Sandgate Community Garden

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 16th March: Sow yet more seeds with the promise of better weather.

This week has seen the return of plummeting temperatures, below average for this time of year.  Just as the newly sown seeds were starting to romp away, basking in the glorious warm sunshine of last week, they have now slowed down and have hardly put on any growth at all.  

However we have braved the cold and continued to prick out yet more cabbages and sow yet more seeds with the promise of better weather this coming week.  

The kale had decided to rise up in an attempt to flower and so we took them all out to harvest the leaves and compost what was left.  The rhubarb seems to be appreciative of the cow manure mulch and is looking sturdy with lots of green leaves appearing.  

Time was well spent retrieving some of the wood chip paths where either the mole or the birds had disturbed them; throwing the chips into the compost beds and making them untidy.  You can see from the picture below that we are now ready to fill those beds as soon as the plants are ready.  We have kept an eye on the hops which were dug out and split a couple of weeks ago, keeping them watered and checking on any signs of new growth.  

We had heard from two friends of the garden, Eddie and Rita, on holiday in the mountainous region of Taiwan being taught how to pick tea by a minority indigenous tribe there.  Apparently the whole area is strictly organic, and no chemical sprays are allowed.  What an amazing experience that must have been and look forward to hearing more about it.  

What’s next?

• Prick out more calabrese 
• Sow some of the more hardy companion plants 
• Transfer some of the nasturtiums in the asparagus beds
• Transfer globe artichoke 

This weeks update from the Sandgate Community Garden Diary.

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 9th March: Perfect weather to be sitting and sowing yet more seeds.

The weather has been so fabulously sunny and warm this week, it has been a pleasure simply to sit in the garden and enjoy it!   Walking through the park to the garden you can hear the birds are enjoying the feel of spring too.  The snowdrops were spectacular this year, and now they are giving way to the daffodils and primroses.

Perfect weather to be sitting and sowing yet more seeds.  The greenhouse is already starting to look quite crowded, yet more calabrese, onions, spring onions, spinach and radishes were sown along with some celery.  The cabbages and calabrese sown in mid February were large enough to be transplanted into larger plant trays giving them more space to grow on in the greenhouse.

The first planting of the year, the radishes took place on Saturday, and we know that from now on it will be busy keeping up with the sowing timetable and the watering of the seed trays before they dry out in the sunshine. 

We have been donated our first plants for our two summer plant sales already.  We have decided not to put all of our trust into raising funds just at the Sandgate Sea Festival 2025, but to double our chances and take part in the Sandgate Safari to be held in June.  The task has begun to make sure we have plenty to offer for both dates.

We have some produce we can share left over from planting last summer/autumn.  We have kale, claytonia (winter lettuce), mustard, sorrel and some leeks.  The leeks were planted sometime in June last year after an April sowing, and unfortunately never managed to make a great size.  We have put it down to the fact that we have to be careful with our watering, and suspect they could have done with more during the summer months.  Never mind, they have a great flavour.

What’s next?

• Sow more lettuce
• If no rain, water the hops again
• Probably more brassicas to prick out
• Take out the kale once picked

This weeks update from the Sandgate Community Garden Diary.

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 2nd March: HELLO!  WE ARE BACK!

In actual fact we have not been away from the community gardens but have been forced on occasions to miss gardening sessions due to the cold or the wet.  Quite often we would meet up for just an hour or so before fingers and toes go numb and we abandon the tasks and head for home to defrost or dry out.

The rainfall for January was 83.6 mm and for February 55.3 mm.  It has seemed so grey and dull these past months but with the longer daylight hours we have recently seen the return of the sun and a few warmer days.  In fact the daffodils and the wallflowers are now in bloom and the garden is starting to look brighter for them.   

There has been plenty to do over the winter months.  We got in some loads of wood chips and put them down on our paths to make sure we never have to get our boots muddy.  Unfortunately, after several stormy days, the netting on the purple sprouting broccoli came loose and the plants got broken or eaten by the pigeons.  Luckily the pigeons do not bother with broad beans, and these survived the winter and are currently starting to grow their second and third shoots.  At the Pent farm garden, it was a different story – the purple sprouting broccoli survived but the broad beans did not simply because the beans were dug up and eaten by rodents.

In the ground at Enbrook Park we have overwintered parsley, coriander, sorrel, chard, spinach, mustards, kale, leeks and spring onions.  The other beds are prepped with a fresh layer of compost and ready for planting when the new young plants are ready.  We got some bags full of cow manure onto the rhubarb bed, and fresh compost over the asparagus beds.

As soon as we got to Valentines day the seed sowing started and the potatoes bought for chitting to be planted out in late March or early April.  So far we have sown radishes, spring onions, lettuce, spring cabbage, calabrese, beetroot, spinach, kohl rabi, turnips, peas, parsley, coriander and a few broad beans as replacements.  From now on it will be all about keeping up with the seed sowing, watering and care, then transplanting the seedlings into the ground as soon as possible.  Already the radishes are trying to climb out of their seed tray and will need planting out this coming week.

We have been fortunate to have support from volunteers at Napier barracks.  They have shifted many wheelbarrows of wood chips, turned a compost heap or two, and just this week helped to dig out the hops along the brick wall, dig in some cow manure and replanted a few chosen hop roots.  Their new shoots are already in evidence, and it will not be long before they are climbing and winding their way up their supports.

What’s next? 

• Plant out the radishes and cover with fleece
• Sow more calabrese
• Split the oregano plants
• Tether the tayberry to the wires

This weeks update from the Sandgate Community Garden Diary.

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 15th December: We wish you all a very happy Christmas and New Year.

The stormy weather seems to have subsided for now, leaving us with dreary gloomy days with little or no sunshine until it decided to make a surprise appearance on Saturday afternoon.  It did mean that we could get to the garden on both of our working mornings, which was a bonus.

With the passing of storm Darragh, we took stock of the damage.  The poor banana tree was shredded even more than it was before, the nets were off and it seems the pigeons had taken advantage and moved in, stripping many of the purple sprouting leaves.  So we set about covering the plants again.  Fortunately the pigeons are not interested in the broad beans, and although their warm fleece coverings were missing, they were still all present and correct.

Two of our gardeners are currently out in Australia for a few weeks and will be spending Christmas there.  It is hard to imagine a Christmas in the summertime, which it currently is over there.  They got in touch to say that they had stumbled across an amazing community garden they found where they are staying, and forwarded some pictures.  It was evident that their banana trees were in the same state as our own, with shredded leaves, but really interesting to see so many different plants there which you would probably not see in a community garden here.  We look forward to hearing all about it on their return.

This is the last newsletter for a while.  We will be returning in January with the latest news.  We will be making visits to the gardens, checking on the plants and of course the state of the netting.  The hot composter at the Folkestone College will continue to be fed with food waste over the Christmas period.

We wish you all a very happy Christmas and New Year.

This weeks update from the Sandgate Community Garden Diary.

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 8th December: Now you can see just how handsome our resident robin is.

We are rapidly hurtling towards the end of the year.  The rainfall for November was a healthy but surprisingly low 55.3 mm.  We have had so many rainy days of late, however the rain is mostly drizzle and not torrential.  Without a doubt the main topic for the weather is the constant battering from storms.  They seem to be coming one after another and so we must truly be in the stormy season.  This weekend brought storm Darragh which stopped us coming out on Saturday morning.  Yet again we shall have to wait for it to pass before checking on the damage on top of the storm we had last week. 

Fortunately Wednesday was fine and dry, giving us an opportunity at last to get the broad beans planted.  The fact that we have any beans to plant at all is a minor miracle because of the ravenous rodents we seem to have in the greenhouse, so it was something of a relief to get them in the ground at last.  Now all they have to do is to be able ride through the weather and the winter and hopefully survive.  To help them along we got out the sad and sorry looking fleece to give them a little protection from the winds and any future frosts.  We had hoped to be able to cover them with some new and hole less fleece, however the Christmas post has been slow and it had still not turned up for the great plant out.  We shall now have to hope and pray that the fleece is not on its way to Folkestone already as Darragh continues to howl and rage, although at the very least it will probably have gained a few more holes.

As usual the resident robin was curious to know what we were up to this week and posed just long enough for one of our speedy gardeners to catch its likeness with her phone camera – we had been trying to do that for some weeks – now you can see just how handsome he is.

Happy with our work, we packed away just as it was about to start drizzling again, so most of our other tasks remain unfinished and are to be carried forward into next week.

What’s next?

• Remove goji berry
• Order some wood chips
• Clear any suckers coming up in the middle of plots
• Keep putting down compost on any uncovered areas

This weeks update from the Sandgate Community Garden Diary.

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 1st December: Prime time for the pigeons to strip many of our plants.

We are now in December.  The time is flying by and before we know it we will be in February and time to start the whole year of growing all over again.  There is plenty to be getting on with before then.  Hoping for some quieter weather after storm Bert last weekend, our wish was not to be granted as storm Conall followed quickly afterwards.

The Wednesday morning session was cancelled once again as there was rain followed by more rain.  Luckily Saturday was dry and we were able to assess the storm damage.  Fortunately one of our gardeners had already been up to the garden shortly after the storms to report back how the garden had fared and saved lots of plants by retrieving netting and tying or weighing them down.

This is prime time for the pigeons to strip many of our plants back to the bare stems. Whilst some suffered this fate, we are hopeful they may recover depending on how harsh the winter is as technically it is still autumn.

The winds had the effect of stripping most of the leaves from the trees, whipping them all around the garden and leaving them in great piles particularly in and around the pond.  Our first task was to begin to collect them and compost them.  Looking around, it was clear that many of our plants had suffered from salt burn where the edges of the leaves turn dry and brown, and the poor banana tree was simply shredded although still trying to unfurl a brand new undamaged leaf.

Thought has to go out to the creatures having to brave these storms. Happily our resident robin was pleased to see us again and particularly glad we were working on the plots.  In spite of all the difficult weather we still have to feed the hot composter at Folkestone College. Nicknamed ‘the beast’, it resembles a smoking dragon as upon lifting the lid it spews out plumes of hot steam from its ‘belly’. All around the rim of the lid are many different ladybirds, all taking advantage of the warmth.

What’s next?

• Might be time to plant the broad beans
• Remove goji berry
• Order some wood chips
• Clear any suckers coming up in the middle of plots

This weeks update from the Sandgate Community Garden Diary.

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 24th November: One hour of working for the entire week.

Good grief!  There is much to say about the weather this week for sure.

It started off being very cold and icy.  Our Wednesday morning session at Enbrook Park was in sunshine but so cold that our fingers and toes soon suffered if we did not keep moving, so it has to be said that we gave up after an hour or so.  At Pent Farm it was even colder and everything was frozen solid which made it difficult to do very much at all.  However it seems we got away lighter than much of the rest of the country which has had snow.

On the Saturday, storm Bert started to roll in which changed the whole weather pattern.  It started to get warmer, blew a hooli and brought rain.  We stayed indoors for our Saturday morning garden session too, but once the storm has passed we shall have to check on the netting and see if there has been any damage.

The temperature has ranged from minus 2 to plus 13 degrees in the middle of the night and it will be interesting to see what will happen next.  Should the pattern go back to freezing temperatures, it will be impossible to plant any of the broad beans and we will have to hope that it calms down in the near future.

In our one hour of working for the entire week, we just about managed to lay a little more compost on the beds, clear up more fallen leaves and cut back some nettles.  We were very much aware of our friendly robin taking advantage of the fresh compost to find any worms as we were trying hard to get a good picture of him.  However every time a camera was pointed his way he flitted off or turned his back.  The best we managed was a rear view in the distance on our tool box. We shall persevere! 

The only other picture we got was of some Jerusalem artichokes we pulled.  Not everyone is all that sure what to do with them and so we shall be on the lookout for some good recipes.

What’s next?

• Clear up after the storm
• Rake up last of the Hope Farm compost
• Order more wood chips
• Keep clearing beds

This weeks update from the Sandgate Community Garden Diary.

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 17th November: An executive decision was taken to lift the dahlias.

Happily there was a bit more sunshine this week and a couple of lovely warm spells, although it was not to last and we are to experience close to frost temperatures this coming week.  Not really surprising for mid-November.

Warm weather has an effect on the clearing of the plots before the winter sets in.  For example the asparagus ferns have only just started to turn yellow which means they can now be cut right down to the ground and compost added to help feed the fat juicy shoots we are expecting next spring.    If we had some hard frosts, then many of the plants would have been affected and subsequently cleared away by us already.  There are still many leaves on the trees which means we have work to do to collect them when they fall.

An executive decision was taken to lift the dahlias.  At Pent Farm they were in danger of rotting before the top growth was frosted, and at Enbrook we have never had to lift them as they have always survived the winters however the space they took up will now be given to growing food.

The good news of the week is that some of the broad beans seem to have survived the hungry mice and are just starting to appear through the soil.  Still not sure if we will have enough but another tray of around 120 cells was sown in the week which is hoped will mean there will be plenty to plant in the coming weeks.

Something else was finding their dinner in the garden, as we noticed there was a huge amount of what looked like pigeon feathers.  We can only imagine that the owner is no more and perhaps a local fox got lucky.

What’s Next?

• Clear leaves if any more have fallen
• Clear the growth to the back of the purple sprouting bed
• Raise the netting over the purple sprouting
• Continue to put down more compost and wood chips

This weeks update from the Sandgate Community Garden Diary.

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 10th November: Time for tea and biscuits and a Mighty Mouse.

Where has the sunshine gone?  We have seen a fleeting glimpse of it this week, but it soon scuttled behind a cloud so that it has been gloomy and dull every day.  It seems we are stuck in this weather pattern but hopefully it will change soon.

It is easy to forget how quickly it gets dark now in the afternoon.  Plans get made to do things, but before you know it, the sun (wherever it is) goes down and it stops anything and everything.  Such was the case this week when some of the lads from Napier Barracks came out to help start to shift our delivery of compost from ‘The Friendly Farmers’ up to our compost compound in the garden.  They are unable to turn up until after 2pm, and before we knew it we were plunged into darkness!  The good news is they are fast and strong which meant the task got done and there was even time for a celebratory cup of tea and a biscuit.

Having the compost ready to hand it meant that we could continue to apply a good mulch of it to some of the other plots.  We also continued with laying some of the wood chip paths, clearing more of the rampaging nasturtiums and yet more weeding and general clearing.  The leaves are still falling, and so the task of collecting them will occupy us for a few more weeks yet.  The hedge got another cut, which we hope will now be the last for this year. 

All this activity and application of organic matter was getting our garden robin very excited as he would flit in and out of the plots, retire back to the trees and sing at the top of his voice which was a delight to see and hear although he is too shy to be able to photograph clearly.

Not all the wildlife is so welcome.  Having sowed some 300 broad bean seeds for The Community Garden and for Pent Farm, they were put inside one of the greenhouses at the farm.  On the next visit to the farm it was clear that a mouse had discovered the seeds and had dug up quite a few and had made short work of them right there and then.  The next idea was to cover the seed trays in a metal mesh to stop them being eaten, which usually works, but not in this case.  So having lost many more seeds the last resort was to upend some large and tall plastic pots to stand the seed trays on.  Fortunately for us this seems to have done the trick as no more damage has occurred, although it could only be a matter of time!  More seeds have had to be ordered…

What’s next?

• Sort out the potted bay trees
• Sow some more broad beans
• Move some more compost and wood chips
• Clear more leaves and add to the leaf compost bin

This weeks update from the Sandgate Community Garden Diary.

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 3rd November: Plenty of flowers but possibly not enough bees to fertilise them.

The rainfall for October was a substantial 82.3mm, but this week has continued to be mainly dry with mostly cloudy and dull days with the odd bit of sunshine.  However the temperatures are good enough for plants to continue to grow meaning that the grass needs cutting even though it is soggy underfoot.

We had meant to cut the hedge back again this week but it will be relisted as a job for next week as were preoccupied with bringing wood chips up to the garden and laying them down to replenish the old paths.  A large tray of broad beans got sown for planting out some time in November, and more will need to be started off this coming week.  The weeds along the hedge line were cleared as were wheelbarrow loads of nasturtiums which had started to take over the asparagus plots as well as amongst the radishes and spinach.

Both the winter and the French radishes were ready for picking, as well as plenty of spinach, some kale and the last of the summer sown spring onions.  We had a sit down session to tackle the spring onion seed heads which were grown at Pent farm in the hope of being able to sow them this coming spring.  It seems we had plenty of flowers but possibly not enough bees to fertilise them.  It was a struggle to retrieve what seeds there were and nobody is convinced that growing our own was a brilliant idea!  We will give it a chance in February when it is time to start the sowing season again.

As well as laying the wood chip paths, our other main consideration is to get any empty plots covered with a layer of new compost.  We have so far emptied our compost bays where it was stored, and having turned the main compost heap into a neighbouring bay, we were able to use a few barrow loads at the bottom of the heap which was usable.  The activity of revealing and turning the compost brought our garden robin right up close to swoop in and pick up anything that looked tasty enough.  We left the covers turned back so that he could continue to scavenge.

It will be a while before we have any more of our own compost and so we resorted to calling on the ‘Friendly Farmers’ in Densole to bring us a couple of ton bags full of great compost they make on the farm.  Now the issue is to get that compost up to the garden but with any luck, perhaps the lads at Napier barracks will be free sometime next week to give us a helping hand.

What’s next? 

• Get the compost moved
• Finish laying the wood chips
• Cut the hedge again
• Trim the bay trees and raise up in the pots

This weeks update from the Sandgate Community Garden Diary.