Having visited the delightful old fashioned shop in Cheriton opposite the library, we now have our seed potatoes chitting away on window ledges, waiting to be planted in the spring.  Here is what we will be growing:

Lady Christl – These were bought specifically for the nursery children as they are a very early variety, and the children will be able to experience harvesting them in June before they break for the summer holidays and change their nursery setting for Primary School.  This variety is recommended in many gardening forums and has an RHS Award of Garden Merit, having both excellent taste as well as good looks!  The harvest is ready in just 11-12 weeks after planting.

Charlotte – Is a waxy second early variety, easy to grow, and can be left for longer in the ground if not required for eating straight away.  Again it has excellent flavour, and is for harvesting mid to end of July.

Pink Fir Apple –   This is an old French variety which can be traced back to at least 1850.  It fell out of favour until it suddenly became popular again from 2000 onwards.  It has ‘top quality taste and texture’, it  stores well and is a main crop type being ready to harvest from mid to end of August.

Oca –  This is not from the potato seed shop, but the seed tubers have been saved from a donated plant and then harvested in November to give us seed for this year (picture below – they look like fat yellow maggots!).  Oca is described as a lemony potato, the ‘lost crop of the Incas’ and a delicious alternative to regular potatoes and yams.  This perennial South American tuber has a slightly tangy flavour, crunchy when raw and starchier when boiled or baked.  It is harvested in the UK before hard frosts.  All of the plant can be eaten – the leaves are similar to wood sorrel, great in a salad;  the stems can be used as an alternative to rhubarb or gooseberries, in a pie.  We will be planting some in-between the garlic and onions as it is a great companion plant, filling the space once the garlic/onions have been harvested in July.  What is not to like about that?

The compost heaps got turned, the last time was probably late September or early October.  The decomposition process is much slower in the winter, but it still happens.   The bench has been moved and we continued to weed and tidy. 

The Saga gardeners kindly found some time to make us another gate, and continue the fencing right up to the windbreak.  Now we know where all the gates and entrances are, the hedging plants, growing in the way, were replanted in hedge gaps. 

In preparation for the birds starting to build their nests, we asked for a bag of washed dog hair from the local groomers, stuffed it into a wicker ball full of holes, and hung it up in the trees for the birds to help themselves to.  There is probably a use for every waste material somewhere!

Bee hive news – we have it on good authority that the bees are still on schedule to arrive in the garden before the end of February.  Work is being done to prepare the hive stands.  Ray is the owner of the bees and hives – he recently moved into Sandgate and we commandeered him as soon as it was discovered he was an experienced bee keeper!  He will be relocating two of his hives to the garden, and will be ably assisted by one of our great garden friends, Chris.  Chris also has experience of bee keeping, and we are confident they will make an excellent success of the garden’s relationship with honey bees.

What’s next?

Progress is currently being held to ransom by a lack of compost…. We simply could not make enough to enrich all the ground space we have available to us.  So we are looking into how we can fix it.  In the meantime we have more tidying to do, and a few more plants to plant, before the seed sowing begins in earnest next month, and more perennial vegetable plants on order since Christmas, arrive in the post!

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This week a couple of us made a trip to Brogdale, the famous fruit farm near Faversham, to collect two  varieties of rhubarb, and a pear tree for planting sometime soon.  On the way back we dropped into the oldest Community Garden in the country, the Abbey physic community garden.  This garden is now 25 years old, and is crammed full of all sorts of things.  World famous, it apparently has coach loads of visitors dropping in for tea and cake, and to see what is being worked on.  You can also get horticultural training, or learn how to cook using ingredients from the garden….. There are so many directions that community gardens can take, however the coaches will not be stopping at Enbrook Park just yet!

Wednesday session was a complete washout, and it seemed like it would never stop raining, however the pond is continuing to fill and the wind break is showing it does slow down the worst of the blasts from the sea, with the cloches managing to stay in place for once.

Saturday was such a contrast, with wall to wall amazing sunshine and finding that we even had to remove our coats soon after starting work.  More weeds have been hoed, three new paths made, and one of the compost bins emptied out onto a new piece of ground to encourage the worms to work it into the soil below – we let them do all the digging!  With the hard stuff done, we made the first proper picking of the year – two types of spinach, chard, mibuna, mizuna, and kale mixed leaves; purple sprouting broccoli and leeks.  We shared the bounty amongst the workers this time, but are looking forward to being able to bring produce to others once we get over the ‘hungry gap’ of the year, and into the next productive part of the growing season.

It is potato chitting time, which involves letting the ‘eyes’ of the seed potatoes develop into shoots whilst they sit on a window ledge!  There is a delightful old fashioned shop in Cheriton opposite the library selling seed potatoes individually, or by the kilo – there are so many different varieties to choose from; waxy salad types, through to floury roasting, nutty flavours, to potatoes never seen in the supermarkets .  Just to be able to buy the exact number and type you are looking for is a real joy.

What’s next?

• Move bench

• Continue to hoe beds and prepare for mulching

• Turn compost heaps

• Start mulching some of the beds ready for planting in March.

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