Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 19th June: Completing the Enbrook Valley planters, and Don’t Step on a Bee.
A busy week where the temperatures rose, the sun shone and we had to start watering again.
The two planters outside the Golden Arrow in the Golden Valley have been under review for some time but we now think that a plan of action has been finalised and can at last be implemented. The pub landlords had been thinking long and hard about what they wanted to have there in terms of planting, and there had been conversations around perhaps making the planters taller. The issue was that because the planters were so close to the outside benches and tables they often got stood on or walked over by customers, and plants therefore failed to thrive and the beds looked sad and sorry compared to the others. After much deliberation, the decision was to cover the beds in shingle and to put some half barrels on top with flowering plants – therefore the plants will no longer be stepped on. The work is all but completed, and it is looking great.
The green outside the chip shop got a long overdue tidy up and some plants put in. The Council has added the hanging baskets already and the space is therefore looking very colourful.
At the Enbrook garden, the last of the broad beans have been harvested and the beds prepared and ready to be replanted, one was quickly filled with new lettuce plants. Spring onions were planted in the space where some of the potatoes were, and a few of the kale seedlings got pricked out into modules to grow on for another few weeks. We also planted a new rhubarb root and two Yacon plants bought last week at Stream Walk community garden in Whitstable. Yacon root is very similar to a water chestnut and needs to be harvested every late autumn and some saved for the following year.
Enbrook Garden was visited during the week by a film crew, where they interviewed and filmed the bee hives and keepers in preparation for highlighting the national ‘don’t step on a bee day’ on July 10th.
I (Leonie) had the honour of being invited to give a talk to the Hythe WI, on our community garden spaces as well as an introduction to ‘No dig’ gardening. It was a delight to meet the ladies and to tell them all about the work of our volunteers and how far we have come in three short years highlighted with a pandemic! For me it was interesting to be able to sequence and put together the creation of all the growing areas here in Sandgate, plus our connection with other groups. Of course, the real treat was the tea and cake afterwards!
What’s next?
- Finish pricking out the kales
- Sow purple sprouting
- Plant the swedes
- Keep watering the small planters if the heat continues.
This weeks update from the Sandgate Community Garden Diary.
