Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 20th March: Sunshine, Sandwich Spread, Sahara Dust and Volunteers

Yippee!  It looks like there is wall to wall sunshine on the horizon for a little while and everything is starting to perk up and look just that much greener. 

Rosie has been tantalising us with her homemade sandwich spread made with all sorts from the garden, chopped up fine and mixed with mayo, a little bit of tomato and grated cheese.  It is the sort of thing that you can make from whatever is available at the time, but has loads of flavour.  Rosie has also been roasting some of the dark kale or broccoli leaves to make ‘crisps’ which can be seasoned with all sorts of herbs and spices – absolutely delicious.

It has been one of those weeks where we did not manage to clear the list of things needing to be done from last week, but did manage to get rather a lot done all the same.  Wednesday was a particularly busy day as we had hired a drop side truck in order to collect compost from our friends at Hope Farm.  The farm make compost from green waste and very kindly allow us to come and collect some for free which is an incredible bonus as compost these days is so expensive.  The farm does not sell compost commercially, but supplies their farm plus a few others based in Kent.  Collecting the compost is always an easy business as the farm has all the right equipment and can load us up with a couple of bulldozer buckets in a matter of a couple of minutes. 

The work is at the other end when we have to unload.  Fortunately we had some amazing hard working and delightful volunteers from the Napier Barracks who soon had the compost unloaded and started wheelbarrowing it up to Sandgate Community Garden whilst another load was being collected.  In the afternoon they came to Fremantle Park and helped us to start work on the mulching of the area in-between the new orchard trees.  There is still much to do there, but soon we can begin to plant up this area with fruit bushes, herbs and flowers.  We are grateful to the ‘Friends of Napier Barracks’ for making such a task a much easier one for us at the garden, and we look forward to working with them again.

The family vegetable plots at Fremantle Park had their paths weeded and another layer of wood chips put down.  The chips from last year had all but disappeared into the ground, broken down over time, and it was getting difficult to work out where the paths should have been.

On Saturday, more coriander seeds got sown and the first batch of Florence fennel.  Early carrots got sown direct into one of the empty beds, watered in and covered in Enviromesh.  Carrots and parsnips are the only small seeds sown direct as their tap roots prefer not to be restrained in small sowing modules, but do not mind being in large pots with space.  There was not enough time to sow the parsnips so that will be another task for next Wednesday. 

As the weather was looking fine and the seed potatoes had sprouted, they got duly planted.  We only have the space for first earlies and managed to plant two beds with enough left to create another next Wednesday which is looking like a busy day already.

The winds bringing in the orange dust from the deserts of Africa did not get missed in the garden, our tool box was completely smothered in the stuff and the slugs and snails lurking in the compost bins next door had a fine time making orange dust trails all over it.  No rain on the horizon to be washing that off and so the phenomenon will be remaining with us for a while.

What’s next?

• Cut back the butterfly bush this week

• Pot up more seedlings just starting to appear, for relocation

• Tidy up the chard beds ready for their last fling

• Random onions still need removing from the Choke berry bushes

• Collect new hop twine and re-string the hops

• Sow the parsnip seeds

• Finish planting the potatoes

This weeks update from the Sandgate Community Garden Diary.

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 13th March: the Spring of Deception

One of our gardeners sent through a very appropriate reminder that we are currently experiencing the ‘Spring of deception’ where you get all excited and raring to get going, but that it could all go horribly wrong if we get too carried away.  The problem is the weather on the horizon is looking reasonable, and we have filled practically all of our seed trays and the cold frames are full.  It is so exciting to see all the little shoots starting to pop up above ground both in the trays and in the garden.  New this week is the very first hop and asparagus shoots; however we will have to remain most patient about the asparagus as the beds still have another year to mature until we can start to harvest just a few spears in April 2023. 

Many of the buds on the fruit bushes and vines are starting to burst, and the kiwi vines poised to scamper up the canes.  The Goji berries are already in acid green leaf and are under threat of being relocated if they do not perform and produce more berries this year.  To be fair they did get attacked by climbing snails last year which probably ate all the flowering buds. 

Many thanks to Diane who contacted us with a gift of a blackcurrant bush dug up from her Sandgate garden which was surplus to requirements.  We certainly have a place to put that!

Seeds sown this week were dill and chervil, peas for pea shoots as well as Mange tout peas, more radishes, beetroot, spring onions, lettuces and spinach.  The broccoli which failed the week before has been replaced by a new sprouting batch which will be thinned out this week to give them more room. 

The kale which had gone to flower last week was removed and the stalks composted, all the autumn raspberries were cut down to the ground as the new shoots are just starting to show through, (however, summer raspberries are not cut right back in this manner).  The enclosure containing the last of the wood chips was emptied, and the wood chips spread about on the paths. 

We are pleased to welcome Miracle to the garden, not quite our youngest member but certainly younger than most of us.  She is working on her Duke of Edinburgh award and has been busy sowing seeds and tending to the hop plants so far.  We hope she will enjoy her visits and gets to absorb what community gardening is all about. 

What’s next?

• Cut back the butterfly bush this week

• Pot up more seedlings just starting to appear, for relocation

• Tidy up the chard beds ready for their last fling

• Random onions still need removing from the Choke berry bushes

• Collect new hop twine and re-string the hops

This weeks update from the Sandgate Community Garden Diary.

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 6th March: All Systems Go

It is all systems go from now on; it remains reasonably warm here in the South East, with no frosts on the horizon to knock any of the growth back.  In fact we had to remove the fleece covers from all the broad beans as they have already started to flower and it would not be possible for any of the pollinators to reach them with the covers still on.  Flowers are what we definitely look for as regards broad beans but not what we want with the kale.  As soon as the kale starts to go to flower it means the beginning of the end for that crop.  However the flowers can be eaten before they are fully open, and so we picked as many off as we could and the rest of the crop will be salvaged and removed next week.

Also cropping early are the spring onions sown last September, we were not expecting to be harvesting them until the end of this month and into April.  Most of the Romanesco broccoli and the Kaibroc have been harvested, but as the ground is not required as yet for the next crop, they have been allowed to stay put and send out some side shoots with miniature flowering heads, as an added bonus.  If you have the time, space and decent weather to allow them to do this, they will reward you. 

Just when you think there can be no more parsnips in the ground, four more suddenly put on some top growth and make an appearance above the ground.  To be fair, three of them must have slid down into the path early on in life to have escaped the final collection, but there was still one more to be found actually in the bed.

The peas and radishes sown just seventeen days before, got planted in the week, and we got to try out our brand new super-sized dibbers we had treated ourselves to before Christmas.  They will make life much easier as they can be used without having to be on your knees, not always possible for some of our gardeners.

We had an invite to visit a new garden project by Touchbase Care in Tontine Street.  For the past year they have been working very hard on the main design and structure of their garden in the corner of a field on a farm.  Nearing completion, they have made it wheelchair accessible, there are some beautifully built raised beds, a tool shed, a greenhouse, a classroom or summer house, plus they are now starting work on the all-important compost toilet!  We first heard about the project this time last year and are delighted that they are realising the dream and now reaching completion.  It has been a lot of hard work to put all the structures in place, but it will be an amazing space once it is up and running and such a beautiful spot too. 

What’s next?

• Take up the kale and strip anything edible

• Sow spring onions, more radishes and herbs

• Cut back the butterfly bush

• Remove more of the woodchips in store

• Remove some random onions growing near the raspberries

This weeks update from the Sandgate Community Garden Diary.