Tim Prater

Next release of spare plants will be Saturday 16^th May, from 10am until 12 noon at the garden.  We have several outdoor cucumber plants, as well as some courgettes and a few squashes, maybe even a few cucamelon plants if they get a rift on!

We would like to say a big thank you to the Sandgate Society, for giving us another £100, which has already been put towards a lorry load of soil conditioner and improver.   There is only one part of the garden which has not been covered so far, and that is where the garlic and onions are growing.  Once they have been harvested, we will get to work and prepare the bed for planting up straight away with sweet corn, courgettes and squashes.  Thanks also to Tina for the pond weed and a couple of bee friendly plants for around the pond – much appreciated. 

We have had a little flurry of enquiries from a few people wishing to join us in looking after the garden.  Currently we are managing to work via our WhatsApp group by posting pictures and videos, and so it is difficult to integrate new members, but we hope they will bear with us until restrictions get lifted. 

This week we have been putting down even more paths with wood chips, and potting up lots of seedlings.  The potatoes have started to show themselves above ground and so we have covered them up with soil, or earthed them up, to give them extra growing depth.   Frustrated at the two month delay in the asparagus crowns delivery, and in spite of complaining that it was too late, half of the asparagus turned up in the post on Saturday morning and had to be transplanted to the prepared plot.  It will need some tender loving care for sure and we will certainly not be ordering from that supplier again.  Goodness knows when the other half of the order will appear!   One of the pictures below shows what a one year old asparagus crown looks like.  They are very large and these were more than 60cm in diameter.

Bee news

What a busy week in the bee section of the garden.  Ray has brought another colony of bees, kindly donated by his father Tony, with another queen and hive!  The bees are known as Buckfast bees, lighter and yellow in colour compared to the other dark bees already in situ.  So very exciting to have this new addition and it is interesting to see bees and work out if they are the honey bees, and if so from which hive, or if they are wild bees.  Ray and Chris will be spending some time making sure the new queen has settled with her colony and is starting to lay eggs inside the new hive.  From their last report, there were encouraging signs of this already happening.

What’s next?

• Might be able to remove all the fleece coverings if the weather is settled

• Might be planting the other half of the asparagus

• More weeding and path making if we have enough cardboard to put down first

• Check for any flowering onions and garlic, remove flower heads

• Compost bins are full again and will need turning.

• Bit more potato leaf covering required

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Considering our current situation it has been a busy week.  Many thanks to those of you that came along to the garden to get some tomato plants and apologies for those that made the trip in vain, as the plants got snapped up as if they were hot cakes.  We were donated an astonishing £72.20 which will go towards our immediate wish list of extra fine mesh to keep insects at bay, more compost or soil improver, and of course seeds.  The next spare plants will be cucumbers, courgettes and autumn/winter squashes, but not for at least two weeks.

We have been busy weeding, and planting more lettuces, a tray of Florence fennel and oca (the South American tuber, or New Zealand yam).  We also had a packet of butterfly, bee and bird attracting flower seeds to throw about, so we did just that! 

Our pond is currently looking a little sad, the plan was to get plenty of oxygenating pond weed and pond plants from a garden centre to help encourage the wildlife into moving to their des res.  Well, we have various pigeons and magpies dropping in for a bath, and a big fat water beetle has been seen in the murky depths, but that is about it.  If you have a thriving pond and can spare us some water weed or non-invasive pond plants, please get in touch as we would love to be able to get the pond to a healthy state.

Bee news

Ray and Chris have been checking on the bees and it has been really interesting to get updates and information about hive life.  Below is a pollen colour chart for the month of April, and a photo of one of the bees with some pollen in its ‘pollen basket’ on one of its legs.  There is also a picture showing the components of a bee hive.  We are learning something new about bees all the time!

What’s next?

• Grrrrrr…… The asparagus ordered in the winter has still not turned up and is now very late!

• More picking,

• More watering

• More weeding!

• More potting on of seedlings.

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We have over fifty tomato plants needing homes, so if you have not got yours yet, come up to the garden on Wednesday 22^nd or Saturday 25^th from 10 am until noon to collect some.  A small donation would be most appreciated, and help towards our running costs.

Thank goodness for some rain, it will make a world of difference; Sandgate often seems to miss any promised rain compared to other parts of Kent, so it was most welcome.  Temperatures have not dropped too far and some fleece covers have stayed off, and because of lack of greenhouse space, many plants now have to cope outside to make space for the courgettes, squashes and cucumbers!

This week, there were more sowings of carrots and parsnips between other established plants so that they will be ready to take pride of place once the first crop has gone. Some cauliflower plants got planted, but weeds got a good tackling too in the fight to keep space and soil goodness just for the fruit and veg being grown.  The posts did get wired, until we ran out of parts and the drill broke!

The first strawberry flowers have appeared, and so the strawberry bed has been mulched with straw to keep the anticipated fruit clean.  They will have to be netted to keep pests at bay. Talking of flowers, the wild/flower area around the banana tree is looking particularly good, and a picture has been included below.  Last autumn a lovely lady came up to the garden armed with a few anemones which she planted.  This lady works in Nepal for much of the year, and comes back to Sandgate every now and then, so we hope she sees the picture of how her flowers are now looking – absolutely beautiful.

Bee news

Bee keepers Ray and Chris are pleased with bee progress at the garden so far and the site has been registered officially on the government database for notifications of any diseases identified locally.  Astonishingly there are 115 registered apiaries within a 10km radius of our site!  Wow!

What’s next?

• Annoyingly late, the asparagus plants may turn up this week and need planting

• Salad to plant and sow

• Might have a first picking of salad and salad spinach leaves

• Pot on sown squashes, courgettes and cucumbers.

• Keep watering and weeding.

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