Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 1st October: Sorrel Soup and Hot Composters.

How can it possibly be October already?  Before we know it, the clocks will be changing again and the nights are drawing in even more than they are already. 

We have been lucky enough to have some fine days this week which look to continue into the next.  Some plants are responding well to that; however, it means that the ground is dry again and some of the kale and purple sprouting plants have been pestered by white fly.  The celeriac and leeks should be putting on plenty of growth at this time too, but of course being dry it will affect how much they can.  The celery is also not looking too happy for the same reason and so we have been taking it out as it will not continue into a cold spell, and can make a decent soup. 

There has been some busy sharing on our WhatsApp group of sorrel soup recipes and memories of food from childhood.  One of our lovely gardeners is Ukrainian, and was delighted to be reminded of a recipe her mother used to make which was very similar to the French version of sorrel soup.

Our sea buckthorn hedge we put around the garden as part of a wind break is now providing us with some bright orange berries.  Not all of our gardeners enjoy them as they have possibly an acquired taste, but as a superfood they can be mixed in with a cereal and are great thrown into a salad too.

We took out the cucumber plants as they are not producing any more flowers and seemed tired of life.  They will of course go to give life to the compost heap, but not before a massive cucumber was found hiding, and obviously missed by several of us when picking.

We used some of the compost we made over the spring and summer to help enrich some of the beds.  It was full of worms which caused a great commotion amongst the local birds, in particular the resident robin which constantly kept flying in to pick up as many worms as it could and rewarded us with some delightful singing as it waited to pick up more.

We are pleased to be able to announce that we have been given a grant from the Folkestone and Hythe council (as part of the Folkestone and Hythe Sustainable Futures Forum) to buy a hot composter to enable us to process cooked food and work towards starting up a composting club in Folkestone.  It is very early days but we are in talks with Folkestone College for a composting site within their grounds.  We will of course keep you up to date with our progress, but we are excited at the prospect of being able to process waste food and to make the most amazing biologically complete compost to go back on our gardens and to support other food growing initiatives in the area.

We had a few more lettuces, claytonia, mizuna, parsley and coriander plants to put in for autumn and winter salads.  Happily we were also able to provide a few of the same to the Incredible Edible group in Cheriton to replenish the planters on the station platform at Folkestone West. 

There was an invite to visit the vegetable and flower plots at Napier Barracks this week.  The men often come out to help us with heavy work, and having heard about their own garden, it was great to be able to finally get to see it, although as you might imagine, getting in to see it was not an easy task!

What’s next?

• Finish using the compost from our compost making on some beds

• Finish taking out the celery

• Water the celeriac and leeks plus the seedlings and salads

• Take out the cucumber structure

This weeks update from the Sandgate Community Garden Diary.

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 24th September: It can take 12 visits by a bee to pollinate a female flower.

We were glad of the rain this week mixed with some gloriously warm sunshine. The shorter days have certainly made a difference to the growth rates, and with cooler temperatures, things are starting to slow down. The leaves of the squash plants are beginning to die back away from the fruits to allow them to harden off. We have had an abundance of male flowers on our winter squashes this year and that can be for a variety of reasons. For a start male flowers take the plant less energy to produce than a female flower, and are used to lure in the pollinating insects. However it was interesting to read that it can take as many as twelve visits by a bee (for example) to pollinate a female flower, so you do wonder where there are so few insects around, how anything fruits at all. We have not had to resort to pollination by hand just yet, but let us hope we never have to get to that situation.

We managed to get more wood chip paths put down, the endive is now being picked but cutting down the hedge runners will have to be a job for next week. The decision to plant garlic cloves has not been made yet as we never seem to be too successful with that at Enbrook Park, but it is always good to remember that every year can be different and where something fails one year, it can be a real success in another. We did plant a few elephant garlic cloves which were saved from this year, as we had them.

One of our volunteers came equipped with a pair of wellingtons to get into the pond to clear it from some of the growth. Things were going well until they came across the deep bit and the wellingtons were definitely not long enough to keep the feet dry!

Saturday was the day of the Disco Soup event at Hythe alongside the Hythe Environmental plant and seed swap plus apple pressing. There was fresh produce donated by Thanet Earth, as well as gleaned field produce from local farms. All of the food was deemed not good enough to be sold in the supermarkets (wonky, too big, too small, wrong colour etc), and would otherwise have been ploughed back into the fields or composted, so it all went to make a great feast to be enjoyed by many local people, as well as help to create a fantastic community social event.

We provided the herbs to make herbal teas, to add to some of the dishes being made, or just for people to take away. We are now looking forward to the next Disco Soup. We are most proud that our herbs helped in some way on the day, herbs can certainly help lift a dish and are often collected by our volunteers to use at home. Below is a picture of some rosemary smudge sticks made by a volunteer for us all to share.

What’s next?

• Cut back the hedge runners

• Weed outside the hedge along the fence line

• Remove cut debris from Saturday

• Are the salad plants ready to pick?

This weeks update from the Sandgate Community Garden Diary.