November 2014 - lots to do in the garden, despite all the rain.

The students have been working hard in the poly-tunnel topping up the raised beds with some of the manure we got delivered from a local farm.

The Scholarship students seedlings are continuing to do well.

Raspberry canes have been planted inside pots to see if we can root them, hopefully this will allow us to grow a few more raspberries next year.

Our friends from Shiremoor Allotment Association have made us a fantastic potting table - it looks amazing!

Our ducks don't mind all this wet rainy weather at all, there are not as many slugs and snails in the garden so they quack at anyone walking past, they have also been feasting on the Kale we have growing in the garden.

A duck decoy was strangely discovered on one of our school mini buses - no-one knows where it has come from but it seems very much at home in our pond.

Due to all the wet rainy weather we have had to put a tarpaulin on the hen run to try to keep it dry.

The orchard has been given an Autumn tidy up, manure has been put around the trees and the fruit bushes.

Garlic starting to peek through the soil.

This is all that is left of our huge manure pile!

Work is progressing in the Scholarship garden, the beds have been topped up and have a thick layer of manure, paths have been laid with weed barrier and topped with wood chippings.

One of our students cutting down the sunflowers which have now finished for the year.  We have really enjoyed having them grown up the school fence and will definitely grow them again next year.

The sunflower stalks heading for the compost heap.

Digging a hole for one of our young holy bushes.

Tidying the shed - we discovered a mouse had made an amazing nest inside the shoe of one of our members of staff!

The scholarship students have been doing an experiment to make rooting compound from willow.   They snipped up small pieces of willow and added water, hot or cold.  They were then left in the poly-tunnel to see what would happen.

This is what the experiment looked like after a week in the poly-tunnel.

After moving a pot in the poly-tunnel we discovered clusters of slug eggs - not really what you want to find in the poly-tunnel.  The ducks came in very handy and quickly ate up all the eggs.

All the wet weather has produced some interesting specimens of fungi in the raised beds.  We had an interesting discussion with the students about the dangers of fungi.

One of our students discovered a discarded tea pot, holes were punched into the bottom of the tea pot for drainage and bulbs were planted inside.

We also planted some bedding plants which hopefully will be ready for planting out in the spring.  The plants will stay inside the poly-tunnel to give them a bit of warmth and protection from the wet, cold weather outside.

Sieving the compost for planting the seeds.

A new raised bed under construction.

A rare bit of sunshine in the garden this morning.

October in the Garden

October has been a busy month in the garden - the ducks have got very used to their garden and have been feasting on Kale in the raised beds.

We have discovered that ducks are very messy birds, so to try to keep things a bit tidier a wood chip path has been constructed with a weed barrier to stop the grass and weeds growing through next spring.

The Scholarship students have been planting inside the poly-tunnel.  They spent a long time preparing the soil, digging it over and raking it to break up any lumps of soil.  They have planted a few herbs and some winter cabbages.

This is our new cockerel, he's a Jersey giant.  He's quite young and as yet has not worked out how to give us a proper crow.

We decided to have a vote to see what he should be called.  The students got a bit of a lesson on tally charts too.  As you can see the name Maximus was very popular - so we welcomed Maximum to our little flock of hens.

One of our friends from Shiremoor Allotment Association arranged for a delivery of manure from a local farmer. I think we got about 7 tonnes of manure for an excellent price - unfortunately it has to be delivered into the school car park.  The students have a huge task to move it onto the raised beds.

The huge manure heap - wheelbarrows ready to begin the job of shifting it onto the raised beds.

Filling up the new raised beds in the scholarship garden.

 Each bed has been given a good layer of manure, which should provide good fertiliser for the year ahead.

One of our students asked to make a hedgehog house for the garden.  We looked into what we would need to construct one and found a great plan for making a hedgehog house from a wine crate.  We are lucky enough to have a great local wine shop in Tynemouth called The Wine Chambers

http://www.thewinechambers.co.uk/index.php/home-page

Kindly they donated a lovely wine crate to our project which will be transformed into a home for a hedgehog over the next few weeks.

The globe artichokes are now ready - we picked them and sold them to a member of staff who was very keen to buy them and cook them.  We had great feedback, apparently they were delicious and we need to grow some more next year!

The caretaker arrived at school early one morning to see a fox sat outside the ducks house.  This worried us and using some spare weld mesh we had from when we constructed the hen run was used to reinforce the duck enclosure.

The ducks getting a bit of a clean.  Even though we have a lovely pond, the ducks still need to have access to water when they are shut inside their pen.  

The scholarship students looking at their seedlings and deciding what to transplant.

Our Celeriac, after watching Gardeners World, we learnt that the outer leaves should be removed to give the root a chance to grow.  We will be finding out how this tastes later in the month.

Planting garlic in our raised beds, we always try and plant garlic around this time of year as it needs a cold spell of weather.