Sandgate Community Garden

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 1st May: Tomato down, fence up, bench built, but the rain is AWOL.

There is still no rain for Sandgate and very little promise of any on the horizon.  Apparently we had 21.1 mm of rain this month which must have come on the very first day or so, or crept in during one night! 

The plants have to really put down their roots to find any moisture in the soil and clearing any of the plots to make way for new plants is a fight.  Some of the roots and stems seem welded into the soil or set off in concrete, whilst others are sitting within a dust bowl; such is the difference between contrasting areas of the same garden.

The spinach from last autumn had gone to seed, and the parsley was trying to do the same, there are new plants of both and so the compost heap gained a deep new layer of vegetation.  The sweet peas got planted with two newly positioned wig-wams near the pond (where they are sheltered from the wind).  A liberal dollop of horse manure got added too, providing a mulch as well as fertiliser for such hungry plants.

An executive decision was made to plant the tomatoes this Saturday.  The temperatures are fine both day and night, but the wind can be a threat and so they have been netted just for a couple of weeks to get them settled in.  More will be planted this coming week, and we will start to plant in spaces along the wall.  The beans, courgettes and squashes are following along just a week or two behind them, so we have time to concentrate on one thing at a time. 

Concentration was certainly not happening when a complete idiot (me of course), managed to drop an entire tray of pots full of seedlings just on their way to be pricked out into larger pots.  Fortunately we had some patient and capable volunteer gardeners there, who carefully salvaged all they could from the situation, and seedlings were saved but many were lost.  Luckily, and on the very same day, Rosie turned up with donation plants she had grown and potted on at home for us.  Thank goodness for that. 

Thanks also go to Rosemary from the Romney Marsh community garden as she had even more seeds to share with us and a few plants for the Incredible Edible plant sale and seed swap which is next Saturday 7^th May from 10am to 2pm outside the United Response Community Network in Cheriton High Street.  If you are a keen gardener or looking to fill some spaces in the garden or house, then this is the event for you, and the place to get some terrific plants for a small donation.  We will be providing some potted herbs as well as spare tomato plants, courgettes and squashes if they hurry up and get a little bit bigger for the day.  We also have some garden plants and some of our very decorative tree spinach too. 

Always looking for recycled additions for our garden, Rita offered a beautiful slab of slate retrieved from a neighbour throwing it out from a house renovation.  We matched the slab up with some concrete blocks, hid them from view with strategically placed logs and we now have a new bench, just in front of the pond, a great place to have a sit and a chat, or a seat to work from.

We are indeed very fortunate at the garden for all the kind people who donate time, energy, or other gifts to make the garden what it is today.  A very special thank you to Paul for making such a fabulous job of the boundary fencing, now finished, it just looks terrific, and we are receiving many compliments on how good the Sandgate Community Garden is looking – now all we need is RAIN.

What’s next?

• Finish planting up the second tomato bed and start planting along the wall.

• Repot the winter squashes

• Clear some of the beds and prepare for replanting

• Check on the number of hop shoots per plant

This weeks update from the Sandgate Community Garden Diary.

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 24th April: Whatever happened to April showers?

There does not seem to have been any rain on the horizon for several weeks now, and any hint of rain on the weather forecast seems to pass over and come to nothing.  The ritual is on arrival at Enbrook garden, to poke a finger into the soil to determine if there is any moisture there, and if we have to water.  The new plantings have the priority along with plants in pots, then fast growers such as lettuces and pea shoots.  Everything else has to get on with it, and it is often surprising to find there is some moisture for more established plants to access deep down where their roots are encouraged to go to look for it.

This week we have had a major epiphany as regards watering at the Sandgate Community Garden in Enbrook.  Our water supply comes via a water bowser or tank and we hand water using watering cans which can take up to two hours to complete, what with all the trotting up and down plus waiting for the watering can to fill up if you are not fortunate enough that particular day to have a willing watering partner with you to load up the watering cans whilst you do all the trotting!  Not all our gardeners are capable of carrying heavy cans across the plot, so it comes down to a hardy few.  However, we have researched and invested in a battery operated water pump which is immersed into the bowser and pumps with decent water pressure some 25 meters up the plot.  It is now the best thing since sliced bread, although we still have a few things to iron out, such as getting the job done in half an hour before the battery runs out, and getting water to the rest of the plot beyond the hose/pump reach of 25 meters!  The trick might well be to position a small water butt at 25 meters and fill that using the pump which will then give us access to water at the other end of the plot and therefore makes for less trotting up and down.  Bingo!  We will get there, and work it all out eventually.

Paul, the Park grounds manager, has very kindly erected a stretch of fencing along the perimeter of the garden where we previously had put up (somewhat badly) fence posts and netting.  It is looking far superior to what we had before and it sets the garden off a treat.  All we can say is ‘thank you’ and very much appreciated.

We have also been very busy sowing beans, lots of flower seeds for the pollinators (well, and for us too), and repotting lots of tomato plants as well as courgettes and summer squashes.  Plants are being crammed into every available space in cold frames, and will have to be nurtured for another couple of weeks at least until it is deemed safe enough to put them outdoors to fend for themselves.  The temperatures are currently good, but the wind is still too strong for small tender plants and brings with it a chill factor.

The potatoes are earthed up every time we visit the plot, and as more tree spinach plants appear, they get moved into pots or left if they have appeared in the right place.  The hops are being trained to climb the strings and posts but we are pinching out some shoots if they have nowhere to go and restrict the number of hop bines. The autumn raspberries are doing their best to pop up as far as possible from the actual place they were originally planted, and have to be either cut down or repositioned.

The recently planted beautifully formed cabbages were discovered by pesky pigeons and had to be recovered, and the three newly planted rhubarb plants have been dug up and chewed, presumably by a foraging badger and had to be replanted and covered in the hope they might possibly re-sprout and not get bothered again.  We can only hope.

What’s next?

• Hundreds of seedlings to prick out and pot on

• Keep an eye on the mares tails pushing through

• Weed around the orchard areas

• Maybe set up a water butt half way along the plot?

• Keep pinching out the hop shoots not required.

This weeks update from the Sandgate Community Garden Diary.

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 17th April: As the weather improves, the planting gets going in earnest. Cucumbers, tomatoes, courgettes, summer squashes and more.

The weather has remained considerably warmer, even at night, which has meant that the tomato plants can at last go outside into the cold frames where they will enjoy basking in the sunshine and really begin to put on some growth.  Some of them need repotting once again as they have started to climb out of their pots.  The courgettes and summer squashes sown last week have already popped up and are also outside in the frames.  This has meant we can start on the next phase of sowing the cucumbers and winter squashes which happened on our Saturday morning session along with some of the flowering annuals such as zinnias, cosmos and French marigolds.

The purple sprouting broccoli is coming to an end, with all the first broccoli spears picked, it may have time to produce a few more smaller offerings, but it is soon to be replaced by the tomatoes or perhaps the courgettes.  Last year there was not enough space given over to the tomatoes, squashes and courgettes, so they ended up being squeezed into other beds and in any available pocket of soil.  This year will be different and they will take pride of place – which in turn will make it so much easier to water them when you know where they are!  Always a juggling act to plan and consider what is popular to grow and what needs space.

The last of the spring onions got pulled to make room for more beetroot, some slug chewed cabbages replaced by spares (always useful to keep a few by), more radishes, pea shoots, chard and spinach picked.  The potatoes were only earthed up for the first time on Wednesday as they had appeared above ground, yet had to be earthed up once more on Saturday they had started to romp away and show through the soil again.

Last year we grew some tree spinach for the first time with startling electric pink new leaves just great for brightening any salad.  When you grow this spinach, and let it flower, then you have to accept it will remain with you from then on, and pop up all over the plot.  It is now starting to do just that and will need coaxing into the right spots to grow them on.  Not to be outdone, the parsnips have also just started to show under a sheet of fleece, they can take several weeks to make an appearance.

Rosemary (from New Romney community garden and prolific seed saver) got in contact with us again offering more seeds which we might be interested in growing.  We are looking forward to visiting the Romney Marsh garden sometime soon!

We have some new labels around the garden for some of the beds as pictured below.  Before now we have used large pebbles and slate found in the locality, but now wooden cut offs, rescued from the bin have been painted and brought into use; and we hope it will make it a little easier to identify what we have growing.

What’s next?

• Repot some of the tomatoes we are keeping as they have more weeks to grow in them

• Keep watering the newly planted plant plugs as well as the fast growing salad leaves

• Pot up some tree spinach for other areas

• Plant some tree spinach where we want them

• Guide the hops up the strings and pinch out the spares

This weeks update from the Sandgate Community Garden Diary.

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 10th April: Our helpers are unstoppable by weather, lorries and fuel shortages.

The changing weather continued to bring challenges this week.  We had to cancel a working party from the Napier Barracks as the weather was just simply too wet and cold.  The following day we were being joined by a working party from Saga.  Saga are keen for their work force to volunteer to support and work with local groups, so we made plans a couple of weeks ago to organise a compost collection from Hope Farm, and for the Saga volunteers to help us unload.

It was not the weather that caused issues, but the ongoing problems we are experiencing on our roads, affected by the thousands of lorries stuck at the crossings.  Ever optimistic that all would be fine and we could continue with our plans, in reality it was not going to happen. Once it also became clear there was no fuel either locally, it was game over!  In the meantime, our enthusiastic team from Saga had battled their way to the meeting point and raring to go so we changed tack and resorted to plan B.

Plan B happened to be plan A from the soggy day before, so all was not lost.  Thank goodness the weather was fine, sunny but breezy, not too cold.  We started by mulching part of the new orchard at Sandgate Park, then moved on to Fremantle Park where we planted perennial flowering plants and fruit bushes in the orchard and in the sloped flower border on the other side of the park.  We had a most delicious lunch made in the kitchens of Touchbase Care in Tontine Street, which we ate outside at the park making good use of the lovely new picnic benches recently installed there…….. brilliant.  After that outstanding lunch we made our way to the Golden Valley shopping car park to weed all around the planters and in them too.  In the autumn we had planted some bulbs which are now flowering, the most popular being the sweetest and tiniest narcissi ever seen, certainly by all of us.  We are grateful to Saga for their hardworking volunteers, and look forward to working with more of them sometime soon.

Some of our ‘to do’ list from last week did get done, but several other tasks came along which needed tackling.  The first compost bin was full to bursting and needed to be turned into bin number two in order to make some room; however to be able to do that, bin number two had to be turned into bin three.  Another pressing task was the fact that we have many plants waiting to be large enough to be planted out, and needing potting on into larger pots to enable them to be able to get larger.  However we did manage to make a start on sowing the courgettes and summer squashes.  More spring onions got planted as did parsley, and more new rhubarb roots in a new bed.  The carrot seedlings have made an appearance at last but we are still to welcome the parsnips.

What’s next?

• Rebook another compost run

• Make new signs for Fremantle and Golden Valley

• Transfer tomato plants to the cold frames when it is warm and sunny, but keep indoors at night still.

• Sow annual flowers

• Start sowing cucumbers and winter squashes.

This weeks update from the Sandgate Community Garden Diary.

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 3rd April: Blasted by hail and snow, but still growing strong

There is never a dull moment when it comes to the subject of the weather in the UK.  We seem to have gone from having to slap on the suntan cream for fear of being burnt in the sunshine, working in T shirts, to having to get the full torrential storm gear on to get blasted by hail stones and snow.

The rainfall for March was just 29.5 mm and most of that probably happened in the last day as we had to get out the watering cans and get watering prior to the change in the weather.   We can get fooled into thinking summer is just around the corner and start buying and planting tender plants already available in the shops, brought on in a lovely heated greenhouse, ending up put outside in horrendous conditions.

Most of our seedlings are sheltered in the cold frames with just protection from the wind and hail, happy with the temperatures.  The tomato plants are still very firmly inside on window ledges and will remain there for some time to come.  They would struggle in a cold frame and fail to thrive until the warmer weather is really here.

Happily the spinach and lettuces just planted outside last week seem perky enough and some have had a fleece coat put over them just for a few days as it seems we may get a frost Sunday morning.

There were seeds sown this week, basil, leeks, globe artichokes, and chard.  All the seeds are kept indoors until they germinate which depending on the seed, can be anything from two days to over two weeks.  The carrots and parsnips sown over the last couple of weeks outside, will not be expected to show themselves for at least three weeks, and have had to be covered to discourage the squirrels or any other animal or bird you may care to mention, from digging in the patch and spoiling the seeds.

The purple sprouting is now in full swing, we have picked most of the crown or head of each plant where a large part of the broccoli is formed, and then the plant sends out side shoots.  The more flowering side shoots it sends out, the more there is to pick, the more there is to come.  However the shoots become smaller and smaller as time goes on until there comes a day when you have to decide enough is enough and the plant is spent or you tire of broccoli (if that is a possibility).  We are still pulling overwintered spring onions, and this week picked the first pea shoots.  A visitor to the garden went away with some of our broccoli and spring onions and sent us a picture of her most amazing looking lunch within hours of it being picked; pictured below.

The lamium or dead-nettle in the flower garden is looking particularly prolific at the moment and is certainly attracting the bees.  The common dead-nettle is so similar to the stinging nettle and relies on the similarity to save it from being pulled up or eaten.  We certainly do not mind making space for it, and also have some more decorative specimens. 

Although it is still too early for the more tender plants, we are aware that the planters we look after in the main street need to look loved, so they had a little make-over this week and to see what has survived the lashings from the seafront and what has given up the ghost.  Some new plants have been added, with more to come as time goes on.

What’s next?

• Serious weeding session in Golden Valley and planting in Fremantle

• Check if the autumn planted rhubarb is ok

• Check on how many hop shoots have appeared and guide up the strings

• Start sowing some of the annual flowers

This weeks update from the Sandgate Community Garden Diary.

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 27th March: Sowing and more sowing, tomatoes coming soon and reclassifying snails.

The days seem to be racing along, so much to do and little time to squeeze it all in.  We did manage to catch up with ourselves this week and finished the list of jobs from the week before.  We can tell that the keen gardeners out there are responding to the warm weather and getting tasks done in the garden.  Many thanks to Enid, Peter and Isobel for the donations of terracotta and decorative pots for which we are grateful as we are working towards gathering plants for our plant sales later on in the year; larger pots are always useful for displays or some larger plants.  Talking of plant sales, our usual tomato plant sale will be announced soon as we will have many spares for sure.  This year we have at least ten varieties on the go, but you will need to be patient as we grow for planting outside, and plants will not be available for at least another four weeks.

The parsnips all got sown, and the last of the seed potatoes planted. More seeds sown in February are now ready to take their chances outside such as coriander, many varieties of lettuce, mange tout, spring onions, and spring cabbages.  Celeriac got sown as did more coriander, and bulb fennel.  The purple sprouting is looking fantastic, and in spite of being got at by pigeons along the way, they are producing some lovely broccoli spears as shown in the picture below.  This is the first time we have tried this variety called ‘Claret’, and we will be sticking with it for sure when sowing again this year.  Some of the kale got completely stripped by pigeons during the winter, but sheltered under some netting, has recovered just in time to give us some more leaves.

Some of us have been continuing work on a new patch of land in a back street of Sandgate.  It got covered in card and compost some months ago and will soon be ready to be planted up.  It is close to one of our gardeners house, and the neighbours have been commenting on how loved it looks already, and appreciate the few daffodils that have popped up there.  It is always possible to transform a scruffy overgrown area with a little bit of love and attention, it just takes time and the will to make it happen.

Talking of transformations, Fremantle Park just gets better and better.  The picnic benches have been in place for a while now, and much appreciated by families and visitors to the park.  We have had several comments from locals that they really appreciate the space and how much more attractive it has become with all the recent plantings and care, so thank you to the Parish Council and the community gardeners, the park is a real asset to the area and seems to be very well used.

On Saturday afternoon, some of us went to visit a ‘no dig’ allotment at Newington, hosted by a good friend of ours, Erica.  It was inspiring to see so many different growing styles going on at the allotment site, and of course, we had to partake in plenty of cake eating, washed down with tea made on site in a little shed with a tiny stove and kettle.  The sun was shining and it was bliss.  We hope to make more visits to different gardens later on in the year.

ITV Meridian got in touch this week and came to Sandgate Community Garden at Enbrook to film a short piece based on the fact that the RHS have decided that slugs and snails are no longer classified as pests in the garden.  The article could well be shown sometime next week but who knows!

What’s next?

• Prick out all the tomato plants

• Lots more seeds to sow this week

• Start to clear the mustards

• Clear the old Romanesco bed

This weeks update from the Sandgate Community Garden Diary.

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 20th March: Sunshine, Sandwich Spread, Sahara Dust and Volunteers

Yippee!  It looks like there is wall to wall sunshine on the horizon for a little while and everything is starting to perk up and look just that much greener. 

Rosie has been tantalising us with her homemade sandwich spread made with all sorts from the garden, chopped up fine and mixed with mayo, a little bit of tomato and grated cheese.  It is the sort of thing that you can make from whatever is available at the time, but has loads of flavour.  Rosie has also been roasting some of the dark kale or broccoli leaves to make ‘crisps’ which can be seasoned with all sorts of herbs and spices – absolutely delicious.

It has been one of those weeks where we did not manage to clear the list of things needing to be done from last week, but did manage to get rather a lot done all the same.  Wednesday was a particularly busy day as we had hired a drop side truck in order to collect compost from our friends at Hope Farm.  The farm make compost from green waste and very kindly allow us to come and collect some for free which is an incredible bonus as compost these days is so expensive.  The farm does not sell compost commercially, but supplies their farm plus a few others based in Kent.  Collecting the compost is always an easy business as the farm has all the right equipment and can load us up with a couple of bulldozer buckets in a matter of a couple of minutes. 

The work is at the other end when we have to unload.  Fortunately we had some amazing hard working and delightful volunteers from the Napier Barracks who soon had the compost unloaded and started wheelbarrowing it up to Sandgate Community Garden whilst another load was being collected.  In the afternoon they came to Fremantle Park and helped us to start work on the mulching of the area in-between the new orchard trees.  There is still much to do there, but soon we can begin to plant up this area with fruit bushes, herbs and flowers.  We are grateful to the ‘Friends of Napier Barracks’ for making such a task a much easier one for us at the garden, and we look forward to working with them again.

The family vegetable plots at Fremantle Park had their paths weeded and another layer of wood chips put down.  The chips from last year had all but disappeared into the ground, broken down over time, and it was getting difficult to work out where the paths should have been.

On Saturday, more coriander seeds got sown and the first batch of Florence fennel.  Early carrots got sown direct into one of the empty beds, watered in and covered in Enviromesh.  Carrots and parsnips are the only small seeds sown direct as their tap roots prefer not to be restrained in small sowing modules, but do not mind being in large pots with space.  There was not enough time to sow the parsnips so that will be another task for next Wednesday. 

As the weather was looking fine and the seed potatoes had sprouted, they got duly planted.  We only have the space for first earlies and managed to plant two beds with enough left to create another next Wednesday which is looking like a busy day already.

The winds bringing in the orange dust from the deserts of Africa did not get missed in the garden, our tool box was completely smothered in the stuff and the slugs and snails lurking in the compost bins next door had a fine time making orange dust trails all over it.  No rain on the horizon to be washing that off and so the phenomenon will be remaining with us for a while.

What’s next?

• Cut back the butterfly bush this week

• Pot up more seedlings just starting to appear, for relocation

• Tidy up the chard beds ready for their last fling

• Random onions still need removing from the Choke berry bushes

• Collect new hop twine and re-string the hops

• Sow the parsnip seeds

• Finish planting the potatoes

This weeks update from the Sandgate Community Garden Diary.

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 13th March: the Spring of Deception

One of our gardeners sent through a very appropriate reminder that we are currently experiencing the ‘Spring of deception’ where you get all excited and raring to get going, but that it could all go horribly wrong if we get too carried away.  The problem is the weather on the horizon is looking reasonable, and we have filled practically all of our seed trays and the cold frames are full.  It is so exciting to see all the little shoots starting to pop up above ground both in the trays and in the garden.  New this week is the very first hop and asparagus shoots; however we will have to remain most patient about the asparagus as the beds still have another year to mature until we can start to harvest just a few spears in April 2023. 

Many of the buds on the fruit bushes and vines are starting to burst, and the kiwi vines poised to scamper up the canes.  The Goji berries are already in acid green leaf and are under threat of being relocated if they do not perform and produce more berries this year.  To be fair they did get attacked by climbing snails last year which probably ate all the flowering buds. 

Many thanks to Diane who contacted us with a gift of a blackcurrant bush dug up from her Sandgate garden which was surplus to requirements.  We certainly have a place to put that!

Seeds sown this week were dill and chervil, peas for pea shoots as well as Mange tout peas, more radishes, beetroot, spring onions, lettuces and spinach.  The broccoli which failed the week before has been replaced by a new sprouting batch which will be thinned out this week to give them more room. 

The kale which had gone to flower last week was removed and the stalks composted, all the autumn raspberries were cut down to the ground as the new shoots are just starting to show through, (however, summer raspberries are not cut right back in this manner).  The enclosure containing the last of the wood chips was emptied, and the wood chips spread about on the paths. 

We are pleased to welcome Miracle to the garden, not quite our youngest member but certainly younger than most of us.  She is working on her Duke of Edinburgh award and has been busy sowing seeds and tending to the hop plants so far.  We hope she will enjoy her visits and gets to absorb what community gardening is all about. 

What’s next?

• Cut back the butterfly bush this week

• Pot up more seedlings just starting to appear, for relocation

• Tidy up the chard beds ready for their last fling

• Random onions still need removing from the Choke berry bushes

• Collect new hop twine and re-string the hops

This weeks update from the Sandgate Community Garden Diary.

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 6th March: All Systems Go

It is all systems go from now on; it remains reasonably warm here in the South East, with no frosts on the horizon to knock any of the growth back.  In fact we had to remove the fleece covers from all the broad beans as they have already started to flower and it would not be possible for any of the pollinators to reach them with the covers still on.  Flowers are what we definitely look for as regards broad beans but not what we want with the kale.  As soon as the kale starts to go to flower it means the beginning of the end for that crop.  However the flowers can be eaten before they are fully open, and so we picked as many off as we could and the rest of the crop will be salvaged and removed next week.

Also cropping early are the spring onions sown last September, we were not expecting to be harvesting them until the end of this month and into April.  Most of the Romanesco broccoli and the Kaibroc have been harvested, but as the ground is not required as yet for the next crop, they have been allowed to stay put and send out some side shoots with miniature flowering heads, as an added bonus.  If you have the time, space and decent weather to allow them to do this, they will reward you. 

Just when you think there can be no more parsnips in the ground, four more suddenly put on some top growth and make an appearance above the ground.  To be fair, three of them must have slid down into the path early on in life to have escaped the final collection, but there was still one more to be found actually in the bed.

The peas and radishes sown just seventeen days before, got planted in the week, and we got to try out our brand new super-sized dibbers we had treated ourselves to before Christmas.  They will make life much easier as they can be used without having to be on your knees, not always possible for some of our gardeners.

We had an invite to visit a new garden project by Touchbase Care in Tontine Street.  For the past year they have been working very hard on the main design and structure of their garden in the corner of a field on a farm.  Nearing completion, they have made it wheelchair accessible, there are some beautifully built raised beds, a tool shed, a greenhouse, a classroom or summer house, plus they are now starting work on the all-important compost toilet!  We first heard about the project this time last year and are delighted that they are realising the dream and now reaching completion.  It has been a lot of hard work to put all the structures in place, but it will be an amazing space once it is up and running and such a beautiful spot too. 

What’s next?

• Take up the kale and strip anything edible

• Sow spring onions, more radishes and herbs

• Cut back the butterfly bush

• Remove more of the woodchips in store

• Remove some random onions growing near the raspberries

This weeks update from the Sandgate Community Garden Diary.

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 27th February: Lettuces, compost, pruning and facility envy.

Luckily, Covid had decided to move on by the end of this week, just leaving the usual after-effects, and appreciation that it could have been much worse.  Regardless, the seeds sown over the last week have popped up and many have been ‘pricked out’ into individual modules to continue growing.  Now starts the juggling with the available space and watching the temperatures, weather conditions and pesky slugs.

Paul, the Saga grounds manager, has very kindly brought the water bowser back to the garden, as it had spent the winter parked up in his yard until planting time came around once more.  He was just in the nick of time as we think we should be planting the pea shoots and radishes, the fastest growing vegetables, this coming Wednesday, just seventeen days after they were sown, incredible.

You may recall that just before Christmas we were tantalised by a call from Waitrose in Hythe with the wonderful news that they had decided to give us some funds; however before we could hold the cheque in our grubby hands it got whisked away back to head office because it was written incorrectly.  The good news is we do now have it in our grubby hands and most grateful we are for £333.00 which will be going towards all the plans we have for this coming year – thank you Waitrose!

The Incredible Edibles have had a busy week making a brilliant start on the dismantling and rebuilding of the big composting area at the back of All Souls churchyard.  No small task as it involves pulling out all the compost in the bins, but it will be fabulous to have a system which is large enough to cope with all the plant matter being generated, from grass cuttings to leaves and weeds.

On Saturday, some of our community gardeners were involved in helping to prune an orchard of some 70 fruit trees, mainly cherry, a few plum and pear trees owned by the community farm ‘Muddy Wellies’ just outside Ashford on the A20.  This community space is part of a series of gardens under Brogdale CIC, serving six college sites across Kent providing horticultural education for disabled young people.   The event was organised by the Hythe Environmental Group, and we had guidance and instruction from a professional commercial orchard manager.

The trees had not been pruned for several years, and so will take a good three years to get them back into good shape.  The weather was just beautiful which was important on the day as well as settled weather thereafter, so this weekend was perfect.  The day was amazing, once we got over the facility envy of polytunnels, kitchen, indoor working spaces and even two toilets!

A great time was had by all, excellent company and such a worthwhile project.  We are hoping to stay in touch and with any luck get involved with the pruning next year as it will be interesting to be able to follow the project through.

What’s next?

• Keep seed sowing

• Plant the pea shoots and radishes – cover

• Is the pond clear of the storm debris?

• Water the plants in the cold frames

This weeks update from the Sandgate Community Garden Diary.