Tim Prater

We had an incredible day at the Sandgate Sea and Food Festival last Sunday!  So much support from everyone there, and many generous donations!  We collected an amazing £102, and the vegetables we brought from the garden disappeared from the stall at speed.  Attached are some photos from the day, and we are sporting our T shirts we bought ourselves to advertise what we were representing….we almost looked professional!!  It was good to see so many people there we now know through working at the garden, and it is clear that the word is getting round that things are happening in that part of the park!

This week we have watered, weeded, set out the new beds in the newly dug area, finished painting the bug hotel, and most important…….. kept picking all things ripe and ready.  This week it is all about tomatoes, and we have them in all shapes and colours, we even have some that have horns … seriously! (Check out the pictures on our Instagram page!).  Now we are getting into September, we are making the last of the seed sowings of Japanese and Chinese vegetables, fast to grow, and with protection, can carry on over the winter.  However the pace is not going to slip just because summer is passing us by, we still have so much more to do. 

A reminder that our picnic will be at the garden on Sunday 22^nd September – a celebration of a fantastic start to the project this summer, and looking forward to much more to come.

What’s next?

• Keep watering

• Keep picking

• Cut back squash leaves and tomato leaves to expose the fruits to the sun for ripening

• We might need to turn the compost heap this week?

• Check how many strawberry plants we have from the runners and plant in new bed if rooted

Sending out our weekly newsletter Saturday evening instead of Sunday morning this time, as we will be up early setting up our stall at the Sandgate Sea and Food Festival on Sunday morning!  We had a great time collecting things from the garden to bring to the Festival to show.  It was time well spent with new garden companions, now friends, and treasure hunting for lost beans, tomatoes and courgettes in the undergrowth!

The sun and the flower patch brought out a number of butterflies and bees, and it was quite idyllic.  It is no wonder that gardening is known to be great therapy, and that is even before tasting something picked fresh, warm, and sun ripened…..absolutely no comparison with shop bought.  Some of us will be at the Festival to talk about achievements so far and great plans for the future, so come along and say hello!

Attached is a letter from The Sandgate Society thanking us all for the raffle prize hamper we put together for the Garden Party, we are more than pleased that we could do that, so well done all the diggers and donators, your hard work is not going unnoticed!

Talking of donations, we had a more than generous donation of £20 from a local follower and well-wisher; this will go straight into our seed fund, as we will soon have to take stock of our growing intentions for next year! 

Although we have lots of lovely courgettes, we have had four separate requests for a supply of marrows which is not something you see these days in the supermarkets.  So, marrow seeds are on the list, and if you have any requests……..just let us know and we will do our best to oblige!

What’s next?

• Keep watering!

• Keep picking

• Finish treating the bug hotel

• Set out the new beds

• Keep weeding

If we had been asked at the very start of this project in mid-May, to produce a hamper of food from the garden in just three months, we might have considered it an impossible task, but we did…. For a raffle prize at the Sandgate garden party last Sunday!  A proud moment!

Spoke too soon about the sunflowers all still being upright after the blast of wind that came through, one of them did fall, however, nothing is wasted; the leaves were stripped and added to the compost heap, the stem and flower left to dry out.  The seeds in the flower head will feed the birds, and the hollow stem used in the future construction of a bug hotel.  Everything gets recycled.  The ultimate in recycling has to be making compost from organic materials.  Otherwise known as ‘black gold’, garden made compost is the best thing you can add to a garden, and the kitchen at the Saga Pavilion is helping by giving us their vegetable waste.  The more compost we can make, the better the health of the garden.

Chris Turnbull from the Hythe Hops Scheme came to visit the garden on Saturday to discuss our taking part in this community project next spring.  It will involve growing some hops, picking them, and combining them with all the other community grown hops to make a very local brew!  Looking forward to sampling that!

Come and see us at the Sandgate Sea and Food Festival next weekend – we will be there on the Sunday, so stop and say hello!  

What’s next?

• Keep picking

• Remove any yellow lower leaves from the kale and purple sprouting

• Start removing any leaves from the squashes that are dying back

• Plant up savoy cabbages in spaces at top of the bean plot

• Check on seedlings in last two beds and see if they need thinning/replanting in spaces.

• Start to mark out beds in newly dug area

• Put wood preserver on bug hotel structure

I know you were wondering… yes, the garden is still standing, and at last look, even the sunflowers, after the hooley of a storm that came through yesterday.  We had to abandon all hope of trying to do much at all, except stand upright. 

Featuring this week are some lovely carrots and beetroot which seem to have doubled in size in just a week!  The Florence fennel is starting to swell.  A passing dog was so phased by one of the blue squashes poking out of the undergrowth, that it started barking and snarling at it, and had to be moved on by its owner!   

Thank you Sandgate Parish Council for a donation of £100.  How very lucky we are to have friends in high places, with support also from The Sandgate Society, and of course Saga…….we are where we are!  The next big buy will be the asparagus crowns, and wooden posts to make various structures, and such donations make it all possible.

What’s next?

• Check on any storm damage

• Tie in tomatoes and brassicas

• Thin out some of the lettuces, and particularly the lambs lettuce (some of this lettuce can be relocated to new spaces)

• Dead head cosmos and rose