BBC food growing campaign

The BBC has launched a campaign called Dig In to encourage people to grow their own vegetables.

Whether they have a garden, an allotment, or just a window box, the Dig In campaign will urge people to get digging wherever they can, offering a free seed starter pack to get growers started and a sprinkling of advice and information through a dedicated website, a national Dig In tour and support on BBC Two’s Gardeners’ World, CBeebies and The Green Balloon Club.

“Quite simply we want to enthuse and help first-timers to grow their own grub anywhere,” says BBC Dig In project executive Nina Bell. 

“We’d love to see whole families coming together to get their hands dirty and start turning their fingers green.”

The Dig In campaign will get growers off the ground with free seed packs available from 10th April through www.bbc.co.uk/digin (the website will go live in April).

The starter packs will contain five varieties of plant suitable for a range of growing locations, soils and climates including Gardener’s Delight tomatoes, Lolla Rossa or Red Salad Bowl lettuce, Boltardy beetroot, Harrier or Hunter butternut squash and Early Nantes carrots. Throughout the growing season, the Dig In website and the Dig In Tour will help growers to nurture their plants successfully.

The website will host a series of dedicated pages to each of the five vegetables with advice about sowing, growing and harvesting with regular updates to ensure support throughout the summer.  Gardeners’ World will feature weekly updates from its Dig In garden with Toby Buckland offering advice and tips to growers.

The Gardeners’ World team will also be encouraging everyone to take part in the Dig In Grow Bag Challenge – using the seed starter packs and a grow bag to cultivate their own crops no matter how small the space. The CBeebies team and The Green Balloon Club will be encouraging their younger viewers to get out and get planting too.

Later in the year, at harvest time, the campaign will switch from plot to cooking pot with tasty recipes for the produce available on the Dig In website and inspiration from top chefs including Nigel Slater.

But it’s not just new growers that Dig In hopes to inspire.  BBC Learning hopes that seasoned growers will step forward to “sow what they know”, with an opportunity to supply tips on the Dig In website and share their knowledge at the Dig In regional tours.