Garden Organic held its first exotic crops fair on 3 October. The aim was to share and celebrate the wealth and knowledge of unusual crops that many are unaware can be grown in the UK. Undeterred by the less than tropical weather, 180 people turned up to see how these plants can be grown, prepared and cooked. This day was part of the Sowing New Seeds project, an initiative funded by the Big Lottery Local Food Fund and the Brook Trust. Its mission is to preserve the resource of expertise, knowledge and varieties of exotic crops grown on allotments in the Midlands and make this more widely available to people who may like to grow them.
I offered tips. Many crops, such as calaloo, can easily be grown on an allotment but our experiences have suggested that seed for the best performing varieties currently resides in home-saved collections in allotment sheds, not so easily obtained by the general public. But it is vital that we conserve this resource.
Samantha Dobbie from the University of Birmingham presented some of her findings from an extensive survey of allotment holders conducted around Birmingham as part of the Sowing New Seeds project. She found a wide range of exotics were being grown but, perhaps contrary to expectations, it is the over-70s that are most active in growing exotic crops. "Many of these people were formerly farmers in their countries of origin and it is vital that their knowledge and expertise is documented and made more widely available to people," said Samantha.
Participants braved the wet weather to join a tour of the exotic display gardens. Here they were able to view many plants they had never seen before: a shark's fin melon trying to take over the garden (its texture is similar to a spaghetti squash and the strands are used in a dish resembling shark's fin soup); a dudi plant producing large gourds popular in Indian and Bangladeshi cooking; mouse melons - miniature cucumbers with a slightly citrus taste; chickpeas - already harvested both by us and some enthusiastic mice; calaloo flowering and yard-long beans (not yet quite a yard long).
But perhaps the most popular were the cooking demonstrations. Isabelle Otokore from Ivory Coast showed us how to cook baked yam, African aubergine and okra while Bhanu Mistry cooked up dudi and potato saag. People queued up to have a go at rolling out chapatis with varying degrees of success.
The Sowing New Seeds project can only take place with the participation of people within the community. During the next two years we have many activities planned to enable more people to grow these crops, including growing workshops, seed swaps, adopting a variety to safeguard seed, and cooking demonstrations. If you know a community group, school or just a group of friends (preferably within the Midlands) that may be interested in taking part, please contact Anton Rosenfeld or me.
