What We Do | Five a Day Market Garden

The Five A Day Market Garden is a community project.

Growing and selling fruit and vegetables:

Corporate team building:

Community education:

For all – both the young and the old

Volunteering:

We are staffed by volunteers, and are always on the look out for more assistance:

Welcome to the garden

The abundance of vegetables and flowers from the Garden is amazing!

You can now buy Five a Day produce at Bradfield Southend Village Store as well as from the produce table in the wooden gazebo at Englefield Garden Centre. The autumn harvest is just beginning with butternut and uchiki-kuri squashes. Cash donations please in the green pot, thank you.

When Five a Day is open, usually on Wednesday to Friday mornings, we can serve customers visiting the garden.

We’ve donated vegetables to the Reading Town Meal, a celebration of locally-grown food for hundreds of families in Reading. More information.

This summer our gardening volunteers have carefully sown, planted, watered and weeded – thank you everyone!

Our squashes and pumpkins will be on show at Harvest Festival in St Mark’s Church, Englefield before they’re cooked and eaten by children Englefield Primary School and PACT!

Our Take Five Summer 2020 Newsletter is full of news about what’s going on in the Garden. Read all about it!

Big ‘Thank You’ to all the volunteers who are enjoying the Five a Day garden, and abiding by the careful health and safety guidelines, including social distancing.

Tips from our head gardener

Keep cutting flowers, especially sweet peas and roses. The more you cut, the more flowers the plant will produce!

Stake up plants like dahlias which have heavy flower-heads. The rain and wind can damage these unless you weave supports made from willow and hazel around the plants.

We have plenty of willow if you would like to try making your own plant supports.

Weeding around the vegetable plants as they’re growing is essential to remove competitors for the valuable water.

Monthly Seasonal Recipe

Summer Squash Recipe

Ingredients
2 pounds summer squash (courgettes, pattypan squash, yellow crookneck squash)
1/ 4 cup of olive oil
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/3 cup bread crumbs
1/2 teaspoon flaked salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
Instructions
1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Remove the stem ends and slice the squash cross-wise in 1/4-inch-thick rounds. Toss with the olive oil.
2. In a small bowl, combine the bread crumbs, Parmesan, salt, and pepper. Arrange the squash rounds in a 9 x 12 inch rectangular baking dish, or 10 inch pie plate. Sprinkle the bread crumb mixture over.
3. Cover the baking dish with foil and bake in the oven for 30 minutes. Remove foil and bake another five minutes until the top is bubbling and crispy.