Five A Day Newsletter | Five a Day Market Garden

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Spring 2019

Winter 2018

Summer 2018

Spring 2018

Previous newsletters

Summer 2017

Autumn 2016

Summer newsletter 2016

Spring newsletter 2016

Winter newsletter 2015

Autumn newsletter 2015

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Welcome to the garden

Spring has suddenly become summer! The fruit trees are in blossom and vegetable and flower seedlings are growing well in the polytunnel.

Just before Easter a wonderful team from CROW visited to build new raised beds, tidy up the compost area and help keep bunnies out. See their photos.

Thank you to Alan and the team from CROW, we look forward to seeing you in May.

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 our Spring newsletter, full of news, ideas and stories.

While Yvonne, our wonderful Five a Day project coordinator is recovering from an illness, 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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