Sandgate Community Garden

When it was announced by the government that there were to be no gatherings of more than two people it seemed that the virus was going to stop the Community Garden from making any more progress for a while…. However we have a great communication system, and with the use of photos, videos and WhatsApp, we take it in turn to go to the garden as part of our exercise regime.  Calabrese, cabbages, and kale for salad leaves got planted; carrots and parsnips got their first sowing of the year.  Dill, parsley and coriander seedlings got potted on, ready to be planted out in a few more weeks.  Time seems to be racing on already, and it seems hard to believe it will be April next week, and the clocks have just gone forward.  With April will come the first sowings of the warmer loving plants like the courgettes, beans, cucumbers and basil, so much to do.

It seems that being confined to home, everyone is having a bit of a sort out either in the garden or the home, and we were left some plants, seeds, and a wheelbarrow.  Thank you Maggie, thank you Peter!

Just as the restrictions came into force, Ray, our chief bee keeper made the swift move to get one of his hives on site, and so we are pleased and proud to say that the bees are here at last.  Apparently the bees are still in their winter mode for now as Ray has some alterations to make to the hive sometime soon, and he will be giving us updates as to what the bees are up to.  It must have been a great shock for them to be in one place, and to suddenly find themselves somewhere completely different.  Below is a picture to show the foraging area that they will be exploring as they can fly a distance of three miles or more each time they go out.  So, if you have a garden with bee attracting plants in the locality it is heart-warming to think that any honey bees you see could be from the garden, just perfect.

What’s next?

• More plants to go around the pond area

• Lift up the fleece from the covered areas and check on the seedlings

• Might be able to get the posts wired for the climbing plants

• Sowing nasturtiums and marigolds

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All of a sudden we seem to have been propelled into another world because of the virus, and nothing seems certain anymore.  Perhaps the only certainty is that there are seeds to sow and plants that still require planting, and although many activities have been shut down, we can still go up to the garden to do things, and it seems that now we have more time to do so!  Saturday was beautiful out in the sunshine; we have room to keep social distancing, and plenty of jobs to be getting on with.  Many of us have our own tools and will make sure we use only them. 

We have sown turnips, celery and celeriac, more peas for shoots, and mange tout.  The tomato seedlings have been pricked out, pea plants, beetroot and spinach planted, hop poles and strings erected, and even some of the plants for around the pond got planted too.

It seems that being confined to the home for some time as led people to consider growing more fruit and veg this year, and we have had requests for tomato plants, and other veg plants too when they are available.  We were also given some seeds to sow, which were gratefully received.

We will continue to plant and sow, and by all accounts the weather is set to improve next week which will be a bonus, helping to bring on the plants in the greenhouses to be then transferred to the plot under a blanket of fleece for a few more weeks.  In the pictures below you can see some of the flowers out at the moment, and the old plum trees are also in full blossom – just fabulous.

What’s next?

• Sow and plant

• Water and weed

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This week we have planted some brassicas (varieties of the cauliflower family that are all different shapes, sizes and even colours!), more broad beans, and some sweet peas, a dwarf variety that should make small bushy plants.  The great thing about all these early plantings is that they do not mind the cold and wet weather so much, and are happy to grow in cooler temperatures.  They will also mature in early summer when the ground can then be cleared and another crop planted.  Unfortunately, along with the new shoots come the slugs and snails looking for some tender pickings, and we have lost some seedlings that never made it out of the greenhouse!  Never mind, new sowings have been made, and they will soon catch up with the earlier sown plants. 

On Saturday we made a trip over to Hythe to collect our hop plants from the Hythe Hops Scheme along with other eager growers.  As well as collecting the dormant plants, there was a seed and plant swap.  Such a great way of swapping any seeds/plants you might not need.  We were on the lookout for seeds and plants that would provide a treat for the bees.  On Wednesday we had noticed that some bumble bees were out and about in the weak sunshine and were busy foraging, luckily we have a few flowering plants such as borage and violas in full bloom.  Early flowering plants are so important for the bee population on days when they emerge and are so low on energy.  There will be plenty of flowers for them to feast on later, but there is not so much to choose from right now.

We are sowing and growing as many things as we have room for and more, for the Incredible Edible project, and the nursery children.  If you are a grower and have some spare plants or seeds, please consider us – we may even be able to do some plant bartering.  We hope at some stage to be able to have a selection of plants that can help us to raise funds through donations….. So, if you will be looking for tomato plants, or maybe a few spinach or bean plants, keep an eye on our Instagram page or newsletter for what is available.  We will also be putting up some notices at the garden to let you know what we may have, what is in season, and about any spare veg plants.

What’s next?

• Sowing seeds

• Planting plants

• If there is time, make a start on planting up around the edge of the pond.

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Such is the generosity and kindness of our community that the call for greenhouse space was answered, and we now have temporary homes for our seedlings to get going.  Lee came up trumps with a small portable greenhouse for us to borrow, not even out of the box; and Kath has room in a greenhouse on top of her shed, just perfect, and we are very grateful.

This week we succeeded in sowing more seeds, planting out the radishes, and lots of hoeing and weeding as the site was starting to develop a green tinge of tiny weedy seedlings, and it is important to run a hoe or rake over the ground now before they have the chance to grow any bigger and therefore make the job of getting rid of them that much harder.

We are excited to announce that we are to be joining the Incredible Edible movement, combining forces with Cheriton and Broadmead in various projects around the area.  If you have never heard of Incredible Edible before, here is the address to the inspirational TED talk by Pam Warhurst, a founder member of the movement which has now gone worldwide. 

https://www.incredibleedible.org.uk/our-story/

The idea is to plant up any available space with fruit and vegetables or trees for anybody to help themselves to.  It is free food, encouraging people to eat fresh, local and seasonal, and to cook from scratch.  If you get the chance to check out the TED talk you will be amazed how such a simple idea made an impact that was life changing for many of the people involved, and helped to create a strong community. 

There have been talks with the station manager and the railway Community Officer at Folkestone West this week, with a view to planting up the station platforms with edibles for commuters to admire and pick, with encouragement to water anything that looks like it could do with a drink.   Sandgate will start with its own Incredible Edible planter in the High Street, and more areas will get the same treatment as time goes on.  Sandgate Community Garden is featured in the March edition of Go Folkestone, and some of us will be helping to plant in Radnor Park on the weekend of 21^st and 22^nd March.  Everybody is welcome to come along and help too, but contact info@gofolkestone.org.uk so that you can be kept informed of any changes to plans.

You may recall that we had joined the Hythe Hops scheme, and have bought four hops and membership for a year.  We got the information that the plants are ready for collection next Saturday, and so we will take time out from our Saturday morning gardening session to collect them, and bring them back for planting along the wall where we hope they will be happy.

What’s next?

• Planting out any veg plants that are mature enough to cope outside

• Sow even more seeds

• Keep hoeing

• Collect and plant hops

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Far too much weather again this week, and how much we will appreciate warm sunny days when they eventually appear.

It is a long shot, but we are putting out an appeal to anybody reading this that might have a greenhouse and is willing to either look after our seedlings or allow us to look after them for just a few weeks until it is warm enough to be able to sow seeds outside.  Once the seeds are sown, they can be put into any warm space like a cupboard, seed trays piled up on each other, just until germination; for most this is just two to three days.  Then they can be brought out and placed in the light to grow on for another couple of weeks until planting.  With these dull, rainy days, the seedlings on windowsills  are becoming long and straggly, which is ok as they can be planted deeper, but it is not ideal, and a greenhouse will  mean more light and stronger plants.  If you can help with greenhouse space for just a few weeks, send us an email, or phone/text 07840138308.

Most of our seeds are to be started off in modules and then transplanted.  It means a faster turnover of plants in the growing space, and you can keep a close eye on them.  From now on, the only direct seed sowings will be of carrots and parsnips (because they have long tap roots) and garlic.  Seed sowing itself is reasonably simple and so satisfying, when miraculous little shoots start to show above the compost, but such a big disappointment when nothing at all happens.  The common thought is to blame yourself for not doing something right, but the fact is that seed companies push the boundaries of packaging and selling viable seed, and are often accused of releasing seed that is simply too old.  As time goes on, seeds become less able to germinate successfully, numbers drop off until all the seed is dead.  Many seed companies state the year the seed is packed, but are not required to say when the seed was collected, and so you never know just how old your seeds are.  Seed companies and seed management are not regulated tightly enough, and there are many practices that need exposing.  There is nothing worse than spending between 3 and 4 pounds for a packet of seeds that fail to germinate, or will never look like the picture on the packet; less painful to buy packets for 25p to £1 from Wilko or Lidl.  So, if you are just looking for most common types of veg seed, do not be afraid to try the cheaper brands, they seem just as good.

Below are pictures of our seedlings, some are ready to be planted, with a fleece covering.  Beetroot is sown 4 seeds per module, spring onions up to 10 seeds, peas for shoots up to 5, radishes up to 6. 

What’s next?

• Sow even more seeds

• Plant out the radishes

• Continue with the compost cover and pathways

• Keep up the weeding

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It does not feel like it right now, but spring really is just around the corner.  The days are getting longer, and some of the buds are fit to burst.  We still have time to get the compost and paths in place, and there are seedlings of lettuce, radish, spring onions, cabbage, calabrese and spinach on their way, filling up window ledges.  The aim is to be planting these sowings in mid-March with any luck.

Still lots of work to be getting on with, and in fact we have not stopped over the winter period at all – take note all the fair weather gardeners out there!

I have only just come back from a course with Charles Dowding, the guru of ‘no dig’ gardening.  There were people on the course from all over the UK, and also from Europe and America.  I have practiced ‘no dig’ for some time, and I know it works, but Charles also has some very interesting methods of sowing, planting and harvesting, for maximum cropping and higher yields for the available growing space.  No dig is about feeding the soil, not the plants, as they take what they need from the soil.  So, keep an eye on the garden to see what we get growing this year.  The trick is to be able to time when replacement plants or seeds are needed, and to avoid empty spaces during the faster growing seasons.  From the pictures you can see he keeps a tidy, orderly garden, and attention to detail is second to none.  However, it was also good to see that Mr Dowding is not perfect either and has disasters just the same as everybody else! If you are interested in ‘no dig’, there are many instructional videos to be found on Youtube.

What’s next?

• Keep weeding

• More paths to finish

• More compost and wood chips to move to the garden.

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Storm Ciara rip roared around last weekend, and we seemed to get away with just shredded fleece cloches, we were lucky.  Let us hope we get through Dennis paying us a visit this weekend!

More barrowing of compost and wood chips has been the theme this week.  It should certainly help to define where it is safe to walk, as most visitors manage to trample over the onions at some point or another.  Unless storm Dennis obliges and blows the rest of the compost and wood chips up the hill to the garden, we will be repeating the action into next week and quite possibly the week after.  One of the Saga gardeners took pity and brought some of the compost up to the garden on the tractor trailer but that was before they became preoccupied with fallen and falling trees in the park!

Believe it or not it is time to be sowing seeds, and the window ledges are filling up with all sorts of seed trays and seedlings.  We aim to grow as much as we can this year.  We are on the verge of announcing lots of other plans and ideas, but all that is for later.

We had the welcome gift of six bags of manure to add to the compost heap from Jill, a good friend of the garden – it will do the world of good, thanks Jill and indeed, all donations of horse muck, seeds, plants and tools gratefully received.  

The area around the pond has had the ‘no dig’ treatment, and is starting to look better, but there is much to do on the path side, where some of the earth needs to be pulled back so as not to show so much of the liner.

If you get this newsletter on a Sunday morning, it will not be appearing until Sunday night next week the 23^rd, as I will be on a course with none other than the world famous guru of ‘no dig’ himself, Mr Charles Dowding.  He has a market garden in Somerset, and is totally inspirational in how he grows and harvests organic food.  I am so looking forward to seeing his garden, which is already in full swing, providing plenty of salad leaves and vegetables to the locals.  So hopefully I should be bringing back lots more ideas and techniques to ours.

What’s next?

• Check for storm damage

• You guessed it – more barrowing of compost, and making of wood chip paths.

• Much is starting to sprout in the garden, and so are the weeds which need hoeing again.

• Collect more coffee grounds/cardboard

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So very happy to report that our wishes have been answered, and we had compost delivered to the community garden to enable us to make the soil easier to work, and continue with a ‘no dig’ policy.  Folkestone and Hythe council took pity on our plight and are giving us their own compost made in their yard from waste collected from local parks and gardens.   It is peat free and perfect for our requirements.  Feeling cheeky, we mentioned we were looking for wood chips to continue making our paths, and that wish is also to be granted – happy days!  Well, if you don’t ask you won’t get – thank you to our local friendly council……. this makes a great difference to us.  The wheelbarrow has been working overtime trundling backwards and forwards (always uphill with a full load!) to the garden and the new compost is being put down where it is most needed first.  Starting to think we could do with another wheelbarrow, one with an engine strapped to it!

On Wednesday we put nine wooden posts into the ground and along the wall, ready for wires to be strung between them, and for plants to be trained along them.  A maiden pear tree was donated and planted by Sue, a local lady, and another pear tree will be arriving next week.  They are both to be trained against the wall.  We have had other offers of tree donations but we feel that we are at saturation point for the amount of space we currently have.  We had some spinach plants which were planted in one of the raised boxes.

On Saturday we continued wheelbarrowing the compost to the garden, put a mulch of well-rotted horse manure around the orchard trees, and picked some kale and purple sprouting.  Storm Ciara is on its way Saturday night and Sunday, so we spent some time making sure cloches were well secured.   Time will tell if the storm has spared the garden, and an inspection is to be made Monday morning.  Having ’battened down the hatches’, a happy hour or two was spent at the Sandgate Societies sloe gin tasting session.  A must considering we should be picking our own sloes from our newly planted hedge later this year.  Looks like we shall have to consider entering a community garden offering next year!

What’s next?

• Check on any storm damage

• More compost and more uphill wheelbarrowing

• Continue to keep on top of any weeds

• Collect coffee grounds from the local cafes for the compost bins

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A reasonably quiet week, we are still trying to resolve the problem of getting hold of lots of compost to put on the garden to improve the soil, without having to part with lots of money, and we think we are about to solve it.  Having recently read an article about electro-mechanical composting machines that can convert garden and food waste into highly nutritious compost in just 14 days, we are beginning to feel quite envious!  However, this amazing machine is not to be our saviour – but who knows what the future may bring!

We inherited with the site a large patch of wild garlic which last year looked quite battered and sorry for its self, but by this week was looking very lush and had increased to twice its size.   So we dug up what seemed a small mountain of the stuff to put into many a dish, to include soup, stir fry and blitzed into a pesto – delicious.  All parts of the plant can be eaten, and the leaves can be continued to be picked throughout the year to be put with mixed salad leaves.

The pond has very nearly filled, and so the excess liner was cut away and the edges were tucked into the ground.  We still have lots to do to make the pond an attractive wildlife asset, but it is getting there.

It was high time we plotted where and what trees we had in the orchard, as two of the labels had already disappeared and it would be a shame not to know exactly what we have.  Officially the definition of an orchard is just five trees together, which does not seem very many at all.  Happily, with the addition in the next week or so of two more pear trees, we shall have double that number. 

One of the pictures attached is of a patch of nicotiana or tobacco plant which is standing tall by the wall and has flowered all of January – simply amazing for this time of year and probably says something about how warm it has been so far this winter and how much shelter the wall gives, and how much heat it radiates.  Also attached is a picture of the last gate, hand crafted by Jeff, a Saga gardener – thanks Jeff!

What’s next?

• It is all systems go to get the compost in place – subject to successful negotiations.

• We have more posts that need to be put in against the wall for climbers and espaliers.

• Spend some time to see if any birds are checking out our bird boxes and nesting materials.

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Having visited the delightful old fashioned shop in Cheriton opposite the library, we now have our seed potatoes chitting away on window ledges, waiting to be planted in the spring.  Here is what we will be growing:

Lady Christl – These were bought specifically for the nursery children as they are a very early variety, and the children will be able to experience harvesting them in June before they break for the summer holidays and change their nursery setting for Primary School.  This variety is recommended in many gardening forums and has an RHS Award of Garden Merit, having both excellent taste as well as good looks!  The harvest is ready in just 11-12 weeks after planting.

Charlotte – Is a waxy second early variety, easy to grow, and can be left for longer in the ground if not required for eating straight away.  Again it has excellent flavour, and is for harvesting mid to end of July.

Pink Fir Apple –   This is an old French variety which can be traced back to at least 1850.  It fell out of favour until it suddenly became popular again from 2000 onwards.  It has ‘top quality taste and texture’, it  stores well and is a main crop type being ready to harvest from mid to end of August.

Oca –  This is not from the potato seed shop, but the seed tubers have been saved from a donated plant and then harvested in November to give us seed for this year (picture below – they look like fat yellow maggots!).  Oca is described as a lemony potato, the ‘lost crop of the Incas’ and a delicious alternative to regular potatoes and yams.  This perennial South American tuber has a slightly tangy flavour, crunchy when raw and starchier when boiled or baked.  It is harvested in the UK before hard frosts.  All of the plant can be eaten – the leaves are similar to wood sorrel, great in a salad;  the stems can be used as an alternative to rhubarb or gooseberries, in a pie.  We will be planting some in-between the garlic and onions as it is a great companion plant, filling the space once the garlic/onions have been harvested in July.  What is not to like about that?

The compost heaps got turned, the last time was probably late September or early October.  The decomposition process is much slower in the winter, but it still happens.   The bench has been moved and we continued to weed and tidy. 

The Saga gardeners kindly found some time to make us another gate, and continue the fencing right up to the windbreak.  Now we know where all the gates and entrances are, the hedging plants, growing in the way, were replanted in hedge gaps. 

In preparation for the birds starting to build their nests, we asked for a bag of washed dog hair from the local groomers, stuffed it into a wicker ball full of holes, and hung it up in the trees for the birds to help themselves to.  There is probably a use for every waste material somewhere!

Bee hive news – we have it on good authority that the bees are still on schedule to arrive in the garden before the end of February.  Work is being done to prepare the hive stands.  Ray is the owner of the bees and hives – he recently moved into Sandgate and we commandeered him as soon as it was discovered he was an experienced bee keeper!  He will be relocating two of his hives to the garden, and will be ably assisted by one of our great garden friends, Chris.  Chris also has experience of bee keeping, and we are confident they will make an excellent success of the garden’s relationship with honey bees.

What’s next?

Progress is currently being held to ransom by a lack of compost…. We simply could not make enough to enrich all the ground space we have available to us.  So we are looking into how we can fix it.  In the meantime we have more tidying to do, and a few more plants to plant, before the seed sowing begins in earnest next month, and more perennial vegetable plants on order since Christmas, arrive in the post!

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