Today we made a new friend called Fred the seed (he is a seed/bulb!). After making Fred, we had to plant some seeds and bulbs in massive terracotta pots. We also had to water all the plants in the polytunnel because they were dry. A few hours later we started to place the food on the table for lunch. When it was ready we sat down to a great feast of strawberries and sausages. We then made butter. We made one batch which was flavoured with cinnamon and honey.
Written by Libby and Chloe

What a great feeling to be outside and meeting up with all the old team! Plus introducing some new people to the project.
So much work was done. Digging over beds, clearing out rubbish from the polytunnel and planting out the cherry trees, as well as lots of cake eating!

We also talked about some of the plans and ideas we had for the next nine months. These included what craft events we will put on, when we would get the Scouts down to visit us and what we will be doing in Leatherhead's shopping centre during the Easter weekend!
Lots to look forward to :)
From Kayleigh

Four weeks to go until we open for the 2014 season of the Leatherhead Community Garden!

We visited the Garden to do a small bit of filming with intent to make a short promotional film for YouTube... Watch this space!
The Garden has faired well under the recent weather conditions.
Some Garden structures have been affected by the high winds. A bird box came down the fruit cage looks a little wonky and half the felt on the coffee shed came off.

We'll pop down next week to do some small repair jobs before we open to the public.

The sun shone for us today! After all the weather reports of a horrible weekend we had lovely warm sunshine all the time we were at the Garden.

We started by harvesting the red tomatoes, raspberries and probably the last of the cucumbers. We then took up the carpet that we put down several weeks ago and turned the soil over ready for planting. The carpet had made the soil underneath so easy to dig! It was amazing soil!

A team of two collected all the strawberries from the current strawberry bed and then they were planted in the newly dug soil. We experimented with some old plastic sheeting we found in a skip. We have turned it into a mini polytunnel and have covered half of the new strawberry bed to see if it makes a difference to the growing.

We then picked all the green tomatoes from the plants that were outside in the Garden. This will make a lovely Green Tomato Chutney. One pumpkin was also picked for chutney purposes! Some red cabbage was also found and picked. They did SO much better than the green ones from last year! Less caterpillars!

Claire and Pat then picked the flowers and Phil tried to saw a car tyre in half....!

Good work everyone!

To thank all the volunteers for their hard work we cooked up some parsnip crisps. Lovely deep fried parsnips with a sprinkle of salt and paprika!
Had a great harvest of tomatoes today. Thanks for the kids for all their hard work!

*New flavour for 2013*
We had great success tonight with a batch of Tomato and Jalapeno Chutney.
The chilies were donated to us and the tomatoes were from the Garden.
Tastes amazing!

It was a only a short session today but with great success! Not only did everything get a great watering we also discovered our first butternut squashes in the polytunnel!
PLUS... One of the kids found Claire's long lost glasses in the fruit cage :D

In our two and a half years of existence we have finally grown a cucumber!
We have the worst luck and manage to have all our seedlings eaten each year. But this year with the help of "Slug gone" an organic sheep wool/woodchip material to stop slugs we have 

I always get a little excited when the old sunflowers show us their faces! Feels all summery :)
This one was at least three potatoes wide!!!