6th March - More signs of Spring

 Our Crocus's are coming up through the soil is our new raised bed.

Signs of life in the pond too - some of the aquatic plants are starting to grow.

Some more spring flowers around school.

Our strawberry plants are showing some signs of life again.

We received some trees from the woodland trust today, Cherry, Rowan and Alder.

We just need to decide where to plant our new trees.  We had a visit to Plantsworld in Gosforth today to buy some flowers for a new bed we hope to be planting next week.

Our onions are sprouting.

Some of the seeds we planted with Sarah are beginning to come through - the Calendula is looking good.

Some more of our seeds are starting to germinated and push through the soil.

Here are a few more of the plants that we bought from Plantsworld.

Hyacinths starting to flower

Primulas

We also had a good look at our fruit trees which are just starting to bud.  We had hoped to get them into the ground before they start to leaf - we are counting the days till the demolition............

February 26th, planting seeds and trees, garden tour and outreach.

Planting peas into old tyres.

We also transplanted some spinach too.

Preparing some seed trays, filling them with compost and writing out labels so that we know what we have grown.

Some beetroot has been planted in this tray - its rather unusual, yellow, stripy and white!

We rescued a holly tree from the building site and have moved it into a space next to our building, we dug a big hole, carefully put the tree into it and packed soil around the roots.  We watered it to try to encourage it to grow in its new home.

We also planted some seeds using a seed tape.  We found that the seed is hidden inside some white biodegradable tape which will rot into the soil as the seeds grow.  

We held our first RHS Spring Twilight Training at Southlands on the 16th of February.

We showed staff from other local schools around our garden and explained our plans for the future.

Sarah Carrie explained about the RHS Campaign for School Gardening and demonstrated some excellent activities which staff could take back to their schools to do with their students.

We are also going to be hosting a seed swap at Southlands on the 12th of March. where seeds and ideas can be swapped and exchanged.

20th February - Some signs of Spring

We noticed some signs of spring when we visited the garden today

I think these are onion sets which were planted a few weeks ago.

Petunias are showing some signs of life too.

Our tray of mixed carnations are beginning to sprout.

Our daffodil bulbs are coming through - these are sheltered in the greenhouse at the moment so are protected from all the bad weather we have been having recently.

We had a look at our fruit trees to see if we could see any buds forming.

Hopefully not long now till we can plant our young trees in the soil in our garden extension - just a bit of building work to finish at school and then the demolition begins.

Some of the bulbs we planted in our new bed back in November are starting to make an appearance.

12th February - planting seeds with The RHS

We found a use for our off-cuts of logs which we put around our new pond!

Sarah made a different type of bird-feeder today - you put a piece of bread in the top and hang it up in the garden for the birds to eat.  We will be making a few more of these in the next few weeks.

Our RHS group made some pots from old newspapers, and planted a variety of different flower seeds.

Nigella, callendula

Some summer bulbs - making good use of some old recycling boxes.

More flower seeds - we have big plans to have more flowers this year.

Oh and we also made a pizza using some of the chilies we harvested at the end of the summer and then dried to keep for the winter.

6th February - Ducks arrive on our pond

This morning we arrived at school to find three ducks swimming around our new pond.

Two drakes and a duck - plus the plastic duck !

The arrival of the ducks prompted us to get the duck house fixed up.

A couple boards on the roof are a bit rotten, so we have been busy re-felting.

Hammering some new felt shingles.

Today one of the hens laid a very small egg - they usually lay small eggs when they are young and just starting to lay eggs, we have no young hens so no idea which hens laid this?

Making Scare-crows - 5th February 2014

Today the RHS group made scare-crows for the garden to scare the birds away from the seeds and young plants in the garden.

Sticks were used as a body, they were tied together with string or wool.  The sticks were used to make arms and legs.

The stick skeletons were dressed in clothes and then the clothes were stuffed with straw to make a body.

Don't they look great!

29th January - Making some bird-feeders and planting a few seeds.

Today we emptied some of the tyres which we used to grow potatoes.  We can't use the soil to grow potatoes again this year, so we re-used it in some pots to grow daffodils.

While we were emptying the tyres we discovered quite a stash of potatoes which had drown inside the rims of the tyres - think it's going to be wedges on Friday?

Here are a few of the bird-feeders which the students made with Sarah on Wednesday.  They are made from tree branches, which were drilled to fit dowels for perches, larger holes were made and packed with a mixture of fat and bird-seed.  

We also started to sow some seeds to put in the greenhouse or our cold frames.  We firstly sieved the soil to remove stones etc.

Here is are tray of while echinacea. 

Some large mixed carnations.

And some pertunias.