Welcome to the Secret Garden South of Bobber's Mill Bridge in Nottingham

Welcome to Windmill Community Gardens, home of the Climate Friendly Gardeners Project.

We are a group of local people, who are nurturing a wonderful community garden in the heart of the city. You'll find us just South of Bobbersmill Bridge, on the allotment site at the South end of Ascot Road. The Gardens are a great place where anyone can come to find out more about growing their own food in a changing climate. We cater for all abilities and welcome any nationality or age group.

Why not come and join us?

Monday 28 October 2013

Pumpkin Carving by Candlelight

We're still grinning from ear to ear, after hosting a fun session this evening for the delightful youngsters from "Go Wild in the Woods" who visited us from their regular base in Killisick.

We had a brilliant evening of pumpkin carving by candlelight, with everyone managing to carve at least one excellent face into their pumpkin, and a few even managing 2.

Soaking up the spooky atmospher

We also invented something rather clever. To safely light the polytunnel, we hang candles in jars from the central pole. This year, we hung them lower than usual, to help put the light close to the carvers, but still slightly above them. We then realised that this makes the perfect system for testing out how your pumpkin will look. Simply place the pumpkin directly under a lit jar, then slide it up until the jar is inside the pumpkin!

Tyler shows how the "windmill
pumpkin testing kit "works

Everyone tried Tracey's famous pumpkin pancakes, and most people had a go at making their own too. Several of the children demanded to take home some pumpkin to cook at home so they could help their families to have fresh pancakes too. We're also helping a church lunch club as the spare pumpkin flesh has been passed on to be used to make soup for them. Seeds will be collected and used for roasting or growing next year.

One last discovery - the "superfreak" knobbly pumpkins on sale at Sainsbury are very, very hard, and one of them was so hard, we literally couldn't carve it, even with a wood-carving chisel! So don't buy one of those if you are hoping to do a clever design. Maybe you could use a drill on it?!

1 comment:

  1. Looks great. Clever bunch..sorry I wasn't in a position to help you out.

    ReplyDelete