Our veggie shop and picking some sweetcorn

Today we had a veggie shop during lunchtime at school, we sold bags of kale, beetroot, a marrow, two of our small pumpkins, some tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, green beans and some of our rainbow chard - oh and a few of our Chili peppers too.

Picking some of the sweetcorn, we tried to check to see if it was ripe before picking it, by looking at the silks at the top of the cob - if they are brown then it's ready to pick and eat.

 Our basket of sweetcorn and out pumpkin is still getting bigger.

Today we also collected a few more seeds from the wildflower bed, we tried to collect only the seeds that were brown and had properly dried.  We are planning on storing them in a jar with holes in the top so we can use them next year.

A busy day in the kitchen.

 We boiled the sweetcorn in a large pan of slightly salted water for about 5 minutes, we served it hot with some melted butter on the top.

Leek and potato soup.

A green bean and new potato dish, made with out own beans, garlic, potatoes and tomatoes.

Sampling the food that we have grown and cooked.

North Tyneside In Bloom Young Gardeners 2013

Here is the trophy our Yr 11's picked up last night, we are very proud of the award, the boys are planning how to spend the gardening vouchers they received as a prize.

Work starts on a new flower bed outside our building.  We plan to have flowers, bulbs and some herbs.

Our project has had quite a bit of coverage today online and on Look North.

http://www.itv.com/news/tyne-tees/update/2013-09-26/gardening-project-helps-teenagers/

http://tyneandwear.sky.com/noticeboard/post/83044/planting-ideas

http://tyneandwear.sky.com/noticeboard/post/82208/chelsea-flower-show-here-we-come

25th September RHS Launch

 Today was the Launch of our year with the RHS, we harvested a lot of produce from the garden, potatoes, carrots, onions, chard, beans, tomatoes, sweetcorn, beetroot and kale.

We had visit from Look North, who came to see what we have been up to in the garden.  Here is one of our Yr 11 students being interviewed.

Tyne Tees recording in EPICC.  Sarah Carrie from the RHS having a chat with one of our Yr 11 Students.

One of our Yr 11 students having an interview about The Garden Project with Tyne Tees - hopefully the interview will be aired later this week.

Sarah Carrie being interviewed by Look North

Tyne Tees filming in our hen run - even the hens got to be part of the excitement.

RHS Launch Tomorrow - and what we have been making with produce from the garden.

Tomorrow we are officially launching our project with the RHS, we are very excited about working with Sarah Carrie and have some great plans and projects to embark upon in the next few months.

We have been very busy this week harvesting our tomatoes, we have decided to gather all our outdoor tomatoes as the weather has turned a bit wet and misty.  We are going to try and ripen them indoors on trays with a few bananas to help the process along.

 We have bagged a lot of tomatoes up and put them in the freezer to make Chili Jam later in the year.  On Friday we halved some of the small tomatoes, put them on a tray with a little drizzle of olive oil, put some basil on the top and in a cool oven (about 70 degrees) we let them slowly dry out for about 4 hours.  We put them in a clean, sterilised jar and covered with more olive oil.

On Friday we gathered one of our huge marrows - it weighed 8lb 4oz.  And took pride of place in Assembly.  We used some to make Marrow and Ginger Jam.

Marrow and Ginger Jam

2lb Marrow, peeled, de-seeded and cut into small pieces

2lb sugar

About 85g root ginger, peeled and cut into small pieces

Couple of apples, peeled, cored and cut into small pieces.

Juice of half a lemon

Put everything into a pan and cook slowly until marrow is soft and the contents of the pan are 'jammy'

Seal into clean, sterilised jars.

Some of the carrots we dug up today.

Some of the beetroot too

Beetroot Bread - very interesting colour - we will see how it tastes tomorrow?

19th of September - Gathering some veg and making chutney

Some of our carrots have grown a little strangely.

We may have made a bit of a mistake by picking un-ripe Habenero chilies - whoops!

Today we also had a go at making chutney.  We were given a bag of Victoria plums, so we searched out a recipe online and came up with Marrow and Plum chutney.

2lb of Marrow, Plums and Onions, peeled, de-seeded/de-stoned and diced

1 1/2 lbs sugar

1 1/2 pints of vinegar

1tsp cinnamon

1 tsp ginger

Couple of garlic cloves

We chopped a few tomatoes we had in the fridge, ripe and un-ripe

4 apples, peeled, cored and diced

2 Chilies, de-seeded and finely chopped.

We simmered this for about an hour and stored it in sterilised hot jars.  Tastes good.

18th September - Working with the RHS and Making Jam

Here are the plants which were taken out of the pond last week, we are storing them in tubs so that we can re-plant them in our new pond.

Digging the holes for the posts which will support the outside of the pond.

Today our group worked really hard with Sarah and Sean to put posts into the ground with some postcrete.  They used a 'post-whacker' to drive the posts into the ground.

We also made our first batch of jam with the fruit that we picked over the summer from our own fruit bushes in the garden.  We put a couple of apples in to help it to set - and we have been given loads and loads of apples so we are using them in everything!

Decanting the jam into our little jars.

Here are the jars we made - Southland's Apple and Raspberry jam!

2 1/2 lbs of rasberries

2 1/2 lbs of sugar

1 packet of pectin

4 apples, peeled, cored and diced

We put everything into a large pan, simmered it for a while and then tested how good a 'set' we had by putting a bit on a cold saucer.  When it set we put it into clean, sterilised, hot jars.

Some late runner beans

Our massive pumpkin.

Our cockerels are growing up, Marius and Richie are getting bigger - Richie has started to crow, he's not very good at it yet and needs more practice.