Pond Update

The pond is in the middle of its long awaited facelift and it's looking good!

The chaps have rotivated the jungle of long grass and weeds at the back of the pond and preparing it as a wildlife area. The old fencing is down, the posts are in and it's looking a whole lot better.  They are doing a really great job and I can't wait for it to be finished!

I have lots of green tomatoes!  A bit of a mixed bag at the moment - there are a few red ones which I've picked but some have rotten bottoms for whatever reason and the rest I've eaten and they taste delicious!  I just wish there were more - perhaps they're waiting for the new term next week so I can sell them on the playground.  That would be perfect timing.  However, I'm not getting my hopes up on that one.  With the terrible summer this year, I'm quite chuffed with the tomatoes.  

Well, we're back to school next Wednesday, so it all starts again. The blogs will become more regular and more informative, you'll be gald to hear!  Just can't wait.

Mid holiday update

Well, I haven't killed the tomatoes yet!  Actually, they are doing quite well and there are quite a few tomatoes, albeit green ones!  We've had quite a nice week of weather and with the sun shining, hopefully they will turn.  Fingers crossed.

I am also very excited as finally, the pond is getting its long awaited face lift.  Simon and his Interserve team called in on Tuesday to finalise and they have kindly offered to organise the wildlife area and landscape generally, which is absolutely brilliant and has taken an enormous amount of pressure off me. I just kept saying yes to everything they offered.

I am also getting organised for the Cookridge Horticultural Show, though there's not a lot to do.  I'm dropping off the children's poetry and paintings to the organisers tomorrow and when we're back in school, I'll try and do a vegetable box display and also create a mosaic of our school's gardening year.  It's not a lot, but everybody's suffered with this year's abysmal weather, so we are all in the same boat.  The Show's on Saturday 8th September from 2pm.  All welcome.

I am still looking out for volunteers to help in the garden from September, so if you have any spare time and would like to potter in our garden, please let me know.  If you can't find me, somebody will be able to track me down in school somewhere! 

A little update......

Well, it's the second week of the summer holidays and I've been bobbing up this week on a regular basis, watering the tomatoes.  They are really the only things left after such a dreadful summer, though the potatoes are flowering.  However, until I dig them up, we won't know what state they're in.

A friend of mine made me feel better by informing that the BBC Gardener's World presenter, Monty Don has equally torrid times - carrots that have barely grown, plants rotting or scoffed by slugs and hardly anything to show for summer.  If it can go so wrong for a professional as well, then I don't feel so bad.

The tomatoes, though flourishing, have just about flowered and there are the odd green tomato here and there.  I don't think we'll have the bumper crop of last year. I will persevere for as long as it takes - we could be harvesting them just in time for Christmas at this rate!

Going up to the garden this week, has given me a chance to evaluate and start a bit of a tidy/re-organising before the start of the Autumn Term.  I've re-shuffled the working tables for the children, chucked out a few unwanted items and had a good sort out.  There's quite a few plants that need composting, the pots needs a good clean and the compost bins need a turn.  We have quite a few green bags that I want to sell as garden rubbish bags and we seem to have far too many flower pots, so in September, I might have a Sale in the playground to reduce our pot numbers.  Hopefully in 3 weeks time, work will start on the pond!  I visited Rodley Nature Reserve in Leeds today and admired their pond dipping area, as well as their meadows.  I just hope we can admire our pond dipping area and meadow over the next few weeks.  Fingers crossed.

I will blog over the summer holidays, but be warned.  It won't be very exciting - probably on the lines of "we've got one red tomato!!!!"