Tim Prater

The unseasonable weather has continued this week with a possible break coming soon of cooler and possibly wetter conditions.

It has been interesting how the autumn plants have fared under unusual circumstances. Used to thriving in a typical autumn, the Chinese cabbage has bolted, and the mustards are trying to do the same.  You begin to wonder if the sowing dates may have to be altered, however the daylight hours remain the same, and such plants need to be able to put on growth in the shorter days available before it gets simply too cold.  It is a constant juggling act trying to get the conditions right, luckily most of the time we manage it.  The cheeky sowing of some winter lettuces shot up within a couple of days – again, another gamble of taking chances.

We have started to think about the clearing of some of the beds, beginning with the Golden Valley Planters.  Rita has been working hard over the months sowing collected seeds, taking cuttings, and nurturing lots of plants at home for putting out eventually in Golden Valley and probably parts of Fremantle Park too.  The first job is to clear, cut back and pot up some plants, put down new compost and replant parts with new stock.  A start has been made but now we are waiting for  a decent downfall of rain as mulching a dry bed is not a good idea.  

The new cold frames we had made this year have been languishing at the end of the garden being used every now and then in the earlier months to shelter a plant or two, but will now soon be starting to do their work.  They are mighty heavy to move from one end of the plot to the other,so it was a case of waiting for some strong willing volunteers to be in the garden at the same time to be able to shift them into a space with the chance of getting some winter sun.  They will need a bit of a clean up, but will soon be protecting those new winter lettuces and mustards so that we may have a few salad leaves even in the deepest darkest depths of winter.

Following on from last week – the Hythe Hops scheme made a second and final collection of the hop cones, making a grand total of 110 kg.  Docker brewery have announced that the green brew from themselves and HopFuzz will be available from noon on Saturday 2^nd October at the East Yard on the Harbour Arm.  Some of us will be rushing over there straight after our gardening session that day to try it before it sells out!

The Hythe Environmental group were in the centre of town on Saturday 25^th for their annual seed and plant swap with apple pressing going on at the same time.  We took some of our spare seeds for exchanging, admired the apple press at work and tried some of the amazing fresh juice. 

We would like to give a mighty ‘THANK YOU’ to the Sandgate Society for organising the walk and talk of the Sandgate Community Gardens and for donating the money raised to us, after expenses – we are indeed very grateful for £64.30 which will be going into the kitty towards all the seeds and numerous other things on our current wish list.

What’s next?

• Clean up the cold frames and start collecting together mushroom boxes to be planted up with salads

• Remove and compost the bolted Chinese cabbage

• Keep checking the mustards for and flowers which should be removed.

• Prick out the new mustard plants and lettuces in the modules

• Plant the saffron crocuses in a safe place

We have been experiencing issues with watering this week.  It has been very warm and dry again, with some promises of rain dissolving into nothing.  So hand watering it is, of the many newly planted beds of spinach, spring onions, mustard greens and herbs.  The autumn raspberries are managing to produce fruit, but they are small, and the leaves are starting to turn yellow. 

Our lettuce mix now has a good percentage of endive and chicory.  We have two types of endive, a broad leaf and a frilly strapped leaf. they are super nutritious and pictured below.  Both have a slightly bitter taste, and can survive very cold temperatures in the winter.  Bitter foods are considered to be very good for our gut health, with evidence that they may work like prebiotics. 

We had our results from the RHS.  We have made progress from our last inspection to level 4 or ‘Thriving’, with five levels possible in total, the last being ‘outstanding’.  The inspector said that it was ‘difficult to offer any words of advice’ apart from addressing our reliance on mains water.  We have all tried to solve that problem from the very start, to no avail as yet.  The only other point was that the garden was difficult to find within the park, however there are new signs made and  installed at all the park entrances, and it is clear now where we can be found.  In effect we are doing alright, and if they cannot offer much in the way of advice to improve our situation then we should be happy with that!

The hops got picked this week.  All the hops at Fremantle and Enbrook had to be picked on the same day, and taken to the Hythe collection point for weighing and putting into hessian sacks for transportation  to a brewery to make a fresh hop (green) brew, with the rest going to an oast house to be dried for use throughout the year.  We were not expecting too much from the four Enbrook plants as they had suffered this year, but they gave 650g compared with last year’s 2.120kg.  Fremantle has three hop plants, and one of those got invaded by ants and only just survived, leaving  two plants which gave an amazing 865g.  In total across the scheme, there were 83kg of hops collected, with another collection date for less mature hops arranged for 19^th September. 30kg of fresh hops has gone to Docker and Hopfuzz breweries, and the remaining 23 kg went off to be dried and will then be sent to Docker for further brews in the year.  The green hop ales will be available in 4-6 weeks at selected local pubs as well as in bottles or cans.  We will let you know where you can try it when we know, but you have to be quick to visit the pub, as it can sell out within a day!

What’s next?

• Get in a cheeky sowing of some winter lettuces if possible

• Plant some saffron crocuses

• Water water water

• Anybody around strong enough to help move the cold frames?

It is with great excitement that the hops are going to be picked this Sunday both at Enbrook Park and Fremantle Park.  Last year the harvest was a little earlier and we picked just 2.12 kg although this year we have three extra plants at Fremantle too!  The suspicion is that although the hops are older, they have suffered this year, so we shall see. 

We knew it would only be a matter of time until blight arrived at the last place to show signs of it – Enbrook Park.  Two plants were infected so far and have been removed and composted.  It is fine to compost plants with blight as the disease is airborne and not spread through the soil. 

The last of the small seeds for this year have been sown.  We still have more spring onions to plant, and bulb onions to put in for next year.  The last additions to the plot will be garlic and broad beans to overwinter. It will be strange not to be looking after any seedlings now until mid February 2022 when we start all over again!   A further 120 plugs of spinach got planted this week, as did 120 plugs of spring onions, some more winter radishes and more parsley.  The coriander sown just a few weeks ago decided to go to seed already, an example of how things  just decide to do their own thing no matter how much you try!

We removed a bed of squashes which had struggled all the way through the summer – sometimes you just have to give up and try again, and so the bed is being prepared for bulb onions instead.  Frustratingly, a random leftover squash plant was planted in a part of the garden near the fruit trees and just left to get on with it.  The plant took up the challenge and with total neglect from us has rambled all over the place and produced some large squashes as pictured below – typical!  You win some and you lose some, we think that we need to get the soil right in various parts of the garden so that most things will have a fair or more equal chance.

You may recall that we had started our first experiment using a natural soil bourne bacteria to spray on the brassicas to deter the caterpillars from stripping them bare which happens every year no matter how much you think you have protected them.  Pleased to report it has actually worked and we have brassicas standing to attention and looking fabulous already so that they can get even bigger and better over autumn and into winter.  However the brassicas at Fremantle did not get the spray and have been chewed to bits.  There is now a move to rescue what is left, but we are pleased to know that it really does work;  if there was only such a deterrent for pigeons!

This coming week we should finally find out how we fared from our visit with an RHS community gardens inspector.  It has been some time since the visit, and there is no pass or fail, it just tells you how you are doing and if there are any recommendations which could be implemented.  Always room for improvement, it will be interesting to know what they thought.

What’s next?

• Finish the preparation of the bed with new compost for the bulb onions

• Weed the gooseberry patch

• Keep watering the new seedlings

• Pot up any spare herbs and plants Try moving the cold frames into winter places