Our Gardeners appear in The Chronicle

Our Students appeared in an article about our morning at Plantsworld in The Chronicle.

The full article can be found at:

http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/local-news/community-news-brief-saturday-march-6892953

Releasing some frogs into the pond - 30th March

This weekend we were given some frogs to put into the pond - normally we would wait until they could be released by the students at school - but we didn't have anywhere to put them, so we thought it was best they went straight into the pond.

Releasing the frogs.

The frogs swimming away in their new home.

Potting some seeds and preparing a stall for Mothers Day

Today we started to prepare a little stall for Mothers Day.

We bought some primulas from Plantsworld yesterday, we wrapped them in tissue paper and tied them with some ribbon.  We will sell them tomorrow for students to take home for Mothers Day on Sunday.

We have a lot of seeds germinating at the moment, and have taken over just about every sunny window sill we have been allowed.

These are Butternut Squash plants which were planted a few weeks ago.

A new plant we have never grown before - gherkins!

Red onion sets which have been planted today.

26th March - A visit to Plantsworld

Sarah from the RHS had arranged for us to visit Plantsworld in Gosforth to do a bit of planting.

http://www.plantsworld.co.uk/

Our students helped to plant some bean seeds.

And also had a good look around the glasshouse to see if there were any ideas we could borrow when we put up our poly-tunnel later this year.  We got some great ideas and hints about how to put the poly-tunnel up and what to put inside.

Plantsworld also had some baby chicks which we enjoyed looking at.

We bought a couple of globe artichoke plants to add to our herb bed, hopefully they will grow into large healthy plants.

Tulips are coming up in our flower bed.

I think these may be some Narcissus?

We planted some broccoli plants at the end of the summer last year - we have been waiting and waiting to see if anything was actually going to grow, finally we noticed that some purple sprouting broccoli was starting to appear.

Potatoes planted inside tyres.

Some signs of seeds sprouting in our wildflower bed.

21st March - Making some herby bread.

Our herbs are doing really well in the new herb bed - this is one of our Thyme plants.

Sage

Lots of new chive plants.

We are trying to make a bit of money to have an emergency fund in case one of our hens become sick and needs to go to the vets.

Every Friday we try and make bread which we sell to the staff at school.

This week we are making fresh herb Fougasse.

We chopped up a selection of fresh herbs from the herb bed - Rosemary, Chives, Sage and Thyme.

We divided our dough up into four and kneaded the fresh herbs into the dough.

The dough was divided into equal quantities and rolled and shaped into Fougasse.  We drizzled a bit of lovely olive oil onto the bread and added a sprinkle of rock salt.

We let the bread rise for another hour and cooked the bread in a hot oven.

We sold all of our bread.

Unfortunately we needed our 'vet fund' straight away as one of our hens became ill on Friday and had to be taken to the vets.  Amber had injured her leg, we don't know how - but it seemed like she had suddenly forgotten how to use it and couldn't move around the hen run.  We took Amber the hen to our local vets - www.value-vets.co.uk.  Very sadly the vet couldn't do anything to help her and she had to be put down.

19th March - moving things from the demolition site

Transplanting the daffodil bulbs from the demolition site.

More crocuses coming up through the soil in our flower bed.

Planting some Primulas in the flower bed.

Transplanting a Elder tree next to the EPICC building

We planted up a barrel we discovered with some lavender and some flowers.

The First RHS & EPICC Seed Swap

Today we hosted our first seed swap at Southlands.  We were lucky to be given hundreds of packets of seeds, so we thought we would share them with other schools and groups in the area.

Sarah from the RHS was on hand to offer advice on growing different fruit, flowers and vegetables, as well as spreading the word on the Campaign for School gardening and the bench-marking scheme. 

We hadn't realised what a fantastic selection of seeds we had, until we sorted the seeds out into their different varieties.

A lovely display of inspirational gardening books.

We also had many different varieties of flowers.

Having a go at some gardening activities - seed cards.

We really enjoyed hosting the seed swap today and hope that we will be able to organise a similar event next year.

12th February planting a new flower bed

We started work on our new flower bed today.  First the grass was removed and the soil dug over.

Here are some of the plants we bought last week.

A wheelbarrow full of Primulas to add a bit of colour to our raised bed of spring bulbs.

We decided where to put the flowers, and used the hand tools to dig a hole for each plant.  We put a small amount of manure in each hole before putting the plant in.

Planting some lavender in the new flower bed.

Planting a few flowering bedding plants to add a bit more colour.

We also acquired some more raspberry canes which will be planted with the rest of our fruit bushes in the new garden.

Watering in all of our new plants.

Our Yr 8 Art classes are going to be using this pile of tyres to add a bit of art to our garden.  They are going to decorate the tyres and then we will use them to create planters for more flowers and plants.

As it was such a lovely day today, we managed to get lots of jobs done outside - here our group are digging over one of our raised beds where we grew kale and chard.

A new Hellebore, which has been planted in our spring bulbs bed, its quite shaded here so this plant should be very happy. 

Some more of our spring bulbs are creeping threw the soil, yellow, purple and blue crocuses.

Some of our herbs are starting to grow back, this looks like Italian Parsley?

Some of the seeds we planted a couple of weeks ago have started to germinate and sprout through the soil.

We spotted some signs of life in the Comfrey bed too.

And a few seeds have started to sprout in our wild flower bed too - hopefully it will be as beautiful as last year.