Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 12th March: A truck, six tons of compost and plenty of muscle
It has been avery interesting week as regards the weather. There have been lashings of rain with cold icy blasts of wind, dismal grey skies with a glimpse of the sun every now and then. It was bucketing it down with rain on Wednesday when we were due to have another gardening session at Enbrook Park, so it was decided to give it a miss; luckily Saturday was much drier and a little warmer. However it seems that a large part of the country has been subjected to snow and so we are grateful not to have to contend with that! We are so close now to seeing the spring, and you just know that when it does eventually arrive, everything is going to gallop ahead at a rate of knots and it will be really busy. The hops growing against the wall are just starting to appear above ground which is a worry as we will have more frost this coming week.
Thank goodness, it seems we had picked the best day to collect compost from our friends at Hope Farm, to take to the Touchbase Care Kitchen Garden at Pent Farm, Postling. We hired a truck to collect around 6 tons of compost, and had plenty of muscle to help from some of the Touchbase Care members as well as some of the lads from the Napier Barracks. It was a busy and exhausting day, getting all the compost off the truck and wheelbarrowed into place in the garden. We are just getting to the point where we have almost covered all of the site with compost now, the process being started last spring, and so this year the vegetable plots should be bursting with plants. We were grateful to Touchbase Care for providing a lovely lunch from their café based in Tontine Street.
It seems it is that time of year again when the youngsters at secondary school are looking for placements for their Duke of Edinburgh award. We had some last year, and this Saturday we were joined by a willing volunteer keen to learn some gardening skills. He planted some radishes, and learnt how to multi sow coriander seeds into modules. Always interesting to host volunteers with little or even no liking for vegetables of any description, however this young man seems to enjoy eating them too which must be a bonus.
On Saturday 29th April, supported by the Carbon Innovation Lab, the Folkestone and Hythe Sustainable Futures Forum will be hosting an event featuring TED x style talks – ‘to give businesses, community leaders, and individuals from the Folkestone and Hythe district area the chance to share and inspire the local community with their environmental and sustainability ideas, projects and stories.’ The event will be held at the Burlington Hotel Folkestone and should be a really interesting afternoon. The tickets are free, and can be ordered here here.
What’s next?
- Sow more radishes, onions, etc
- Probably warm enough later next week to plant the peas for pea shoots
- Prick out the thyme seedlings
- Might need to repot the sweet peas
This weeks update from the Sandgate Community Garden Diary.