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.
