Five A Day Newsletter | Five a Day Market Garden

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Summer 2019

Spring 2019

Winter 2018

Summer 2018

Spring 2018

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Summer 2017

Autumn 2016

Summer newsletter 2016

Spring newsletter 2016

Winter newsletter 2015

Autumn newsletter 2015

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Welcome to the garden

At Five a Day we’re busy harvesting potatoes, beans, courgettes and soft fruit. After a very successful Open Day it’s back to watering and weeding, and more watering!

Buy our delicious vegetables and posies of flowers from the garden – we’re open on Wednesday and Friday mornings from 10am to 1pm. Our produce is also sold at Englefield Garden Centre.

Watch this video made by Penny Locke from Penny Post at the end of April; meet volunteers who help to keep the garden looking good.

Would you like to join them? Volunteer sessions in the garden are on Wednesday and Friday mornings, usually from 10am to 1pm although times are flexible. If there is a lot of interest for volunteering on other days we will do our best to set up new sessions.

Discover how you can grow vegetables and flowers, meet interesting people, have fun and enjoy the peaceful environment of Five a Day.

Read the Summer Newsletter, full of news, ideas and stories.

Please contact Wendy Tobitt, Chair of the Five a Day Management Committee if you have any queries about the garden.

Tips from our head gardener

VEGETABLES –

Keep sowing vegetables such as French and runner beans (in pots) and broad beans direct into the soil. Plant out in succession and you will lengthen the season so that you can enjoy these tasty vegetables throughout the summer and into autumn.

FRUIT

Start pulling the longest sticks of delicious pink rhubarb and make our Rhubarb Cake (see recipe below). Make sure there is plenty of manure/mulch/compost around the rhubarb to feed it through the spring and into summer.

Tie in fruiting vines to wires. This is essential with blackberries and jostaberries so they will be easier to harvest.

Monthly Seasonal Recipe

Rhubarb Cake

Ingredients:
• 300g rhubarb
• Juice of ½ lemon
• 165g self-raising flour
• 175g unsalted butter, softened, plus extra for greasing
• 175g caster sugar
• 3 large free-range eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
For the topping
• 25g unsalted butter
• 2 tbsp self-raising flour
• 1 tbsp caster sugar
• 2 tsp ground ginger
• 1 tbsp icing sugar, to dust

How to make it:
Preheat the oven to 180°C/gas mark 4. Grease a 23cm square cake tin and line with baking parchment.

Trim the rhubarb and chop into 3cm pieces. Place in a bowl with the lemon juice.

In a separate bowl, beat together the flour, butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla extract. Fold in half the rhubarb and spoon the mixture into the bottom of the cake tin, spreading it out with a spatula. Scatter over the remaining rhubarb.

For the topping, rub the butter into the flour, then stir in the sugar and ginger. Sprinkle over the cake mixture and bake for 40-50 minutes.

Leave to cool for 10 minutes, then remove from the tin. Dust with icing sugar, then slice into squares.

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