Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 12th March: A truck, six tons of compost and plenty of muscle

It has been avery interesting week as regards the weather.  There have been lashings of rain with cold icy blasts of wind, dismal grey skies with a glimpse of the sun every now and then.  It was bucketing it down with rain on Wednesday when we were due to have another gardening session at Enbrook Park, so it was decided to give it a miss; luckily Saturday was much drier and a little warmer.  However it seems that a large part of the country has been subjected to snow and so we are grateful not to have to contend with that!  We are so close now to seeing the spring, and you just know that when it does eventually arrive, everything is going to gallop ahead at a rate of knots and it will be really busy.  The hops growing against the wall are just starting to appear above ground which is a worry as we will have more frost this coming week. 

Thank goodness, it seems we had picked the best day to collect compost from our friends at Hope Farm, to take to the Touchbase Care Kitchen Garden at Pent Farm, Postling.  We hired a truck to collect around 6 tons of compost, and had plenty of muscle to help from some of the Touchbase Care members as well as some of the lads from the Napier Barracks.  It was a busy and exhausting day, getting all the compost off the truck and wheelbarrowed into place in the garden.  We are just getting to the point where we have almost covered all of the site with compost now, the process being started last spring, and so this year the vegetable plots should be bursting with plants.  We were grateful to Touchbase Care for providing a lovely lunch from their café based in Tontine Street.

It seems it is that time of year again when the youngsters at secondary school are looking for placements for their Duke of Edinburgh award.  We had some last year, and this Saturday we were joined by a willing volunteer keen to learn some gardening skills.  He planted some radishes, and learnt how to multi sow coriander seeds into modules.  Always interesting to host volunteers with little or even no liking for vegetables of any description, however this young man seems to enjoy eating them too which must be a bonus.

On Saturday 29^th April, supported by the Carbon Innovation Lab, the Folkestone and Hythe Sustainable Futures Forum will be hosting an event featuring TED x style talks – ‘to give businesses, community leaders, and individuals from the Folkestone and Hythe district area the chance to share and inspire the local community with their environmental and sustainability ideas, projects and stories.’  The event will be held at the Burlington Hotel Folkestone and should be a really interesting afternoon.  The tickets are free, and can be ordered here here.

What’s next?

• Sow more radishes, onions, etc

• Probably warm enough later next week to plant the peas for pea shoots

• Prick out the thyme seedlings

• Might need to repot the sweet peas

This weeks update from the Sandgate Community Garden Diary.

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 5th March: Good news from Thanet Earth.

Believe it or not we were actually short of rain for the month of February, with a mere 10.3mm of the wet stuff registered.  It continues to be chilly so the seedlings are still not moving much.  In the past we would have planted the radishes and the pea shoots by now, but they are still not quite ready, and with the threat of frosts to come this week, we have halted the seed sowing until it warms up a bit more.  We have been busy pricking out the lettuce seedlings, as well as the early cabbages and cauliflowers as they really needed to be moved into larger pots before they got too many roots to be able to separate easily. 

On Tuesday, some of us went to an event held by Low Carbon Kent at Brogdale Farm to find out about the possibility of being matched with a business or producer that has organic waste as a by-product which could be put to another use.  We would have been interested in being matched with a cob nut farmer who has loads of nut husks to dispose of which we could have used to make paths or simply to compost, however the farm was in Tonbridge and therefore too far a journey.  However the concept is a great one as we all know that one man’s rubbish is another man’s treasure.

On Friday the garden at Enbrook Park had a visit from ‘The Black Gardener’ Danny Clarke, garden designer and television presenter who has worked on various garden shows for the BBC, ITV and Channel 5.  He came with a film crew from Saga to talk about the garden, how it was started and the features within it.  He was able to recognise that it was a ‘no dig’ garden from the mounds of compost on the beds and the wood chip paths.  It was really interesting to hear about his career and the projects he is currently working on as well as his garden at the Chelsea Flower Show last year.  The film is to be put together and it is hoped that we may be able to send out a link on its completion so that you can see it too.

That was enough excitement for one week! 

Having got on the soap box last week to comment on the lack of tomatoes and cucumbers from abroad and suggesting it would be more environmentally beneficial to eat seasonal and local; it seems that if you really cannot do without tomatoes and cucumbers in winter, you can buy them from the visiting greengrocer at the Saturday morning market in the Folkestone West station car park.  They come direct from Thanet Earth, Kent; and happily, the cucumbers are not wrapped in plastic. Of course the great news is they have not travelled far but the cost has come from having to heat and light those massive greenhouses.

What’s next?

• Supporting Touchbase Care by collecting compost

• Keep an eye on the temperatures this coming week

• Might have to transplant more seedlings

• Keep checking the netting as there are hungry pigeons around

This weeks update from the Sandgate Community Garden Diary.

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 26th February: Seasonality, and the mole in our midst.

No, we do not have any tomatoes, cucumbers, strawberries or bell peppers growing in the garden at the moment, and it seems the supermarkets do not have any either.  The global market has told us that we can have any fruit or vegetable we want at any time of the year, and so we have come to expect that.  When the far away countries that grow those things to be brought here suffer the effects of bad weather and the crops fail, the fact we cannot get such things creates some panic as happened this week across the country.  We will and can grow such crops, but not until late summer will we be able to eat them, for a time of maybe between two and ten weeks if we are lucky; and what a treat that will be – something to look forward to.  What a pity it is that many of us no longer know what is in season in the UK and are probably buying whatever is on the supermarket shelf little realising that these foods have travelled halfway across the globe to get there.  What a cost to the planet, what a cost to our own UK food production and the loss of many untried seasonal and local dishes.

We have been sowing more seeds this week, and many have now germinated, and are being put outside to shiver in this winter sunshine under the protection of cold frames.  The increased daylight hours are all important, the sunshine is a bonus, but the protection from the cold blasts of wind is what saves them.  Probably the most frustrating conundrum is trying to find a suitable seed and general compost that is fit for purpose.  It is almost impossible to recommend or stick with any one brand as the content varies all the time and basically you never know what you are going to get or even if it is any good – sometimes they can be so diabolical that nothing wants to thrive in them.  It continues to be a constant problem and guessing game.  However, so far, so good, and most of our seeds are growing. 

Talking of compost – a couple of us went all the way to Horsham in West Sussex by invitation of the head gardener of a huge spa and hotel, boasting three restaurants, serving fruit and vegetables from the walled garden and extensive grounds.  In the garden there is a ‘Tidy Planet Rocket aerobic composter’ which is capable of composting all food scraps, peelings and general food waste from the premises; producing a fine compost within a matter of two weeks which is later put back on the gardens to grow even more food.  Our mission was to see this composting beast in the flesh as up to now we had only read about it, and wanted to speak to somebody who actually has and uses the thing.  It was most interesting, the machine does do what it says it can do, and we had a great time seeing the kitchen garden and talking to the head gardener about all things to do with compost and vegetables – in particular the trials and tribulations of working with demanding chefs with little notion of the job of the gardeners, together with some of the amazing dishes they can produce that most of us will never see the like of at £90 and upwards per head! 

The February meeting of the Sandgate Environmental Action group was held this week in the Old Fire Station.  There was a talk from Nikki Gammans of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, which was absolutely fascinating.  There is nothing that Nikki cannot tell you about bumblebees, and we are hoping that the trust will come out to Pent Farm where some of us are volunteers, to record the bees in residence there. 

Wildlife was something we were concerned with during the week when one of our volunteers spent some time removing more leaves from our pond.  We always make sure the leaves are left at the side of the pond so that any creatures can crawl back into the water.  We were pleased to see that there were many interesting creatures amongst the leaves, and helped some of them to get back to their home.  One of them is pictured below.

The Sandgate Park in Military Road also has a new addition to the wildlife population – a mole; in fact it seems a rather massive mole as you can see from the picture below, the mole hills are rather spectacular in size and are in evidence around the newly planted trees as part of the ‘Queen’s Green Canopy’ and now making their way right across the park.  Cheeky!

What’s next?

• Prick out the other half of the lettuces

• Put down some more wood chips

• Keep picking the kale sprouting flowers

• Weed around the asparagus beds

This weeks update from the Sandgate Community Garden Diary.