Month: October 2022

This afternoon, the first thing my gardening group had to do was to look for signs of autumn colour, which was all around us a lot of the leaves were under our feet, the sky was bright blue with the warm sunshine upon our backs.

Ava, Chloe, Isobel, Jude and Brooklyn, came with me to the eco house, the crops in there had finished and now needed to be removed.

As the string on the garden canes which had been supporting the tomato and cucumber plants was cut off, all of the children then pulled each spent plant away from the grow bags  what fun! , the material was then put into the wheel barrow and taken over to the ever growing compost heap.

What are we going to do next? Asked Chloe, planting more spring bulbs was the answer, the group potted up the last of the daffodil bulbs into individual flower pots covered these with organic compost and watered well, we popped a label in and these will sit in the learning lodge over winter.

The next group of children were just as keen to do some gardening jobs this afternoon we talked about what they would like to do “Digging” was the most popular vote! Ana, Oliver, Sebi, Archie and Oscar, collected spades and forks from the shed put on gloves and then came and found a patch of the vegetable plot which needed the weeds to be removed, lots of digging.

Sebi dug up potatoes, Oliver artichokes and the rest of the group lots of weeds, this group of children talked to each other about what they had found,.

We were now running out of time , so the children removed all of the weeds from the raised beds, then we all dug these over and found yet more potatoes, of course all of this group wanted to take the produce home , which they did as they were very proud of what they had dug up!

Dojo points were given to Miss Cochran and wellies and tools were all put away.

Next term we will be pruning, clearing away decaying material putting fallen leaves into bags which will turn into leaf mould, and preparing the garden for winter.

Fine drizzle blew about in the wind but it didn’t stop two groups of volunteers wanting to come out into the learning garden to do some jobs.

Wellies and gloves on, spades, forks, a mixture of pruning equipment sourced the first group of children were now ready and willing to get started. Josie, Amy, Maddie, Michael and Cali wanted to do some digging but before they could the ground had to be cleared in the vegetable area.

Michael worked with Jacob their job was to removes the old runner beans from the garden canes, cut off the string so it could be re-used, then tie the canes in bundles. The girls had to cut back all the dead material from half of the vegetable plot, this consisted of dried globe artichokes, the long green stems from our Jerusalem artichokes, sunflower heads which we needed to save for the birds.

All three wheel barrows were now full so these now needed to be emptied onto the compost heap, I had to climb onto to try and flatten it as it is now quite high!

Time to dig, all of the group either chose a spade or fork to turn over the ground the soil looks surprisingly good.

This team had the chance to take home some poppy seed, a potato and a small onion from the garden.

Out came Noah, Amelia, Becky and Amelia they were also very keen to get digging, they chose spades to do their digging, a few more potatoes were found.

This group then cleared the remainder of the vegetable garden, being careful to leave in any produce which was still ok (I am hoping to use some in the church for the harvest display), again there was a huge piles of dried material to put on the compost heap.

The children collected garden rakes to level the ground which had been dug, cut down the dead spikes from the hollyhocks, and then put the tools away.

Finally we potted up the summer geraniums into large pots, these were now put into the learning lodge to hopefully overwinter. From little plug plants they had now grown huge, deep red and bright cerise pink in colour.

All of the children were awarded dojo points today as they worked well in their groups, helping one another and having fun.

Next week we will be planting out more spring bulbs,