Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 6th November: Keeping our cabbage white butterfly caterpillars well-fed, fat and healthy.

Are you interested in your local neighbourhood, the environment and how we as residents as well as visitors, interact with our facilities and businesses? Are you interested in the impact of globalisation on us all and how the growing worldwide movement of localisation and sustainability is fighting back to become more self-sufficient, resilient and stable in an uncertain world?  Then you need to come along to the Reading Room at the Old Fire Station in Sandgate, on 17^th November at 7pm where the Sandgate Society will be starting work on ‘Sustainability in Sandgate’.  If you are interested in looking at how localisation and sustainability has helped in many villages, towns and cities around the world then check out this website:

This fascinating collection of videos and articles cannot fail to inspire, and at the very least make you think about what is happening around the world to the environment, nature and people.  It can be depressing viewing some of the videos, but there are solutions if you are prepared to get involved in your locality and join the movement.  Hope to see you there.

There has certainly been some rain in Sandgate these past few days.  The rainfall for all of October was 43.9 mm however by 4^th November the rainfall within just a couple of days was 45.4 mm.  At the Touchbase garden where some of our volunteers lend a hand, a massive 1000 litres of rainwater was saved in those two torrential days from just one large shed roof – incredible. 

Below is a photo of a rather bedraggled looking Heron standing on top of the moorhen house in Enbrook Park, spotted following the downpours.  All very well for us tucked up inside our cosy homes, but for nature, this week of high winds and rain must have its toll. 

As for the community garden in Enbrook Park, we kept a watchful eye over how the plants fared with the battering.  There was a gathering of volunteers on Wednesday, however the session on Saturday was cancelled and we all opted for the comforts of home instead.

It has to be said that we have not been quite so vigilant at looking after our plants as we might have thought, with the issue being netting over the plants concealing all that is going on underneath.  Netting is a wonderful thing to keep off marauding pests of all shapes and sizes, fob off the high winds and lull you into a false sense of security that all is well.  One day the cauliflower plants were looking sturdy enough and growing well, and what seems like the next day, all the leaves seem to have disappeared, leaving a straggly excuse of a plant loaded with well-fed fat and healthy cabbage white butterfly caterpillars happily feasting away obviously safe from marauding predators and high winds, all cosy under that net.

In another area of the Sandgate Community Garden, some purple sprouting broccoli had sent up a broccoli head which was missed, probably because of the netting, and was now starting to evolve into the yellow flower head.  It just goes to show that out of sight is out of mind and netting over a crop can complicate matters.

One plant we do not need to net which has performed well this year is the sea buckthorn.  We have used sea buckthorn as a barrier against the winds, and is a plant that can cope with the sea salt.  We are trying to keep it tight against the fence so that it will thicken up with time and not take up too much space.  The downside of a hedge is that it will take moisture from the ground which you need for growing vegetables, and this hedge is prickly!  In this third year of growth it has rewarded us with bright orange berries, which some of our volunteers have collected to be dried and crushed into a powder, or simply used fresh in recipes.  Sea buckthorn is a superfood, but is an acquired taste with a most intense flavour.  We often pot up some of the runners from the hedge which are making their way either across the plot or outside, so do get in touch if you would like a plant as we will certainly be able to oblige.

We were recently contacted by a Saga employee with a gift of five seed trays complete with clear covers and reservoir trays.  We will certainly be able to make good use of them; and although seed sowing is finished for 2022, it will not be too long until we reach mid-February, and the seed sowing season starts all over again.

What’s next?

• Get ready to plant the broad bean seedlings

• Keep checking cold frames

• Cut back the amaranth plants and compost them

• Thin out some of the nasturtium plants

This weeks update from the Sandgate Community Garden Diary.

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 30th October: Anyone for Slug Fritters?

Oh dear oh dear, with temperatures of 20 degrees this week and plenty of moisture, the slugs are having a wonderful time and have turned the Chinese cabbages to something resembling paper doilies, they are so full of holes.  Our new routine of checking the cold frames for slugs has been most fruitful with several being caught each time.  It is such a shame that slugs are not on the menu as we would have a fine crop.  Apparently they are edible; and the flavour is a cross between chicken and calamari.  Something to bear in mind but perhaps times will have to be really bad before we would choose to make a meal out of them. 

Still there are plenty of caterpillars around, and a fine dusting of blackfly, the poor plants are being attacked from all angles.  Below is a photo taken of a sighting of some ladybird larvae.  You would certainly not be expecting to see them in late October and the hope is that they will have time to transform into their adult form as they are generally supposed to be hibernating from October until February and certainly not reproducing.

Where the summer annuals we grew from seed this year were planted, they have flowered, gone to seed, dropped their seeds, the seeds have germinated, grown, and now about to flower, all around the parent plants still flowering.  We have never known anything like it.  Looking forward to next week, temperatures will be lower, but with a promised minimum of 8 degrees, it will have little effect on the current situation.

One of our weekly newsletter readers, Rita, got in contact having read about the amazing array of fungi forms appearing in great numbers all around the park and garden.  Rita sent in a photograph of what is believed to be a basket stinkhorn pictured in SW France where she is currently staying.  You can see the picture she took below, and it has to be one of the strangest and most amazing structures to be seen in nature.  On researching the distribution of the fungi, it has been found as close to us as East Sussex; perhaps we may get to see it in our county yet.

There was a little flurry of excitement when the Hythe Hops scheme treated its members to a gift of two beer glasses printed with the Hythe Hops logo, and a can of the new brew by the great Docker brewery, and made from hops grown by locals.  All the names of our volunteers went into the ‘hat’ to draw out the winners of either a glass or a can of the brew itself, and with our two memberships of the scheme, six of our volunteers had a happy surprise – thank you Hythe Hop scheme!

What’s next?

• Water all pots, plus cold frames, check for slugs, clear leaves on plot and in pond

• Continue to make new plant labels

• Continue to pot up strawberry runners

• Keep checking on the broad bean sowings.

This weeks update from the Sandgate Community Garden Diary.

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 23rd October: Planning forward and planting for 2023.

We are just coming up to the ideal time to be preparing the ground for next year and to be thinking about cutting back old growth and getting the gardens tidy.  However the warm weather continues, pushing back the dormant time for plants.  In the Meadowbrook alley garden, the globe artichokes had been cut right back at the end of summer, but the new shoots for next year have already grown tall and are producing artichokes – in October. 

We have been keeping up the routine of fishing leaves and duckweed out of the pond, picking up the fallen sycamore seeds and leaves, and remembering to water the various pots around the plot.  We now add the task of checking the cold frames each and every session to check for slugs.  They seem to have made a direct pilgrimage to the cold frames where they can spend uninterrupted and safe time feasting on the lettuces.  They are safe until we search them out, remove, and relocate them to pastures new.  In the meantime the lettuces are disappearing fast, and it will be a miracle if the rest survive much longer.

We did start to tackle the list of tasks for this week, but this period of clearing and weeding will probably be with us for some time to come, and so the list continues into next week for sure.  We have started work on making some new plant labels for the plots, and are continuing to pot up lots of new strawberry plants that keep popping up in some of the paths.  They will be useful to relocate to some of the other gardens.

Our bird watching, visiting couple came by the garden again this week to let us know their house purchase is close to completion and they will be moving away from Sandgate.  We will miss the informative discussions on local wildlife.  This week we heard about the sighting of a raven (although we never knew they were a rare thing here) and three firecrests.  The firecrest is a tiny, brightly coloured bird, which apparently was once only a visitor to the south but is now starting to breed here. 

On Friday we completed the mulching of the Queen’s Jubilee Orchard in Fremantle Park.  In the spring this year, we only had enough time and compost to spread between half of the trees, which we then planted in late spring/summer with fruit bushes, rhubarb, herbs and flowers.  We organised a day to collect four truckloads of compost from our friends at Hope Farm in Capel who kindly allow us to take it.  The compost they produce is used on local farms and not sold commercially, but their generosity has meant that we have been able to get on with various tasks that would otherwise have used much of our funding – compost is an expensive commodity.  It has also meant that we can practice the ‘no dig’ method, and take care of the soil first, which will then take care of the plants.  We used two truckloads of compost on the lower end of the orchard, with a little left over to replenish some of the soil on the opposite slope we are developing, as well as some parts of the orchard where the compost has worn thin.  The plan is that in the spring we will plant the newly mulched area with more fruit bushes, herbs and flowers.  In-between truckloads, the volunteers started planting spring bulbs, and we will continue to plant more around Sandgate in the next few weeks.

In the afternoon of the compost run, we delivered two truckloads to Enbrook Park for use on the community garden plus of course the alleyways and various planters, not forgetting the other orchard area at Sandgate Park.  We are grateful for help from Saga volunteers that day plus volunteers from the Napier Barracks.  It would have been an impossible task without them, and we certainly would not have managed to complete as much as we did.

What’s next?

• Water all pots, plus cold frames, check for slugs, clear leaves on plot and in pond

• Continue to make new plant labels

• Continue to pot up strawberry runners

• Sort out the bay tree planters

This weeks update from the Sandgate Community Garden Diary.