Tim Prater

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 4th September: Oh, you’re going to rain NOW, are you?

We are delighted to report that the Sea Festival was a great success for us and we managed to raise a massive £422.27 profit.  We are very grateful to everyone who came along to the stall to spend some cash.  We sold practically all of the plants we are glad to say, and 26 jars of Sandgate honey!

Trying to guess the weight of the fruit and vegetable hamper was a popular activity, and we could have sold the bundle of runner beans in the hamper dozens of times. 

Being obsessed with the rain situation, or lack of it; the only day we were praying for none of the wet stuff was Festival day, and with none scheduled to arrive, imagine the surprise and curses when it actually did rain, just as we were trying to get our stall set up in the morning.  Unbelievable.   However it was a great day all round, and lovely to see so many friends of the garden all at once.

Having recovered from the Festival, the rest of the week went by reasonably uneventfully, and yet again no rain to help us along so every session starts with watering and more watering.  Apparently the rainfall for the month of August was 33.3mm which probably fell on Sandgate the day that one of our gardener’s High Street residence got flooded and he lost many belongings.  It will surely take some time for the ground to become saturated again, and in the meantime any rain that does fall will continue to run off and away.

Now we are into September already and the days are certainly starting to become noticeably shorter.  The seeds we are sowing are becoming fewer, and once most of the winter salads are on the way, that only leaves the hardy broad beans, onions and garlic to make room for once the tomatoes, courgettes and squashes are finished.  We cut back many of the tomato leaves, just leaving a few at the top of the plant, making space around the last of the tomatoes to ripen and allow air to circulate.  The dill got planted as did some of the first winter mustards.  More spring onions got sown along with some winter lettuces.  Now is a great time to think about what to sow and grow next year as many of the shops are selling off seasonal items to include this year’s seed packets.  Most seeds will be absolutely fine to buy and keep for next year, and with discounts of 70% and more, being able to get hold of seeds at 10 – 15 pence a packet is a real bargain.  We have managed to get much of what we need for next year already, and in late November will review what we still need and buy more then.

Now that the school holiday period is over we will be starting to settle into the season of the coming autumn, and more familiar faces will swing by the garden, where the visitors have returned home.  We were treated to our own very special guest of a fabulous hummingbird moth paying attention to one of our salvias in full flower.  Up to now we only dreamt of seeing one in our garden but knew they were around in other gardens in the vicinity.  It certainly made our morning, although unfortunately any photographs we took did it little justice. 

What’s next?

• Still not planted the coriander

• Still not pricked out the pak choi

• Is there somewhere to plant the above?

• Cut back growth around bases of the trees and back of the compost area

This weeks update from the Sandgate Community Garden Diary.

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 28th August: Sea Festival preparations, the approach of autumn and why you should never attack wasps.

This newsletter is being written on the eve of the Sandgate Festival, so when you get to read it, the event will probably be all over.  We will be reporting back on how well we did at our stall in next week’s news with some photographs.  Not to be outdone by all the other professional stalls, we got ourselves a banner printed, and very smart it looks too.  Even though we have been asking for rain and on the odd occasion dancing the rain dance, we will be happier if it stays warm and dry, and so far it looks like it will be fine.

It has been an eventful week one way or another, and you can just begin to feel the summer starting to dwindle and the very earliest signs of the oncoming autumn.  We of course spent time sorting out our plants for the sale so they will look their best; the rest of the Chinese cabbages got planted as well as the winter radishes.  Once again the badger found the newly planted cabbage bed too inviting and dug great holes, sending some of the cabbages out of the bed and to their doom, so on Saturday morning we replanted the space with a few random lettuces needing a home, and netted the whole bed to see if that will solve the issue.

On occasion, we plant up a bed of brassicas such as cabbage or broccoli, and find that after a few days one or two of the plants are drooping and fail to thrive; this is usually because there is something lurking in the soil (wire worms) which love eating through the roots of plants and that is the end of the plant.  Putting another plant in the same space is usually a waste of time as it can happen again and so this week we have been replanting replacements in other spaces, close but hopefully safer!

One of the important jobs to get done last week was the turning of the rather large compost bins.  Bin number one is always the bin that gets the fresh materials from kitchen scraps to discarded or finished plant material from the garden as well as weeds and hedge material.  In order to be able to turn and empty bin number one, bin number two has to be emptied into bin three, so it is quite a long task.  Most of the time the job is uneventful, a little smelly at times, hot work in the summer, and might cause discomfort later from muscle pain which always seems to find the muscles you did not know you even had. 

This week I (Leonie) decided that it would be a wonderful addition to the compost heap if I was to retrieve some cow manure near to where I was working.  The manure pile is based on a farm and quite large.  However the long hot summer has meant that much of it has dried up so that the cow shed bedding of hay/straw and wood shavings is mostly all that seems to be left.  With a shovel I was digging to find a good section to start bagging up, when I stuck the shovel into what seemed a promising area only to unfortunately cut into a wasps nest.  All I can say is that it was certainly an experience for the volunteers I had with me to witness the squealing and unimaginable sight of me stripping off my outer clothing where the wasps had aimed for anything fleshy.  Uncountable stings later from head to ankles I can confirm it was an excruciating and memorable experience I would never wish to repeat.

Of course the wasps are very efficiently defending their territory and I was a threat.  The point being that doing something as simple and enjoyable as gardening can at times bring the odd rose thorn or head bump from the rake you left on the ground and consequently trod on; but sometimes you can get more than you bargained for.  Lesson learnt, I will henceforth be more careful around compost/dirt piles and be more observant. 

What’s next?

• Prick out some of the pak choi plants

• Find a space for some of the dill and coriander plants

• Keep up with removing more leaves from the tomato plants and brassicas

• Do we need to sow any more salads for the winter?

This weeks update from the Sandgate Community Garden Diary.