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F3 - Free Fresh Food
Welcome to Our Site
We are very grateful for your interest and please contact us if you would like to know more about the F3 Project -
Mark & Sue Brandon.
PS If you are curious about the name, F3 stands for Free Fresh Food.
We started from scratch at Chafyn Grove School in October 2022. Now all the infrastructure is in place and we garden both Organically and with Charles Dowding's NoDig regime. As well as advice from Charles we are also affiliated to the Royal Horticultural Society who are most helpful, especially in dealing with Climate Change.
Now all this is in order to supply The Salisbury Pantry with free fresh fruit, vegetables and flowers. The Pantry in turn help those caught out by the cost-of-living crisis.
Eight raised beds 30' long with a variety of covers to protect against birds, butterflies and insects.
Six raised beds with bird protection. Blackcurrants, summer and autumn raspberries, strawberries and rhubarb. For 2025 we have dispensed with summer fruiting raspberries and replaced them with blackberry and redcurrants.
Our 6' x 10' greenhouse with shade netting. Producing a succession of vegetable 'plugs' that are planted out at the ideal time for each variety. In the winter the glass is lined with fleece and the space heated with candle pots, à la Monty Don.
The next batch of leek 'plugs' going in to ensure we can supply the Pantry throughout the year. This is something we hope to perfect in 2025.
All the beds are equipped with drip-feed hoses. The system is computerised (left) so that the watering takes place at night and the roots are watered, not the leaves. The fruit garden is on a separate circuit. As the system uses quite a lot of water we have increased the number of rainwater butts.
Where would we be without our volunteers. Many hands making light work of the strawberry bed. We start 2025 with two new volunteers who are most welcome.
Unloading at the Salisbury Pantry while their customers are queueing outside. Demand is outstripping supply so we are planning to increase production by 25%.
Loading up at 8:00am on a Tuesday morning. In 2025 we hope to increase production enough to also supply the community fridges at Bemerton Heath and Old Sarum/Longhedge.
Life of course never runs smoothly and we are at the mercy of suppliers, the climate, technology, pests and diseases etc. so we have to continually review what we do and see if we can improve. The photo shows a bag of compost 'catapulted' from a lorry tail-lift.
Winter 2024/25 and Chafyn Grove School have kindly given us room for another 5 beds. You can see the start on the right with 2 types of compost. Covering to suppress weeds and warm soil.
January 2025 and we have acquired a second F3 plot behind St Michael's Church and Community Centre on Bemerton Heath. It is in a state but includes a large polytunnel, shown on left. As it is adjacent to the Community Café and fridge there will be no food-miles.
The F3 team have emptied the polytunnel, cleared the site and marked out the new beds ready for the NoDig process. As you can see there is at least 2 skips worth of rubbish to move. Empower have kindly agreed to transfer their grant to the new site so that we can at least get started on planting.
