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.
