Sandgate Community Garden

This seems to be the first week we have started to feel the cold whilst working in the gardens, and late autumn is really upon us.  The rainfall for October was 106.6mm, a fair amount which mostly seemed to arrive just when you are busy outdoors!  So it was at the dismantling of the planter at the Re-rooting exhibition, and by the time we had transferred it to Cheriton we were soaked.  A big ‘thank you’ to Erica for using her car to transport the planter, and all the time she spent helping. 

The rain does come in handy when you are planting beds however, and the broad beans are in their new homes, as well as some of the garlic, with more to be planted out next week.  Some tulips and daffodils for spring colour got planted in some of our large pots, the hedge got a trimming, and we are starting to cut back many of the perennial plants in the flower garden.  One of our volunteers decided the banana tree should be wrapped up for the winter, and time will tell if it needed it or not! 

Even though we are into November, we are seeing the brassicas still being eaten by new hatchings of caterpillars – unbelievable!  The kale bed was looking somewhat diminished and it became clear that it was under attack from pigeons as the leaves were showing the tell-tale signs where the flesh of the leaves is stripped leaving the main veins behind, and so it will be sensible to start netting all the brassicas before they disappear.  On Saturday it was noticed that there were a great many ladybirds around too, possibly making their last searches for food before they find suitable crevices to hibernate for the winter.

Some of our volunteers love the community garden WhatsApp groups, and have been sharing pictures of what they have made using some of our produce, as well as recipe ideas.  A couple of the pictures are featured below.  It is always interesting to see what different people come up with.

It is with great excitement that we can now mention a project initiated by the Sandgate Parish Council for the Sandgate Park off Military Road, and Fremantle Park, in Fremantle Road.  To commemorate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee in 2022, as part of The Queen’s Green Canopy (QGC) our community is being asked to help plant an orchard of 12 trees within each park mentioned, on Saturday 13^th November at 2pm in Sandgate Park, and Sunday 14^th November at 2pm in Fremantle Park. * We will be planting apple trees, pear, cherry, plum, and cob nut, so if you would like to come along and be a part of this community event, then contact us, Sandgate Community Garden, through our social media platforms, via email sandgatecg@gmail.com or text Leonie on 07840138308.

[ * UPDATE 11/11/2021: The Fruit trees will not be available from the supplier for this weekend, so the planting is postponed until further notice. Thanks to all those that said they would help, and we’ll update again when we have the trees!]

Many hands make light work, and before we know it we will be enjoying and sharing the fruit from the trees hopefully for several years to come, so get in touch and be involved.

What’s next?

• Finish planting the beans, garlic and onions

• Continue the bulb planting

• Net the brassicas

• Weed along the wall

• Plant the orchards!

We have always agreed in our garden WhatsApp group that should it be blowing a hooly or tipping down with rain on one of our designated gardening days then we would throw in the towel and not turn up.  On Saturday it was blowing and tipping at the same time, so that was that.  The site being rather exposed, at the far end of the park with no shelter or even anywhere nearby to take cover and wait until the worst passes, means you have to take the plunge and make a decision when the weather is dodgy.  All the same, the garden is always open for anybody to access from dawn till dusk and so if the gardening urge is too great to resist, then some of our gardeners can be found therapeutically weeding or deadheading whenever they feel compelled to do so.

Happily, the Wednesday session was reasonably fair, and there was a great number of volunteers making short work of our ‘to do’ list. We picked kale, salad leaves, chard, spinach, winter radishes and leeks, moved compost around to prepare some of the empty beds for re-planting, and the leaf compost bin got emptied.  The leaf compost was collected last autumn – fallen leaves were raked up from the grass and picked up from the plot and the pond, to be left to rot down for the year in the assigned compost area. 

This seems to be the first week that the autumn colours have started to show on the trees, that is the leaves that are left, as there are few leaves to compost so far, most seem to have been blown away!  Someone somewhere must be piled high with our leaves wherever they have been blown to, and we may not have many to compost this year.

The climate is quite different at Fremantle Park, with shelter from the wind, and the ground seems to collect more moisture sitting within a dip.  All the gardeners that volunteer there met up last Sunday to weed and tidy the plots and pathways, put fresh compost down and share which crops did well for them.  It was interesting to find we have a phantom planter, as nobody confessed to establishing a line of fabulously flowering osteospernum plants along the outer path edge.  So obviously we have a secret and shy gardener who would be welcome to join us if they made themselves known!

We are still establishing the slope within Fremantle Park, and gradually removing brambles and shrub runners as they try to reappear, with the view to putting some fruit bushes and more flowering plants there in 2022.  The strip of annuals we planted in the spring have made a lovely display and on looking to see if it needed cutting back and removing, although a trifle battered, was still full of flower and alive with bees, so we have left it and probably will not remove anything now until the first frost or the plants give up the ghost themselves, whichever comes first.  Rita, our queen of plant propagation and flower seed sowing, planted some donated iris roots and perennial wallflower plants she had grown from cuttings – something the bees just love!

Talking of donations, the Hyth Hops group got in touch with offerings of free beer from Hopfuzz and Docker brewery, a can or bottle from each brewer to all hop growers to say thank you for the donated hops grown within the collective.  In true community spirit, all the gardener names were entered into a lucky dip, and two were chosen to be the lucky recipients.  There are cans of ‘red-green hop’ available in the Sandgate village shop if you are still yet to sample some of the fresh ‘green hop’ brews.

Still on the subject of donations and especially community spirit, we are pleased to advertise and take part in an event on Saturday 20^th November 11am to 3pm at the Radnor Park Bowls Club, called ‘Disco Soup’.  The idea is to take part in transforming surplus food into a community feast, and activities will include apple pressing, learning how to fement food in jars, and various craft stalls.  A great day for the family, and a wonderful way of using food which may otherwise have gone to landfill.  See the poster below for more information and how to take part.

What’s next?

• Dismantle the fringe exhibition

• Start planting the broad beans

• See if there is space available for other things

• We have bulbs to plant for the spring

• Keep checking on the plants in the cold frames Still weeding and cutting back to be done

This week seems to have been all about ‘almost’, ‘not quite’ and ‘maybe’.

It is difficult to pinpoint, but along with the changing of the weather and the season, there is a shift in how our volunteers are having to arrange their free time to fit in with a change in work patterns, trying to grab a holiday before winter sets in, visiting or being visited by friends and family.  There has been a sprinkling of ill health, medical procedures, and various ‘jabs’ of one sort or another topped with a bit of COVID ‘pinging’ just to add to the mix.  We have had some new faces too, which is refreshing, and always interesting to know why people seek us out and want to come along.  The good news is we are a friendly bunch!   

We have been in talks for some time to try to get access to a supply of good compost.  We established contact with a farm just outside Folkestone where they actually make compost to put on their own fields and sell the remainder to other farms in Kent.  The farm owners are keen to support us by bringing a large trailer load of the ‘black gold’, however, at the last leg we got scuppered by the fact that their enormous tractor is too large to gain access to the tipping site.  Not knowing anybody in the locality with a spare smaller tractor or transport happy or able enough to help us out, we find ourselves back to square one until we can find a solution to the dilemma. Oh well!

We have managed to complete the ‘what’s next?’ list – the onion sets and garlic all got planted, the remaining mustard plants were nestled into some mushroom crates and housed in the cold frames, and will now be spending their time under cover until the spring returns.  The flowering plants and seeds are being looked after with the view that they will be planted or sown and in place for next year, wherever that may be, in Sandgate.  The tree leaves are starting to fall in greater numbers now, mostly bypassing the autumnal riot of colour and simply dropping.  So begins the prolonged clear up, not forgetting that they are a useful resource and go straight to the compost bin as lying around on top of some of the leafy growing crops like spinach or chard can make them start to rot and encourage slugs or snails which we have in plentiful supply as it is.  In fact the appearance of many a hole in the various crops verifies just how warm and wet it continues to be.  It all goes to show how organic we are though, and accepting that you have to share your food with insects, wild animals and molluscs, although it is never good to find something sharing at the same time!

Talking of sharing, we are sharing our words of wisdom and experiences in the garden with Explore Kent.  Their website can be found here Get Out and Explore Kent – Explore Kent and we were asked to send some pictures of the garden and contribute autumnal and wintery ‘blogs’ on what we are up to and all that  can be done in the garden.  There is always plenty to be done during the colder months and quite amusing when the assumption is that we will be ‘shutting down’ for the winter to then re-open again in the spring. 

What’s next?.

• Plenty of leaves to pick up and compost

• Plenty of weeding to be done along the wall and behind the posts

• Plenty of compost to shift from one place to another

• Still plenty of crops to be picked after sharing with the wildlife

• Can we fit in some onions between the fennel bulbs?

Have you ever wondered what happens to the town’s bedding plants when the season is finished?  We certainly have, and made some enquiries with Folkestone and Hythe horticultural department that carry out all the summer and winter floral displays all around the area from the parks to the street planters.

Most of the plants are annuals, which means after their display, they are literally exhausted and finished, fit only to be composted.  Some of the plants are perennials and can survive all year and come back to flower once again.  These were the plants we were interested in, as there were quite a few of them from dahlias to verbenas, gazanias and salvias.  It seems that most of the plants are removed from the beds and reused which is good news.  We were concerned that these plants might also end up on the compost heap and were keen to rescue them if that were indeed the case, and put them to good use in some of the areas we are looking after.

However, having removed all the plants the council decided that they did indeed have a few too many perennials left and offered them to us.  Always keen to save valuable resources, we jumped at the opportunity, and liberated several plants which we shared with the Incredible Edible team.  Many thanks to Folkestone and Hythe Council for thinking of us for these spare plants, and you never know, after planting out the winter bedding, there might be the possibility of a leftover plant or two – you never know!  The great thing about gardening is that nature is the master of recycling, and nothing is wasted.  Plants give their all by flowering or providing fruit/vegetables, and even when finished make the best compost, and the cycle continues. 

Talking of compost, our compost heaps all got turned this week, which was warm work!  Bin 3 which contains the finished compost got turned out and put onto empty beds, whilst bin 2 was turned into the now empty bin 3.  Bin 1 was full to bursting with all the new waste from veg peelings to finished plants, and got turned into bin 2, leaving an empty bin 1.  By Saturday, bin 1 was half full again, but you can be sure that by the time we return for our garden session on Wednesday the compost will have started to rot down and make some more room!  Turning the compost gives an opportunity to mix the ingredients together for a perfect end result – too wet, then add some brown or dry ingredients, too dry then mix with green (wet) ingredients.  Always interesting to see the compost wildlife, especially the worms, hard at work.

As well as flexing some muscles turning the compost, the onion sets and garlic got planted, and hundreds of broad beans sown in anticipation of an early crop next year.  Planting or sowing into modules has given us time to empty some of the beds over the next month or so and cover them with a new layer of compost to benefit all the plants in that bed for the next year. 

As the days are starting to shorten, the garden is entering a new phase in preparation for the winter to come.  The dominant summer planting making way for the hardy autumn and winter crops.  Leafy chard, spinach, cabbage, kale and sprouting broccoli alongside the roots of swede, celeriac, and parsnips.  Their time is about to come, and some first pickings have been made.  These plants enjoy a slower pace unlike their summer predecessors, often maturing at different rates with an ability to be left in the ground or on the plant until required.  A useful state in a family allotment, but probably not appreciated in a community garden where the demands on fresh vegetables is at a premium – no time for storing or biding time, unless the destination is a jar of chutney or frozen meal of course!

What’s next?

• Search out more planting boxes for the cold frames

• Finish planting last of the onion sets

• Check on seeds needing sowing in the autumn for flower beds/herbs

• Start clearing fallen leaves

The return of some warmer and drier weather was certainly a welcome relief, and on Saturday the garden was alive with butterflies, bees and dragonflies, as well as gardeners and visitors all making the most of it.  Such a contrast to the previous Saturday, with lashing rain and high winds,  After the garden session, there was a migration to the harbour to at last sample the green Hythe Hop beer and very good it was too. 

Here is some information from Hythe Hops about where you can sample the green ale from Docker and HopFuzz but you will have to be quick as it will not last long.

“Official launch of 2021 Docker and HopFuzz Green Hop Ales made using our hops takes place at Docktoberfest at Folkestone Harbour (East Yard) from 12 noon Saturday (9th October).

“The same Green Hop Ales (Red Green Hop Ale and HopBuzz) are to be/have been distributed to the following local pubs:

Beer Shop – Folkestone

Docker Tap Room – East Yard, Folkestone Harbour

The Goods Shed – Canterbury

Unit 1 – West Hythe

Bouverie Tap – Folkestone

Broken Drum – London

Duke William – Ickham

Freed Man – Deal/Walmer

Hidden Treasure – Dymchurch

Inn Doors – Sandgate

Larkins Alehouse – Cranbrook

Lighthouse – Deal

Smugglers – New Romney

Tankerton Arms – Tankerton

Three Mariners – Hythe

Unit 1 – West Hythe

Waterworks – Rye

“We cannot guarantee precisely where and when beers will become available or sell out so if you’re planning to make a special trip to any please check with the pub first.”

Very busy as usual in the garden.  Some spare plants, seeds onion and garlic sets were handed over to the nursery children at Saga so that they can get planting and sowing.  We always look forward to seeing what they are growing in their playground.  We took down the last of the tomato plants, cleared the ransacked beetroot bed where the badgers had helped themselves, and removed the dwarf beans.  We now need to get the cleared beds prepared for new plantings, and make space for the compost heaps to be turned as our current bin is really full to bursting.

On Wednesday after the garden session, some of us made our way to the Folkestone Fringe event ‘Re-Rooting’ to set up our planter and plants.  The planter will be there until the 30^th October.  We enjoyed setting it up and being able to take part in something different, and hope that visitors will enjoy seeing what is looking good in October.

Below is a picture showing some of the fungi that has suddenly appeared on the plot and in some of the beds.  Fungi is a welcome sight and we just let it be to do its thing as it does no harm.  So much to understand still about the role of fungi in the garden, but as an organic ‘no dig’ garden it certainly encourages plenty of it.

What’s next?

• Plant some of the mustards still in seed trays

• Plant more mustards in mushroom trays for the cold frames

• Check on the Re-Rooting planter for water levels and condition of the plants

• Sow broad beans in large modules

• Plant garlic and onion sets in large modules

Well, it has definitely all changed for wetter and cooler weather!  The rainfall for September was at 3.9 mm for most of the month until the very endo when it surged to 40.5 mm.  It has probably rained more than that in the first couple of days of October. 

Docker brewery had to postpone the launch of the green Hythe hop new brew until Saturday 9^th October for fear of losing their gazebo on the harbour to the high winds, let alone the lashing rain.  We were only thinking how fabulous the banana tree was looking in the Enbrook garden with a full set of leaves, and took a photo before it was tattered to bits.

Unfortunately the leeks added to the plant confusion as to which season we were in and also started to flower, which is totally unheard of in October.  With any luck the trend will be over and it will be clear we are now in autumn. 

Arms full of herbs got collected this week and sent to a ‘wild remedy workshop’.  Whilst collecting some rosemary it was interesting to see that there were several metallic looking beetles amongst the leaves which after research turned out to be the Chrysolina Americana or rosemary beetle becoming established in the 1990s apparently, and originating from southern Europe.  Luckily it does not do much harm to the plants and seems to have scarpered since the rain started anyway.  However the weather has not deterred the badgers from demolishing the entire beetroot crop in one fell swoop,  another reminder that it can be a BIG mistake to remove netting sometimes.

Sections of the netting around the garden have been damaged by our nocturnal animals, and one of the pictures below shows the holes created.  The squirrels (or is it the foxes?) have worked out how to get under some of the netting and have great fun digging about in the soil.  Not to be left out, a mole has worked its way from the other side of the garden wall and is happily pushing up the soil all around the tool box and compost heaps where we hope it will stay!  The badgers seem to have turned their noses up at the winter radishes so far which we have just started to pull up, and very tasty they are too.  Much larger than the spring varieties, they can get as big as a turnip and withstand winter temperatures although it is doubted they will last that long.  The cheeky late sowing of winter lettuces had been safely tucked away in a cold frame making plenty of growth until the wetter weather encouraged just one snail to find them and make a meal of all but six – it only takes one snail.

The nursery children at Saga are keen to be planting up their pots and planters in their playground now that the summer is over, and we will be supplying them with a few cloves of garlic and onion sets to plant, along with a few broad beans and mustard plants.  They have visited the garden to see what is growing there as part of their educational walks around the park grounds.

This coming week we are pleased to have been asked to take part in an exhibition as part of the Folkestone Fringe, called ‘Re-Rooting’.  We will be installing a large planter in the window of the venue at the Shakespeare Centre in Sandgate Road, full of plants with information on their medicinal uses and any associated folklore.  Six volunteers from the garden have stepped up to the plate to get the job set up and eventually dismantled.  The exhibition will run from 8^th to 30^th October (Thursday – Sunday 11am to 4pm) just incase you happen to find yourself in that vicinity and feel in need of a cultural experience as apparently there will be four artists exhibiting their work at the event too.

What’s next?

• Take down the tomatoes left standing at Enbrook and distribute green fruits

• Remove the beans and prep the ground for replanting

• Any wood chips left?

• Clear the demolished beetroot bed and add compost for replanting

• Take plants and seed to the nursery for the children to plant

The unseasonable weather has continued this week with a possible break coming soon of cooler and possibly wetter conditions.

It has been interesting how the autumn plants have fared under unusual circumstances. Used to thriving in a typical autumn, the Chinese cabbage has bolted, and the mustards are trying to do the same.  You begin to wonder if the sowing dates may have to be altered, however the daylight hours remain the same, and such plants need to be able to put on growth in the shorter days available before it gets simply too cold.  It is a constant juggling act trying to get the conditions right, luckily most of the time we manage it.  The cheeky sowing of some winter lettuces shot up within a couple of days – again, another gamble of taking chances.

We have started to think about the clearing of some of the beds, beginning with the Golden Valley Planters.  Rita has been working hard over the months sowing collected seeds, taking cuttings, and nurturing lots of plants at home for putting out eventually in Golden Valley and probably parts of Fremantle Park too.  The first job is to clear, cut back and pot up some plants, put down new compost and replant parts with new stock.  A start has been made but now we are waiting for  a decent downfall of rain as mulching a dry bed is not a good idea.  

The new cold frames we had made this year have been languishing at the end of the garden being used every now and then in the earlier months to shelter a plant or two, but will now soon be starting to do their work.  They are mighty heavy to move from one end of the plot to the other,so it was a case of waiting for some strong willing volunteers to be in the garden at the same time to be able to shift them into a space with the chance of getting some winter sun.  They will need a bit of a clean up, but will soon be protecting those new winter lettuces and mustards so that we may have a few salad leaves even in the deepest darkest depths of winter.

Following on from last week – the Hythe Hops scheme made a second and final collection of the hop cones, making a grand total of 110 kg.  Docker brewery have announced that the green brew from themselves and HopFuzz will be available from noon on Saturday 2^nd October at the East Yard on the Harbour Arm.  Some of us will be rushing over there straight after our gardening session that day to try it before it sells out!

The Hythe Environmental group were in the centre of town on Saturday 25^th for their annual seed and plant swap with apple pressing going on at the same time.  We took some of our spare seeds for exchanging, admired the apple press at work and tried some of the amazing fresh juice. 

We would like to give a mighty ‘THANK YOU’ to the Sandgate Society for organising the walk and talk of the Sandgate Community Gardens and for donating the money raised to us, after expenses – we are indeed very grateful for £64.30 which will be going into the kitty towards all the seeds and numerous other things on our current wish list.

What’s next?

• Clean up the cold frames and start collecting together mushroom boxes to be planted up with salads

• Remove and compost the bolted Chinese cabbage

• Keep checking the mustards for and flowers which should be removed.

• Prick out the new mustard plants and lettuces in the modules

• Plant the saffron crocuses in a safe place

We have been experiencing issues with watering this week.  It has been very warm and dry again, with some promises of rain dissolving into nothing.  So hand watering it is, of the many newly planted beds of spinach, spring onions, mustard greens and herbs.  The autumn raspberries are managing to produce fruit, but they are small, and the leaves are starting to turn yellow. 

Our lettuce mix now has a good percentage of endive and chicory.  We have two types of endive, a broad leaf and a frilly strapped leaf. they are super nutritious and pictured below.  Both have a slightly bitter taste, and can survive very cold temperatures in the winter.  Bitter foods are considered to be very good for our gut health, with evidence that they may work like prebiotics. 

We had our results from the RHS.  We have made progress from our last inspection to level 4 or ‘Thriving’, with five levels possible in total, the last being ‘outstanding’.  The inspector said that it was ‘difficult to offer any words of advice’ apart from addressing our reliance on mains water.  We have all tried to solve that problem from the very start, to no avail as yet.  The only other point was that the garden was difficult to find within the park, however there are new signs made and  installed at all the park entrances, and it is clear now where we can be found.  In effect we are doing alright, and if they cannot offer much in the way of advice to improve our situation then we should be happy with that!

The hops got picked this week.  All the hops at Fremantle and Enbrook had to be picked on the same day, and taken to the Hythe collection point for weighing and putting into hessian sacks for transportation  to a brewery to make a fresh hop (green) brew, with the rest going to an oast house to be dried for use throughout the year.  We were not expecting too much from the four Enbrook plants as they had suffered this year, but they gave 650g compared with last year’s 2.120kg.  Fremantle has three hop plants, and one of those got invaded by ants and only just survived, leaving  two plants which gave an amazing 865g.  In total across the scheme, there were 83kg of hops collected, with another collection date for less mature hops arranged for 19^th September. 30kg of fresh hops has gone to Docker and Hopfuzz breweries, and the remaining 23 kg went off to be dried and will then be sent to Docker for further brews in the year.  The green hop ales will be available in 4-6 weeks at selected local pubs as well as in bottles or cans.  We will let you know where you can try it when we know, but you have to be quick to visit the pub, as it can sell out within a day!

What’s next?

• Get in a cheeky sowing of some winter lettuces if possible

• Plant some saffron crocuses

• Water water water

• Anybody around strong enough to help move the cold frames?

It is with great excitement that the hops are going to be picked this Sunday both at Enbrook Park and Fremantle Park.  Last year the harvest was a little earlier and we picked just 2.12 kg although this year we have three extra plants at Fremantle too!  The suspicion is that although the hops are older, they have suffered this year, so we shall see. 

We knew it would only be a matter of time until blight arrived at the last place to show signs of it – Enbrook Park.  Two plants were infected so far and have been removed and composted.  It is fine to compost plants with blight as the disease is airborne and not spread through the soil. 

The last of the small seeds for this year have been sown.  We still have more spring onions to plant, and bulb onions to put in for next year.  The last additions to the plot will be garlic and broad beans to overwinter. It will be strange not to be looking after any seedlings now until mid February 2022 when we start all over again!   A further 120 plugs of spinach got planted this week, as did 120 plugs of spring onions, some more winter radishes and more parsley.  The coriander sown just a few weeks ago decided to go to seed already, an example of how things  just decide to do their own thing no matter how much you try!

We removed a bed of squashes which had struggled all the way through the summer – sometimes you just have to give up and try again, and so the bed is being prepared for bulb onions instead.  Frustratingly, a random leftover squash plant was planted in a part of the garden near the fruit trees and just left to get on with it.  The plant took up the challenge and with total neglect from us has rambled all over the place and produced some large squashes as pictured below – typical!  You win some and you lose some, we think that we need to get the soil right in various parts of the garden so that most things will have a fair or more equal chance.

You may recall that we had started our first experiment using a natural soil bourne bacteria to spray on the brassicas to deter the caterpillars from stripping them bare which happens every year no matter how much you think you have protected them.  Pleased to report it has actually worked and we have brassicas standing to attention and looking fabulous already so that they can get even bigger and better over autumn and into winter.  However the brassicas at Fremantle did not get the spray and have been chewed to bits.  There is now a move to rescue what is left, but we are pleased to know that it really does work;  if there was only such a deterrent for pigeons!

This coming week we should finally find out how we fared from our visit with an RHS community gardens inspector.  It has been some time since the visit, and there is no pass or fail, it just tells you how you are doing and if there are any recommendations which could be implemented.  Always room for improvement, it will be interesting to know what they thought.

What’s next?

• Finish the preparation of the bed with new compost for the bulb onions

• Weed the gooseberry patch

• Keep watering the new seedlings

• Pot up any spare herbs and plants Try moving the cold frames into winter places

What a fabulous time we had at the Sea Festival last Sunday.  Nobody could have wished for better weather considering what it had been like previously.  Tucked up against the wall on the seafront outside the castle, we managed to stay out of any wind amd it was just perfect.  We managed to raise a massive £308.29 from the stall with the help of many of the volunteers plus a £20 donation from favourite auntie M.  A special mention to Ali and Tania pictured below as they raised over £30 by baking some most delicious muffins for the occasion.  Many thanks for all the love and support we experienced from everyone there. 

Well now we are in September, and it might have felt as if it has always been raining in August, but the rain gauage said that just 77.8 mm of the wet stuff came down during the month, and it is getting quite dry again.  The first Hythe hops collection date was supposed to have been  Thursday, however the Oast House where all the hops get dried was not able to take them, and so the next harvest date is Sunday 12^th September instead, weather permitting.  Many of the hop growers are saying that the harvest is very variable this year, some had been slow to make a start, and some, like our own, had been damaged during high winds.   Time will tell, and we shall see once all the hops are gathered and the collective weight recorded. 

The sweet peas finally gave up the ghost this week and have been removed, they certainly lasted longer than they did last year and seemed to enjoy the cooler wetter weather.  Only the tomato plants at Enbrook park are blight free now.  Some people seem to worry that tomato plants affected by blight will make the actual tomatoes inedible.  As long as the fruit shows little or no sign of blight, then they are fine to eat – even green tomatoes can be removed and ripened on a windowsill, so just try to make the most of what is there under such circumstances.

The second sowing of mustards and winter lettuces did not get done so will have to be urgently on the list for this week.  The third lettuce sowings of the year are now mature enough to pick and take over from the second sowings which have finally gone to seed as have the tree spinach which will be left to mature for collecting, however that will most likely seem pointless as once you have let this one go to seed in the garden, it will likely be with you forever!

On Sunday 5^th September, the Walk and Talk about the Sandgate Community Gardens and ‘no dig’ will be taking place, so if you have booked a place with the Sandgate Society, we will look forward to seeing you there!

What’s next?

• Sow those mustard seeds and winter lettuces pronto

• Keep watering and watering

• Prepare the area where the sweet peas were and plant up with seedlings waiting to go out

• Plant out the new spinach plants Consider having to resite the cold frames for the winter