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.

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 16th October: Comparing notes, know your mushrooms and the flight of the Sandgate Storks…

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 9th October: Keeping the garden tidy, a full pond and late growth.

After all the rushing around of the last few weeks, getting all the plants into the ground and settled in as quickly as possible, it has suddenly gone very quiet now in the garden, giving time to catch up with a few things and to actually sit down and spend time having a good chat to volunteers and visitors.  There is not much to harvest at the moment.  Daylight hours are so much shorter, and this has an impact on the speed of growth, or lack of it, and once something has been raided, it takes that much longer to recover than it might have done in high summer, to be at a point where it can be raided again.

The leaves are now continuing to fall along with bountiful amounts of sycamore seeds which always keep us busy when they start to sprout in the spring, so it will be lots of picking up and constantly tidying from now on.  Where leaves cover any seedlings, they cut out the light and the slug and snail population quickly move in.  Keeping a tidy garden helps to keep problems at bay.  The damper cooler weather has encouraged the fungi to appear all over the plot, and there are some rather large spectacular displays appearing just outside in the grassy areas as pictured below. 

The pond is full again at last, something we have not seen for many months.  We have been clearing the fallen leaves and duckweed, however looking at the amount of scum on the top of the water; it is evident that many birds and perhaps mammals have been enjoying taking a dip in the deeper water.  There is always a kerfuffle and commotion when you first enter the garden as the birds bathing take flight and fly away.

Now is the time for some of the flowers to look their best having got through the drought, stressed and attacked by blackfly, the dahlias and fuchsias are now making a spectacular show and really having a final fling before any frosts finish them off. 

The last of the rather large purple sprouting cages were completed this week as the broccoli was straining to burst out of their hooped netting and grow taller and wider.  You can sense the relief; looking at those plants released from their confines last week, already seeming larger and healthier for having the space.

One of our garden friends, Rosemary (from the Marsh community garden, and Napier Barracks garden volunteer) got in touch to say she had been collecting many seeds that we could have, as well as an electric garden shredder.  We snapped up the seeds, but having no electric power on any of our sites, the shredder was passed on to one of our sister groups, the Incredible Edibles in Cheriton.  We know they will be able to make good use of that, thank you Rosemary!

What’s next?

• We still need to cut back the foliage that is growing into the pond.

• Keep on picking up leaves from all over the site

• Weed, weed, weed

• Water the pots and cold frames regularly

• Still plenty of seedlings to pot up and move to other sites.

This weeks update from the Sandgate Community Garden Diary.