If we had been asked at the very start of this project in mid-May, to produce a hamper of food from the garden in just three months, we might have considered it an impossible task, but we did…. For a raffle prize at the Sandgate garden party last Sunday! A proud moment!
Spoke too soon about the sunflowers all still being upright after the blast of wind that came through, one of them did fall, however, nothing is wasted; the leaves were stripped and added to the compost heap, the stem and flower left to dry out. The seeds in the flower head will feed the birds, and the hollow stem used in the future construction of a bug hotel. Everything gets recycled. The ultimate in recycling has to be making compost from organic materials. Otherwise known as ‘black gold’, garden made compost is the best thing you can add to a garden, and the kitchen at the Saga Pavilion is helping by giving us their vegetable waste. The more compost we can make, the better the health of the garden.
Chris Turnbull from the Hythe Hops Scheme came to visit the garden on Saturday to discuss our taking part in this community project next spring. It will involve growing some hops, picking them, and combining them with all the other community grown hops to make a very local brew! Looking forward to sampling that!
Come and see us at the Sandgate Sea and Food Festival next weekend – we will be there on the Sunday, so stop and say hello!
What’s next?
- Keep picking
- Remove any yellow lower leaves from the kale and purple sprouting
- Start removing any leaves from the squashes that are dying back
- Plant up savoy cabbages in spaces at top of the bean plot
- Check on seedlings in last two beds and see if they need thinning/replanting in spaces.
- Start to mark out beds in newly dug area
- Put wood preserver on bug hotel structure
Beetroot and carrot pickings 
Hamper for the Sandgate Garden Party
