Sandgate Community Garden: Update 15th December 2024

Sandgate Community Garden Team Diary Entry for 15th December: We wish you all a very happy Christmas and New Year.

The stormy weather seems to have subsided for now, leaving us with dreary gloomy days with little or no sunshine until it decided to make a surprise appearance on Saturday afternoon.  It did mean that we could get to the garden on both of our working mornings, which was a bonus.

With the passing of storm Darragh, we took stock of the damage.  The poor banana tree was shredded even more than it was before, the nets were off and it seems the pigeons had taken advantage and moved in, stripping many of the purple sprouting leaves.  So we set about covering the plants again.  Fortunately the pigeons are not interested in the broad beans, and although their warm fleece coverings were missing, they were still all present and correct.

Two of our gardeners are currently out in Australia for a few weeks and will be spending Christmas there.  It is hard to imagine a Christmas in the summertime, which it currently is over there.  They got in touch to say that they had stumbled across an amazing community garden they found where they are staying, and forwarded some pictures.  It was evident that their banana trees were in the same state as our own, with shredded leaves, but really interesting to see so many different plants there which you would probably not see in a community garden here.  We look forward to hearing all about it on their return.

This is the last newsletter for a while.  We will be returning in January with the latest news.  We will be making visits to the gardens, checking on the plants and of course the state of the netting.  The hot composter at the Folkestone College will continue to be fed with food waste over the Christmas period.

We wish you all a very happy Christmas and New Year.

This weeks update from the Sandgate Community Garden Diary.