Local children get growing to become 

Booths youngest suppliers


Grow your own - background

Booths has launched a Grow Your Own competition for local schools that will give pupils the chance to sell their home grown produce in one of its stores.

For the first time, the winner of the regional retailer’s annual school gardening contest will become an official supplier to its local Booths store for the day.

Schoolchildren will be able to sell their winning harvest of summer produce to customers to raise money for their school.

The victorious school will also collect a £1,000 cheque to spend on gardening or cooking equipment for use in lessons. Three runners up will each receive £150.

Every primary school in Booths’ four home counties of Lancashire, Cumbria, Yorkshire and Cheshire can take part in the competition which is designed to encourage pupils to grow their own five a day.

Now in its third year, the Grow Your Own competition has proved a blooming success with hundreds of schools across the region digging in to take part.

Booths’ Matthew Bruno says: “It’s a fantastic way for children to take their learning out of the classroom and into the great outdoors.

“As an added reward this year, the lucky winners will become our first school age suppliers and be able to sell the fruits and vegetables they grow in a real store. Who knows maybe it will inspire them to become one of our future award-winning suppliers.”

The Grow Your Own competition aims to help children understand where different fruit and vegetables come from and to encourage them to eat healthily.

Each school can take their pick of the crops to grow whatever produce they choose. This can include strawberries, tomatoes, radishes, rhubarb or lettuces.

Judges will be looking for the school that harvests the finest fruit and vegetables, uses recycling imaginatively and presents their results to the judges in the best way.

Matthew Bruno adds: “If you can encourage children to grow their own fruit and vegetables you’d be amazed by how much more enthusiastic they are about eating them. They simply love getting their hands dirty and sowing and growing their very own food. It’s a lesson that will stay with them for life.”

One finalist will be selected from each of the four counties. They will be invited to bring some of their best produce to an awards ceremony at Booths head office in Preston on Monday 12th July 2010.

More than 60 schools registered to take party in last year’s Grow Your Own competition and the winner was Lancaster Lane Community Primary School in Leyland, Lancashire.

Pupils at the school impressed judges by coming up with innovative ideas that stretched from the garden into the classroom. The children used their produce in science and cookery classes. As well as bringing in some examples of their produce for the presentation, they also made a delicious broad bean dip from beans they had picked that morning.

They also worked hard to recycle products by sowing seeds in cardboard tubes and paper pots and composting garden waste.


To enter your school into the competition and register please email growyourown@booths.co.uk by30th April 2010 .

Schools will then need tosubmit their entries by Monday 28th Jun 2010 in the form of a short creative photo or video diary showing the children planting their gardens and growing the fruit and vegetables.







First of all, gardening isn’t difficult. Plants want to grow. They’re designed to grow. Having said that you can make life easier for yourself by following a few simple rules.



1.    If you can pick your gardening plot, avoid sites that face north or are waterlogged, exposed or heavily shaded by trees.

2.    Always look on the bright side. If your soil is heavy clay and difficult to dig it will generally be more fertile. If it’s sandy and free draining you’ll be able to grow better carrots and herbs like Thyme and Rosemary.

3.    Get advice. Invite someone from the local allotment society to come and see your plot and give you their top tips.

4.    Plants, like children, need a good start in life. Most salad crops and vegetables such as cabbages, cauliflowers, leeks and onions benefit from being sown in plastic or fibre modules. Keep them in a greenhouse or cold frame (or even on a sunny window sill) until they’re established and ready to plant out.

5.    If you want to avoid having to use pesticides, invest in some horticultural fleece. Cover crops such as carrots and cabbages and even leeks to prevent pests getting to them and laying their eggs.

6.    You’ll have to do some weeding as the season goes on, which is great because weeding is one of the most satisfying jobs in the garden. Some grown-ups seem to think it’s boring but they’re wrong.

7.    Start off by growing the easiest things such as lettuce and dwarf beans, beetroot and early potatoes. They all grow like weeds. Even if you haven’t a proper garden you can grow these plants and things like strawberries in containers outside the classroom door.

8.    Gardening is infested with old wives’ tales, so invent some youngsters’ tales to outdo them. If you’re growing tomatoes tell the boss that you need to add a teaspoonful of sugar to the water in the watering can to make them sweeter. It works, honest.  Also a bit of salt sprinkled along beetroot rows makes the plants grow better. And pine needles scattered thickly under strawberry plants will deter slugs and make the fruit taste wonderful.

9.    If you’re growing something like parsnips which take a long time to germinate mix the parsnip seed with radish seed. The radish will germinate quickly and show you where the parsnips will eventually be. And you can eat theradishes – if you like radishes.

10.    Mice sometimes eat newly sown peas.  You can fettle them by scattering holly leaves along therow. The mice don’t like pricking their noses.

11.    Think of ways of saving money. Buy one of those pots of growing herbs such as basil from the supermarket. When you get home tease the plants apartand re-pot them individually. You quite often get six or eight plants for the price of one.

12.    Finally, if your teacher catches you skiving, just remember the advice of one famous gardener who said that the very best way to garden was to put on a wide brimmed straw hat and some old clothes. Take a hoe in one hand and a glass of lemonade in the other and then tell somebody else where to dig.



If you any any images you'd like to share with us of how your fruit and vegetable plots are doing, please email them to growyourown@booths.co.uk and we will select a few to to show on our website.