Tim Prater

If we had been asked at the very start of this project in mid-May, to produce a hamper of food from the garden in just three months, we might have considered it an impossible task, but we did…. For a raffle prize at the Sandgate garden party last Sunday!  A proud moment!

Spoke too soon about the sunflowers all still being upright after the blast of wind that came through, one of them did fall, however, nothing is wasted; the leaves were stripped and added to the compost heap, the stem and flower left to dry out.  The seeds in the flower head will feed the birds, and the hollow stem used in the future construction of a bug hotel.  Everything gets recycled.  The ultimate in recycling has to be making compost from organic materials.  Otherwise known as ‘black gold’, garden made compost is the best thing you can add to a garden, and the kitchen at the Saga Pavilion is helping by giving us their vegetable waste.  The more compost we can make, the better the health of the garden.

Chris Turnbull from the Hythe Hops Scheme came to visit the garden on Saturday to discuss our taking part in this community project next spring.  It will involve growing some hops, picking them, and combining them with all the other community grown hops to make a very local brew!  Looking forward to sampling that!

Come and see us at the Sandgate Sea and Food Festival next weekend – we will be there on the Sunday, so stop and say hello!  

What’s next?

• Keep picking

• Remove any yellow lower leaves from the kale and purple sprouting

• Start removing any leaves from the squashes that are dying back

• Plant up savoy cabbages in spaces at top of the bean plot

• Check on seedlings in last two beds and see if they need thinning/replanting in spaces.

• Start to mark out beds in newly dug area

• Put wood preserver on bug hotel structure

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I know you were wondering… yes, the garden is still standing, and at last look, even the sunflowers, after the hooley of a storm that came through yesterday.  We had to abandon all hope of trying to do much at all, except stand upright. 

Featuring this week are some lovely carrots and beetroot which seem to have doubled in size in just a week!  The Florence fennel is starting to swell.  A passing dog was so phased by one of the blue squashes poking out of the undergrowth, that it started barking and snarling at it, and had to be moved on by its owner!   

Thank you Sandgate Parish Council for a donation of £100.  How very lucky we are to have friends in high places, with support also from The Sandgate Society, and of course Saga…….we are where we are!  The next big buy will be the asparagus crowns, and wooden posts to make various structures, and such donations make it all possible.

What’s next?

• Check on any storm damage

• Tie in tomatoes and brassicas

• Thin out some of the lettuces, and particularly the lambs lettuce (some of this lettuce can be relocated to new spaces)

• Dead head cosmos and rose

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A very productive week as usual, with both labour, and our rewarding produce!  We did all of the jobs on our ‘to do’ list and more, to include laying some shredded wood pathways around some of the boxes, and welcoming the donation of a compost bin from Helen, which is being filled with vegetable peelings, plant material and turf taken by straightening the grass edges.

On the menu this week is all that was mentioned last week, plus welcome, somewhat exotic additions of the very first cucamelon, and kale.  As you can see in one of the pictures, the cucamelon is like a tiny version of a watermelon, and tastes like a lemony cucumber – very much in demand for expensive drinks in cocktail bars!  The kale, also pictured, go by the names of ‘Emerald Ice’, and ‘Midnight Sun’ – the colours are starting to show now, and they should provide us with leaves from now on, throughout the Autumn, Winter, and into Spring.  We have smugly celebrated the fact that the brassicas haven’t yet been made into doilies by the caterpillars, only to discover that they had sneaked into the radish patch and had been having a party there… didn’t know caterpillars enjoyed radish leaves that much, ignoring the luscious lettuce leaves next door!

Just take a look at the last picture showing how tall the sunflowers have grown!  How on earth they managed to stay upright in all that wind we have recently endured is a minor miracle.  For certain that amazing wall has something to do with it.

What’s next?

• Top fill the last raised box with compost

• Plant up box with module sown savoy cabbages if ready

• Keep chasing off the cabbage white butterflies from those brassicas!

• Water new seed beds and anything looking droopy!

• Keep picking anything that is ready

• Continue to prep the new growing area

• Dead head flowers for continuity/ spot weed any bindweed showing through, and hoe paths.

• Maybe tackle that pallet compost bin?

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The trouble with pallets is that some of them look rather useful for other projects, and get re-assigned!  So parts of the compost project are still ‘work in progress’….however, the area has been tidied up and is ready and waiting!  We also tidied an area for our BOX STORE!  A donation from Theresa and Peter’s garden … We had great fun walking the box across the road to the Saga entrance, and into the garden, but we now have a place to store some tools which will be so much easier than having to bring things all the time. 

You can see from the pictures showing courgettes/beans and tomatoes that the grass was parched, and so we did really well to keep the plot producing the first beans and more spinach, salad and turnips, plus of course, the courgettes and tomatoes.  Some of the tomatoes are yellow when ripe, so you have to keep tabs on what you can pick!  The winter squashes are looking for a way out of the plot, and have to be guided back in when they start growing over the grass edges!  Some of them are very happy climbing up the bean stakes and into neighbouring beds.

The brassicas are coping with frequent assaults from cabbage white butterflies laying their eggs, and as long as we keep checking them, should survive now they are getting bigger and tougher.  The transplanted lettuces are looking perky as the roots have got a hold, thanks to diligent watering.

What’s next?

• Some prepared beds can be sown with fast growing crops until they are needed for the waiting and maturing perennial fruit and veg plants.  Still time to sow chard, lettuces, radishes, and spinach.

• Any gaps in the harvested beds can be sown with overwintering Chinese cabbages or salads.

• Consider where on earth to put the savoy cabbages that are nearly ready to plant out!

• Tidy up and straighten the grass edges to the new beds.

• Continue to prep new growing areas

• Enjoy the relief the much needed rain has brought to the garden and spend some time observing just what is actually going on!

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