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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. Blackcurrants, autumn fruiting raspberries, strawberries, blackberry and rhubarb. We have also grown potatoes, butternut squash and courgettes for this year only. A mesh cage is being constructed at present for bird protection.
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 were 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. As the system used quite a lot of water we replaced it with a retractible hose and increased the number of rainwater butts to six.
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.
Empower Community have funded half the site costs and now SCORE (Salisbury Catholic outreach) have agreed to fund the other half. We have started to build the raised beds (above) and mulch added. There will be two more beds on the higher level by the polytunnel and five small but taller beds in the tunnel itself. There will also be two waist-level shallow planters for salad crops in the tunnel. The rain water collected from the community centre roofs is at last running and our first job will be to top up the pond which already has frogspawn (see gallery). Background shows compost bins and fruit cage under construction.
As demand for our produce grows we have to look for ways of increasing productivity.
For the 2026 season we will be reducing the variety of vegetables grown and increase the quantity of each we plant.
Right is our fruit-growing area. The individual beds each had their own netting cage which is a real pain when weeding, pruning and picking. We thought it would be much more efficient if the whole area (inside the box hedges were to be one big netted aluminium cage. The timber and netting have been reused.
We record the weight and estimated value of all produce. These metrics are important to demonstrate to our donors that we are doing the right thing.
By the end of August 2025 we had doubled the quantity harvested during the same period in 2024.
The shed was the first item we constructed. It was important to have a base where tea and coffee could be dispensed. It of course houses all our tools but there is also a workbench for repairs and a storage rack for onions, garlic and pears.
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