Newton Flotman Primary School Gardening Project

Compost everywhere!

Last night, group 1 of Gardening Club had great fun preparing our wooden planters for the winter. The old, dried plants were removed, carefully preserving seed from petunias and snap dragons for sowing next year. Half of the old dry compost was taken out and the tubs topped up with new fresh compost. The children watered the tubs, mixing the old with the new soil with their hands and got very messy in the process. This is a prime example why it might be a good idea to send children to the club with old clothes to change in to!

In go the plants

We planted new polyanthus, pansies and wall flowers in the planters, which are now back by the entrance to the school, and by the school gate. The flowers were removed from the pansy plants to encourage root development and more flowers in the long run. The picked flower heads have been pressed for using in craft projects later in the year although, as they are edible, they could have been a colourful addition to the school salads.

Everyone had fun with watering the greenhouse and snacking on the tomatoes again – but I still couldn’t persuade anyone to have a bite of our 5 inch long jalapeño chillies!

In the last few minutes of our meeting, we potted up a few more strawberry plants before parents came to collect their children.

The term has started afresh and a massive 28 children have signed up for gardening club, ageing from 5 to 11. As last year, we’re splitting up into two groups so children will attend every other week.

Weeding

The first two meetings of gardening club have taken place and much has been achieved already. Both groups have had a go at weeding – there were plenty to pull up – and they have all nibbled the ripe produce as they worked. Super sweet cherry tomatoes, golden courgette, crisp runner beans, and the odd late strawberry.

Goodies for the school kitchen

Much of our produce has gone from the garden straight to the school kitchen. What a pleasure it is to show off the hard work of the children, and for them to benefit during their meal times.

Free strawberry plants!

Last week we concentrated on potting up the runners from the strawberry plants. Some of the runners were so long that they had five new plants on them! The newly potted strawbs are now in the green house so that their roots are encouraged to grow before the cold weather sets in.

Juicy toms

Some of  the boys decided that they wanted to become “clod bashers”. This involved them kneeling along the edge of the potato bed, bashing the larger clods of earth with hand tools. It certainly kept them happy.

The tomatoes and chillies received a good watering – they are all reddening up nicely. Watch out for school produced salsa!

Potatos ready

The Newton Flotman School garden has coninued to flourish over the holidays. The late sowing of the runner beans has paid off fas they are coming in to maximum production ready for the school term to begin and the kitchens to benefit. Likewise, the potatos are superb. The green tops of the plants have mostly browned off now, but luckily there has been no evidence of blight.

Caterpillars!

Unfortunately, the brassicas have not faired as well. During the week of my own holiday, the cabbage white butterflies did their worst laying millions of eggs all over the leaves. The caterpillars which emerged from these eggs have stripped the whole plants. All that is left of the broccoli, cabbages and cauliflowers, not to mention the remaining radishes and salad crops, are the sketetons. The lesson to be learnt here is that protective measures need to be taken, either netting the plants or using sprays at the right time to destroy the munching menaces.

The school garden has flourished with this warm wet weather. All that has needed watering is the greenhouse and some of the pots. The beds have had by far enough water from the rain.

The most impressive crops this summer have been the radishes. One variety in particular, “French Breakfast”, have produced two inch long radishes. They are crunchy, not woody at all, and the flavour is hot and peppery. They are been great sliced thinly on top of a mixed salad.

The courgettes continue to come, and now the runner beans are cropping too. The wigwams are completely covered withright red flowers. Standing by them you can see, and hear, the bees going about their business of pollination. There will be beans well in to September so that the school kitchen will benefit when the children come back for the new term.

In the greenhouse, the physalis is taking over! The plants have really bushed out and are covered in the delicate lanterns which hide the bright orange fruits inside. The tomatoes and peppers really looked like they needed a drink this morning.

By far the best looking in the garden is the herb bed. The plants have really taken well, particularly the flat leafed parsley. The mint is doing well too; its spread has been curtailed by being planted in a large pot.

The shed has gained some furniture from the school. Two children’s sized tables now reside under the potting bench, providing extra shelving to make the storage area more tidy. We also have another table outside for our tray of potting compost to live on. This will enable the children to stand whilst they pot on their seedlings.

The beds could do with a bit of a weeding session, and the grass needs a trim, but that will have to wait as it is now thundering again.

The remaining meetings of Gardening Club at Newton Flotman for this term were spent sowing as much seed as possible. Lots of salad leaves, sugarsnap peas and mange tout. The idea is that by sowing some vegetables late, the cropping time will be when the children return in September rather than whilst they are all on holiday.

We also sowed bulk loads of radishes which were ready to pull within 2 weeks! I just goes to show what a benefit warm weather is, combined with plenty of watering,

Thank you to Zoe who donated her preschooler-son Ben’s spare broccoli plants to the club. When he comes to the reception class in September, he will be able to tell everyone that he has already had a hand in our garden!

The lettuces are harvested...

The best bit of the last couple of weeks of term has to be the cutting of little gem lettuces from the greenhouse, and their use in school lunches! It was with great pleasure that the lettuces were cut, and handed over to Debbie, our school cook. Other produce has been tasted by the children and teachers, including our first carrots, huge radishes and bright yellow courgettes.

...presented to Debbie....

Thank you to my friends Matt and Vicki who, as a result of redesigning their own garden, have given us a huge amount of decorative slate. With help from Matt and another good friend Sally, I collected the slate in the school minibus; Issy and Orla came along for the ride. This week, with help from Jacqui, we have started to transfer this lovely blue stone to the greenhouse. There is more than enough to cover the whole floor, pinning down the weed matting in to place, and levelling off the uneven surface.

...and eaten for lunch!

Now we are in to the first week of the summer holidays, the garden is looking fantastic. I’ve just been up to water the greenhouse – it’s been taken over by tomatoes and physalis (cape gooseberry). The potato bed is bursting with foliage, with our late-sown-early-croppers just about ready to dig [Hmm, those might have to be used as perks for those who water over the holiday!] . As another perk, I have just picked a lovely bunch of sweet peas to bring home, which are climbing all over the cottage arches at the ends of the beds. After all, they will stop flowering unless they are picked regularly!

With the competition out of the way our hard work was turned to the Grand Opening of the Newton Flotman Primary School Garden. Our meetings of Gardening Club in the run up to July 2nd were fast and furious, making sure that everything was watered, neat and tidy for our visiting VIPs.

Newton Flotman Gardeners Say Thank You

In the scorching sun, and the start of Sports Day, we all congregated around the garden. It looked fabulous, with bunting draped all along the fence, our huge “thank you” banner pinned up, and the grass trimmed neatly.

Alistair and Evelyn cut the ribbon

Mr Alistair Duffield (our kind beneficiary from Duffields Feed Mills) cut the red ribbon with Evelyn Dyer (year 5 pupil at Newton Flotman who gained us a grant of £1000 from the “Kash4Kids” initiative) to a round of applause from the gathered crowd of pupils, teachers, parents and guests.

Guests were invited for a tour around the garden, and to plant a sunflower seed for the school competition, whilst the team games of sports day commenced.

I feel like I can breathe a sign of relief now. The bulk of the hard work is complete; we are officially open for business, and now we can just enjoy using the garden as the most fabulous teaching resource.

So, the judge for the Royal Agricultural Association came to school to view our garden. He grilled me on how the school was using the resource, and threw me question after question about what the children were learning, and how we were going to use the produce grown. I pretty much had an answer for everything, but was not sure how these replies were going down.

I borrowed gardening club members Hannah and Luke to show the judge around outside, but I think nerves got the better of them both when it came to answering questions about the vegetable plot. Unfortunately, some of his questions were regarding areas that we have not covered yet at the club, such as pest and disease control.

I got the strongest of feelings that the judge was suggesting that we did not need a prize of £1000 as we already had so much in the garden with the potting shed and greenhouse. I thought this was a little unfair as he school has done so much to encourage the growth of our own plants this year.

I did pick up on areas where we can improve for next year though. It is inevitable that in our first year there will be areas which are lacking. It was commented on that our onions were not looking great due to their late planting, and that our beautiful flower-filled planters should be filled completely with edibles.I thought that we were doing fine with adding lettuce and chillies to the petunias and lobelia!

Needless to say, we received a letter telling us that we had not won any prize this year, but I am still proud of the efforts of the children getting us shortlisted in our inaugural season. Roll on next year’s competition!

Planting the tyres

We met tonight with rather an air of excitement. The children all knew that tomorrow is our big day for the growing food in schools competition, and they did their very best to get the garden looking great.

With some help from the grown-ups (Jacqui, Jo,  Andy, Tanya, Tina and me) the children set about planting up more of our timber edged plots with the vegetables grown sown in the modular pots. Most of these plants should have gone in weeks ago; we shall have to settle for late crops and smaller yields and more than likely smaller yields. Never mind, after all this is only our first year.

The kids were split into small teams, each team with a particular area and task to do. Tina helped with the flower planting in the recycled tyres. Tomato plants were set in the middle of the tyres. The nasturtiums went in around the edge. but were not looking too happy having been attacked considerably by black fly. They have now been sprayed with an organic bug killer, so hopefully they will perk up.

Jo busied her team of the older boys with making more wigwams for french beans, mange tout and sugarsnap peas. On inspecting the wigwams, I discovered that we will have to guess at which wigwam has which vegetable as they have not been labelled! (I think Jo’s back must have been turned at that point).

The younger boys came in to the greenhouse with me to plant up the trough with our tomatoes and physalis (Cape gooseberry). We also had a lovely tray of lettuces which we planted along the front edge. There’s still room for more; we can’t possibly have everything finished by tomorrow. That’s gardening for you - there’s always work in progress.

Recycling in the library

A group of girls spent the evening in the library with Andy’s daughter Franchesca, making beautiful dragonflies out of recycled materials. It’s amazing what can be made out of a few plastic bags, a little stuffing and some plastic coated garden wire. These giant insects-on-sticks were placed around the garden, along with some flower bird-scarers made with old CDs from the children of class 2. It really makes the garden look colourful and alive.We also managed to plant up the herb bed, and threw in some mesanbryanthemums (Livingstone daisies) around the edge for colour. Many of the herbs were quite large so we split them, planting the spare sections in the border outside the kitchen. Hopefully Debbie the school cook will be able to use some of them in her cooking.

Dragonfly in the herb bed

Now all that is left is to keep our fingers crossed for 9.30am tomorrow morning!

Today the entire school used the garden!

We launched the inaugural Newton Flotman School Sunflower Competition. Each class sent children out to the garden in groups to pot up a giant sunflower seed.

The pots have been left, labelled and watered, in the greenhouse. Classes will have to remember to come out and water them at least every other day (I will ensure that they don’t dry out at the weekends). The children, and staff, will watch as their personal seeds germinate, and hopefully record their progress. I, personally, will be talking to my seed as often as possible to encourage its growth!

Everyone will take their pots home at the end of this term so that their sunflowers can be planted out in their own gardens. Prizes will be given to the person who grows the tallest sun flower and also for the flower with the largest diameter.

During the morning break and at lunch time, many children helped with planting the runner beans around the wigwams. There were just the right number of plants to have two at the foot of each cane.

Thank you to Joan, Berice and Jacqui who helped throughout the day. I know we didn’t necessarily do the jobs that we meant to do, but it was so much fun with the children coming out – that is the entire aim of this garden!

Transformed!

It’s amazing what can be achieved when a little pressure is applied to a task. With the judging for the Royal Norfolk Agricultural Association’s Food Production in Schools competition looming next Thursday, the call for help in finishing a few jobs in the garden was well and truly heard by parents and children alike.

We held working parties during Thursday, yesterday evening and this morning. Thank you to Jacquie, Sharon, Teresa, Wayne, Georgia, Greg, Kirsten, Emily, Andy, Jackie, Jason, Issy, Jo, Geoff, Eleanor, Charlotte and Jack, whose help resulted in the transformation of the allotment. I really think that without the additional panic about the competition, we might not have completed the tasks for months.

More edibles have been planted in the front shrubbery outside the school reception. Poor Sharon got wet as the heavens opened, but she was determined to finish her job. Jackie and I had a big sort out, and tried to attach the final pieces to the greenhouse which provide the lateral strength. Unfortunately these pieces have not been engineered accurately enough so this will have to be finished after the application of a drill to the metal struts!

The fence is as complete as it can be with the panels that we had. We need to purchase three more panels to complete the lot; this is not so important as the unfinished section lies behind the willow arbour so cannot be seen. The timber edges are finished around the vegetable beds and are now ready for the seedlings to be transplanted. There are four lovely wigwams waiting for the runner beans (thank you Jo and Jackie) and more sweet peas planted to climb one of the cottage arches.

The arch goes up

A big Roman arch was constructed (again from a kit donated to the gardening club) but only after some initiative was used by Wayne to replace key missing elements. We’ve hung a bird table from it (again thanks to Wayne for cutting a post to replace the bit which was missing) but I’m not sure that will remain in that position as the children cannot reach it to place food on it.

The herb bed has been dug over, having added school-produced compost (made from the shreddings of the nature area hedge), and a few donated bags of vermiculite and perlite. This mixture will ensure that the bed is freely draining which the herbs will love.

The green house has had the ground levelled (to a degree) and been covered with weed matting. A trough has been made with the remaining timber in which to grow our tomatoes and cucumbers. We filled that with some of our shreddings compost, and topped it with 210 litres of general compost. It’s incredible how much compost a trough like that takes to fill up. We found an old table to use as some staging for the greenhouse, and some left over bags of pea shingle to cover the weed matting. We will need to obtain some more to completely cover the floor and set recycled paving slabs in, but it’s fine for now.

Packing tyres

We’ve placed some of our old tyres donated by Seastar Motorbikes in the corner, and part filled them with shreddings compost and soil. They need topping off with general compost and planting up, which can be the task for next Wednesday’s gardening club.

The next main bit of work will be to plant the rest of the vegetable beds up, which is a job for the school children during the coming week. I hope that they will also create some sculptures and outdoor artwork which can be hung around the garden. I hope that the judge on Thursday will be able to see what a community effort this garden has been.