Harvest Event Saturday 20th October 2018, 1pm - 4pm

Yes folks, it's that time of year again!  Dig In are holding our annual Harvest event day on Saturday 20th October, 1pm - 4pm.

If you like the sound of homemade cakes, soup, freshly pressed apple juice, pumpkin carving and other activities, please come along to the allotment to join us.
We have a marquee, polytunnel and other shelters to huddle under if the weather's a bit iffy so don't let that deter you!

We're always looking for new people to come and share what's on offer at the community allotment so why not use this as an excuse to see what we do?

Come and celebrate the Harvest with Dig In, we'll be pleased to see you.
Free entry.

Autumn Harvest 2016

A big THANK YOU to all visitors who came to our Harvest Event on Saturday afternoon.
We thought we were going to have a dry & sunny day at one point, but then we should have known there'd be a rain shower or two, there usually is when we have an event.  No fear though, we have tents, gazebos, a polytunnel & other places to shelter so nothing stops us enjoying ourselves.  We hope all our visitors had a good time and don't forget, if you fancy joining in with our allotment group you can come along any Weds or Sat, 10-12.  Just ring the bell on the gate or drop us an email to enquiries@diginstapleford.org.uk
Here are a few pics from the event.

Flowers

More Flowers

Bee

Hearts

Apple pressing

Apple pancakes - yum!

Pumpkin Carving

Jar decorating

Willow craft

Sunday catch up

Everything is growing so quickly at the moment, we have lots of French beans (haricot verts as our French volunteer would have it) and runner beans.  It seems as soon as we've finished picking some there are more ready, not that we're complaining, there's nothing quite like picking veg & then cooking & eating it soon after, so fresh and virtually zero food miles!

We've had a good crop of onions too.

The pumpkins, after a slow start, have really caught up.  We were hoping to time it right so that we'd have pumpkins for carving at our Harvest Day coming up on Sat 22nd October, but a couple of them look ready now with 7 weeks to go!


The (ahem, award winning) vine cuttings that we took in January are looking very healthy.  They've been nurtured in the polytunnel and have put on a lot of growth.  Check out the picture taken in May and one taken today to see the difference!

Harvest Event 2015

Here are a few pics from this year's Harvest Event.
Many thanks to all the people who came to this event even though it was raining for much of the day.  DigIn really appreciates your support.
Thanks to Asda for supporting us, especially Jon on the day.
Thanks too to the volunteers who contributed so much to make the whole day possible - we couldn't do it without you.

The comments we had from our visitors on the day were very encouraging - it sounds like you all enjoyed it!

It's the way I tell 'em!

More Pumpkin Progress

The time has come to harvest the pumpkins before the frost gets them.  Today, we released Big Max from its plant along with other almost as large pumpkins.  Here are some pics.  They were so heavy it took two of us to lift them into the wheelbarrow!
They should be on display at our Harvest Event on Saturday 24th Oct, 11 - 3pm.  Come along and see them for yourself.

Pumpkin Day 2012

Special thanks to Chris Davis for the video presentation.

Here are some of the sample of pumpkin carving what's been going off today at the allotment. Everybody enjoyed the day from carving into pumpkins and doing the pumpkin activities there and tried food with pumpkin in them. The weather was cold but never rained for the day with the sun coming out in the sky. There's different form of shape and colour, which makes them look different and stands out quite well together too.

A big thank you to Tracey Lloyd of Groundwork and everyone who volunteered to make the event a great success. A poem was also commissioned specially for the event, which was written and performed by Dave Wood;

Soup De Doop (mp3 audio format) © Dave Wood 2012

Congratulations to the winners of the pumpkin contest;

Largest pumpkin: Roy Oldershaw.
Best dressed pumpkin: Mickey Jones (8)
Most unusual pumpkin: Claire Swain

Pumpkins are a coming...

A selection of delicious DIG IN squashes, pumpkins and shark fin melons.... all safely tucked away awaiting 2012 Pumpkin festival. Come and join us to celebrate and bring a pumpkin for the largest, best carved or most unusual competition categories.
Thanks to The Co-operative for supporting our event this year with a supply of Pumpkins for carving on the day.see you on the 27th October 11-3.

Pumpkin Day Winners!

Congratulations to the following pumpkin exhibitors at the Annual Dig In Pumpkin Day event-

The Bradburn family - Largest pumpkin award (weighing in at 34.93 kgs).

Chris Davis' daughters - Joint winners for best dressed pumpkin.

Mystery exhibitor (unknown) - Strangest looking pumpkin.

Gary and Claire Swain - Honory prize for their misshapen pumpkin.

The event was one of our best attended so far, with around 180 adults and children (including volunteer helpers). A total of £124.67 was raised through a raffle and donations on the day, which will help towards seed, materials, tools and repairs for the next season.

Many thanks for all who attended, making Pumpkin Day a huge success. We also have some video footage of the event;

Pumpkin Day

Today was very busy and loads of things was going off from carving pumpkin's, pumpkin soups, bird feeders, facepaint, pumpkin games and activities and other things too.
I was doing the bird feeders shaped of pumpkins by using

lard and wild bird seed.

Volunteers needed to help with events

Can you help to plan and deliver Our Apple and Pumpkin festivals? We need a small group of people who can give a bit of time to help organise or help at these events to make them as good as previous years.If you want to be involved let us know either through the blog or the Dig In enquiries email.

Dig In Pumpkin Festival 2010

Just back from a wonderful Pumpkin Festival at Dig In. We were incredibly lucky with the weather, and even luckier with the number of fantastically artistic people who volunteered to help us carve pumpkins to decorate the site and who cooked fabulous pumpkin-based food for the event. Dave, our pumpkin poet last year, visited us again to provide another brilliant poem, this one with its own dance, and Pulp Friction provided us with non-stop hot pumpkin soup.

Thank you to everyone who volunteered both beforehand and on the day - it made a huge difference to be able to spread the workload, and really helped our 149 visitors to have a great experience. Thank you also to the Groundwork team who added to the work of our regular groups to make the site look really spick and span on the day. And we mustn't forget those who entered the competitions, especially those who made the huge effort required to bring along their giant pumpkins.

Congratulations to our Prize Winner Mr. Fisher, with his 110kg monster pumpkin, and to Mr. Genivere who was a worthy runner up. Both gentlemen have generously donated their pumpkins and their seeds to us, so we look forward to giving these out next year and seeing what folk manage to grow from them!

Here are a few photos to give you a flavour of the event.

Pumpkin Fun for Albany Nursery

The morning and afternoon classes of Albany Nursery visiting Dig In today to have a look around the allotment and help us harvest our pumpkins, ready for our Pumpkin Festival on 30th October.

They had a wonderful time looking at the bee hive and the pond, testing out the different smells of the herbs and choosing pumpkins to lift. 

Then they discovered how big the biggest pumpkin ever grown was (currently 1725lbs and 5.15m in circumference), by standing in a circle the same size as the pumpkin's girth. After that, we weighed all the children, added the weights together and found that they would need 3 classes the size of the morning group to weigh the same as the record pumpkin, or 4.5 classes the size of the afternoon group (which had less pupils). We rounded off the visit with a taste of pumpkin pudding, which nearly everyone tried (even the adults!)

Thank you to the staff at the Nursery and all the parents, grandparents and carers who came down to make the visit possible. And a special thank you to our allotment neighbour who helped make the visit extra-special by showing the children their chickens and letting them help to feed them.