Incredible Edible Granada

Believe it or not the plates are already beginning to spin in Granada.

Had a fantastic time meeting people at a local event telling them the Tod story.

The level of the enthusiasm in the room was incredible.

We had mums with their tiny babies on their knees,

students, people from El Piano itself and a delightful guy that had learned permaculture in Scotland. He was telling us about how he grows edibles in re-used plastic bottles that he hangs from his walls. He was really keen to get involved and maybe help others grow in really simple ways.

We had questions and answers with the help of an interpreter.

Next day I had a chance to visit one of the local growers and suppliers for El Piano.

You will see from the pictures the challenges they have over here in growing in temperatures of 40c.

But I have absolutely no doubt that Efrén (curly hair and head scarf) is going to be a real growing champion.

He has already started to design the raised beds. Earlier on in the day Maggi and I with Florence had a meeting with the CASTRO brothers who are part of Emilio Castro e hijos. This is the largest independent landlord in Granada. Told them the story, showed them the barefoot slide show.
I really think they got it. So much so that they promised to make some of their courtyard land within their apartment blocks available for community growing. So very soon we will have something to point at in Granada. They were really interested in working out how they could grow things from some of the balconies from the flats (going to do some brainstorming on that one).

The day after the event Maggi and Floz got this amazing email from this young guy who came to the meeting whose work brings him in contact with 6 schools here in Granada and who wants to meet up to explore how we can get that learning plate moving.

There had been some groundwork done to help get this going. El Piano in Granada has produced the labels which we saw at the first Incredible Edible Conference in November in Tod last year. These ‘percentage stickers’ go on all the veg they sell and on the dishes they produce. Recently they changed all their hummus and falafel recipes to using locally grown dried broad beans instead of chick peas which are not local. On the strength of this a series of small DOSSIERS of recipes and growing info for broad beans has been produced, another one on tomatoes and a third on aubergines is in plan. I was invited to write the generic intro and hopefully soon we will see some DOSSIERS for using and growing food produced in our area.

So there you have it, all three plates starting to spin, lights going on, hairs on the back of your neck standing up and a web site. Have a look at it. www.comestibles-increibles.com It’s going to grow.

We are linking up so the world map expands!