Sandgate Community Garden: Update 26 June 2022

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 26th June: The skills of managing tomatoes.

It has been a challenge this week to keep up with the tomatoes and the growth they are putting on.  Every week our list of jobs includes checking all the tomato plants for side shoots, and every week those side shoots sneak up on us and start taking over.  Keeping tomato plants as a cordon or single stemmed plant is quite a skill, you really do need to know your stuff when it comes to identifying a side shoot and nipping it out before it saps too much energy from the plant and goes off at a tangent.  Of course, in the wild a tomato plant would naturally be a bush, but in the short time we have in our summer to grow a decent crop of tomatoes outside, then it pays to be vigilant and train them.  It has to be said that last year (and the year before) we somewhat lost the plot when keeping our eyes on the growth and they went out of control in a busy time when so much is going on anyway.  However this year the determination is to plug away at it……… all we need now is some tomatoes!

Any promised rain this week is up to its usual trick of appearing on the weather apps and then completely passing us by, or even being so localised that we can have a short shower at one end of Sandgate, yet not at the other.  The yellow warning of thunderstorms and heavy showers faded to nothing and many a water butt at gardener’s homes remain empty.

However, we get on with what needs doing, and there is always plenty.  The kale seedlings all got pricked out into modules, the broccoli seeds sown, and the swedes planted, along with the second batch of lettuces.  One of the red potato patches were pulled up and more onions.  Sadly the mange tout is starting to dwindle but soon we hope the courgettes will start to come thick and fast.  The gooseberries are thinking about ripening but as you can see in a picture below, we had another volunteer turn up, in the shape of a squirrel, with a keen eye on what we were doing, and what he could glean. 

Over by the asparagus beds a mole is having a wonderful time making mole hills all over the place and we are rather hoping he will be making his way under the fence and out.  With the imminent arrival of many brassica plants (swede, kales and broccolis) we will have to think about their protection from the dreaded cabbage white butterfly.  Sadly, we have not seen many butterflies or insects, well not as many as we should.

The memories of ‘fly soup’ or being able to look across an open space and see hundreds of flying insects, is now in the distant past, along with having to clean the car windscreen due to all the casualties encountered on a journey.  It seems a wonder that any of the flowers are fertilised and the fruits form at all, but fortunately they still do and long may it continue.  Where last year there was just one pyramid orchid in a spot near the Enbrook garden, this year there are two, and the fact we are surrounded by a diverse range of flowers, grasses and trees will help support the much needed insect population.

Just as the insects need support, so do we at times, with various projects.  Saga has a fantastic scheme to encourage employees to spend a day volunteering for local charities and projects.  This week a dozen came out to support Touchbase Care at Pent Farm, along with some of our gardeners, to unload several truckloads of compost, varnish the inside of the summer house, weed, water, construct compost bins from recycled pallets and with great enthusiasm, roll massive tractor tyres down the lane to make raised beds.  They were a fabulous hardworking bunch, but suspect that after a day of hard physical graft in the great, hot and sunny outdoors, they were suffering for it the day after when back in the office! 

What’s next?

  • Prick out the broccoli seedlings, the smaller the better
  • Check on the gooseberries
  • The woodchip paths need another layer
  • Keep watering the new plantings

This weeks update from the Sandgate Community Garden Diary.