Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 15th May: I’m sorry, I’ll read that again, Honey and the Moon.
Oh dear, oh dear! It seems I made a very optimistic reading last week of the rainfall, and mistook the temperature of 17.8 as being the actual amount, when it was in fact just 4mm. A little bit of overenthusiastic statistic reading to say the least. How fortuitous it would have been to have rained 17.8 mm. It is still extremely dry for this time of year, and we have to water every session. Looking at the satellite prediction for the weather this weekend on the television, we are being promised great downpours, but look at any weather apps and there is only a 40% chance of anything happening – so confusing, but by the time you read this newsletter we will know what was right.
It has been another week of kind thoughts and deeds. The Meadowbrook alley garden got a mention last week, and this week a neighbour of the garden installed a water butt in the alley, fed by their shed roof; such a kind act. We have received gifts of plant pots from various people, and even Waitrose got in touch to say they have several plants just going over their best-selling condition and can we use them. We certainly can, if not at any of our gardens, we have contacts with many other local projects and can pass them on. A lovely elderly gentleman has recently discovered our garden at Enbrook, and brought us a lemon tree he had grown himself from a cutting. He found a perfect spot to plant it close to the wall in a sunny situation and it will be most interesting to see how it gets on there.
The hops did get thinned out but will need constant reviewing for a few weeks yet. Most of the bolting chard and finished purple sprouting got removed making some space to plant out the rest of the French beans, the summer squashes and courgettes plus a few spring onions. At Fremantle Park, some of the radishes had bolted and gone to flower but were left as the flowers are great for the bees and the seed pods are excellent to put in a salad or even a stir fry – all was not lost.
Our bees at the garden seem to be doing well. It was interesting to note that some of them took a great interest in one of our gardeners this week and took to buzzing around him as soon as he came within a 20m radius of the hives. We will have to find out why they were fascinated by him. One of our beekeeper friends sent an article about honey fraud which seems to be rampant at present and getting worse. If you had ever wondered why certain supermarkets can sell a jar of ‘honey’ for as little as 69p yet a local beekeeper has to charge in the region of £5 for all the hard work they put into producing a jar of honey – well it seems that the cheap supermarket version is mostly a sugar syrup that has never seen a bee, yet can be described as ‘honey’. It seems disgraceful that this can happen and is yet another example of adulterated food which we buy in good faith and are none the wiser about where it came from and how. However the clue is probably there in the price, same with many other processed products that are cheap for a reason and many of us choose to turn a blind eye to and not question.
Last but not least, it seems that scientists have successfully managed to grow some plants in soil from the moon. However we are not anticipating having to start up a Sandgate community garden there any time soon…
What’s next?
- Finish staking and tying in all the tomato plants
- Are the winter squashes ready to plant out yet?
- Plant out some of the flowers
- Finish removing the purple sprouting and compost
- Maybe turn compost bin 1
This weeks update from the Sandgate Community Garden Diary.
