Who knew …. A farm on top of Wimbledon Quarter shopping centre?? Amazingly there is!
Informative and interesting tours take place each month during the growing season where you can see container grown fruit and vegetables and the rooms used to produce oyster mushrooms. You can also admire, from afar, the farm rooftop beehives, moved further away from people for swarming season. (Purchase the honey in the Old Fire Station cafe on Queens Road.) They produced 298 jars last year!
Demonstrating organic gardening, companion planting and a circular economy, the farm is manned by volunteer gardeners. Many of the containers are repurposed from the shopping centre industrial skip, the mushrooms are grown on coffee ground waste from the cafes and the vegetables produced are supplied to local restaurants. It’s a masterclass in container planting in quite a forbidding space.
The variety of produce is surprising in what first appears to be a small space. The open site is intensely sunny – everything is grown from seed. Careful selection of seeds makes success possible – smaller varieties preferred.
Oyster mushrooms grow in two rooms next to ventilation machinery. Climate controlled for maximum humidity, they don’t like temperatures much above 25 degrees, so have found the summer challenging. With just the right amount of starter, used coffee grounds can produce mushrooms 3 times before being consigned to the compost heap. Everything is composted and re-used.
If you’d like to join a tour, ticket price includes a half price beverage and 50% off the farm honey and mushrooms in the Old Fire Station cafe in Queen’s Road. The tours can be found on Eventbrite, and we will try to let you know when the next one is happening.
with thanks to Shan Karwatowska