26th September - clearing the wildflowers and the start of the scholarship garden.

Sadly we decided it was time to clear the wildflowers from underneath our little orchard.  We have been amazed by the lovely flowers which have attracted all sorts of different insects to our garden this year.  They have started to die off so we pulled them up this morning.

And created a massive pile of plant material in our garden.  Our ducks soon came over to the newly cleared area to have a look for slugs and other insects to eat.

We have piled all the wildflowers next to our composting area as we will need to chop the material up before composting it

We discovered a few frogs in the wildflower area - this one was really big, the students managed to catch it and had a good look before putting it into our pond.  

This week we have been getting ready for the arrival of our new chicks.  Our broody hen has been sitting on 4 eggs for 19 days now.  Usually hatching begins after 21 days.  A space has been cleared inside the hen house, the nesting box has been put inside with food and water.

We have put up some netting to keep the other hens out of the area as they try to get inside the nesting box with the broody hen and she is not too happy about this at all.  With the help of our Technology Teacher a heat lamp has been fitted inside the hen house to keep the new baby chicks warm, we also bought some chick crumb as baby chicks are too small to eat normal hen pellets and corn.

We started to lay a path next to our poly-tunnel, which will make getting to our composting area a bit easier.  We will put chippings on top of the weed barrier.

The poly-tunnel has had a tidy, the tables and benches have been put back ready for some bulb planting and some seed sowing next week.

Our latest plans are now underway.  We are just about to start work on developing a new area of the school garden.  This will be our scholarship garden where 6 year 11 students will embark on a Horticulture course for a year - they will all hopefully gain a Horticulture qualification from the RHS.  So far the school fence has been moved, top-soil has been spread over the site and we have received a delivery of wood from Potts in North Shields.

 

Next week we will continue to construct raised beds to put onto the site.  The students will learn a variety of skills over the next academic year from our New Regional Adviser from the RHS. 

One of the melons we managed to grow this year in the poly-tunnel.