Growing for the Foodival

One of the key messages of the Tooting Foodival is that you can grow local, cook local and eat local i.e. with very low food miles and so minimal carbon emissions.  Another is that we aim to have a lot of FUN both over the summer and during the Foodival weekend in September.  If you want to be part of this local food extrvaganza, in any capacity, just make contact, we always need more hands as Foodival is a totally volunteer run event.

Cyber Carrot

As usual we will ask for donations of home grown produce from your back gardens, pots, allotments or window sills.  If you are a grower of anything, please try to save something interesting for September 12th!  Perhaps you could be this year's Top Tooting Cook?  All you'd need to do is cook up a dish using locally grown ingredients - we hope to have plenty to give you!  That's another big idea, we distribute all donated produce to local restaurants, cooks and, this year, groups and schools too, who will then produce dishes for us all to sample.

We also want to celebrate the strange looking things that we grow that no supermarket would ever sell!  So if you're a producer of wonky carrots or weird tomatoes, be proud and show the world!  There will be prizes!

Meanwhile, now is the time to watch out for all those garden pests who might ruin your best laid plans!  Here is a snapshot of the battle in my garden.  I like butterflies but ...

Kohl rabi & caterpillar, both growing for Foodival!

Marko Is This Year's Foodival Poster Winner

For this year's Foodival, we asked students at South Thames College to design us a poster.  Emma Ashton, lecturer in Creative Media Production, set the task and sent us a shortlist of great designs. 

The standard was high but the winning design we have chosen is by 19 year old Marko Saponja, a first year student of Interactive Media Production. Emma says “Marko is very creative in visual arts and in the last 12 months he has really excelled in this area”.

Marko hopes to go on to University to study interactive media or visual effects once he leaves College. We think he's got off to a fine start and we wish him all the best in his future career.

Marko's Foodival Poster for 2015

Our thanks goes to Marko and all the students of South Thames College who took part in this challenge and for Emma Ashton for all her hard work in helping to organise it. 
Malsara