Wednesday

My second lunchtime garden club this week and it was great!

All the kids turned up and we went out into the murky fog again.  Being one of the highest points in Leeds (if not the highest), the fog can be quite thick and persistent.  It was also rather damp.  There's not much you can do in 20 minutes, but we watered and checked on the Christmas hyacinths and daffodils which seem to be doing the right thing!  The broad beans are sprouting too which was a lovely surprise as nothing was happening this time last week!

I cancelled my afternoon garden group for a variety of reasons - firstly because of the aforementioned murkiness and light drizzle so we couldn't work outside, there's nothing to do in the polytunnel, I'm full of cold and lost my voice (careless I know!) and also I've got a pile of paperwork and a display to plough through!

We have been invited on yet another bulb planting expedition in early November.  Alan Mann and the Holt park Tenants Association would like us to help plant bulbs in the Holt Park Entrance and also on Holtdale Approach opposite Ralph Thoresby.  If you would like to join us, let me know.

Hopefully I will get out tomorrow and do some gardening.  It's been very stop/start these last two weeks but after half term, we can start cracking on again!

Bulb Planting in the Community

We've just planted 500 daffodils bulbs!

Working with Groundworks Leeds and the local councillors, we took nine children into a neighbouring road and planted narcississ bulbs in the grass verge.

The weather was foggy and quite murky (a typical autumnal day), but it was reasonably warm.  Armed with spades, the adults dug the holes (though the children soon took over) and the kids put in about half a dozen bulbs in the hole and had the delight of jumping on the grass to cover them.  It took us no more than a hour to plant the lot!  The kids loved it and thought it was great - especially when they found worms!  A special thanks to Ellie and John from Groundworks, Councillors Judith Chapman and Sue Bentley, Sarah O'Driscoll Duke and Ann Colefax.



The Bulb Planting Crew




Great teamwork guys!




The Muddiest Face competition



Hi Ho, its off to work we go!






The team hard at work





Ellie explaining what to do




Molly and her 3 headed bulb!





Heading home for a cup of tea! Good job, guys!



Sorry, no blog this week!

Sorry folks, it's going to be a short blog, but it's been a crazy week this week.

I only managed to get out on Wednesday afternoon with Taylor who helped me check on the Christmas hyacinths and daffodils, giving them a quick water and gave the garden the once over. 

Since then, I've been in Ireland on a school trip, visiting Swinford Primary School in Swinford, County Mayo with Mrs Speak, Mr Gamble and 11 of our pupils! I happily chatted about our garden and our organic gardening, that we sold our produce and/or gave it to our kitchen staff.  I mentioned our 40 foot polytunnel, the Lunchtime Club and our afternoon gardening sessions and told them to check out our Gardening Blog! So hopefully, Swinford Primary School will start to follow us and our gardening exploits.

Hopefully next week, normal service will be resumed, though there's a Training Day next Friday and then half term, so it might go a bit quiet for a week or two.

We're in the local magazine!!!

Unbeknown to me, somebody has mentioned Cookridge Primary School's entry in the Cookridge Show.   My father who lives in Horsforth gave me a copy of the local "Covered" magazine which is distributed in the Leeds postal areas of LS16, 18 and 19, so our gardening adventures are being spread across North West Leeds! Who has written the article, I'm not sure as I had absolutely no idea about us being in print, but hey, I'm not complaining. Our little mention is the last paragraph under Cookridge Horticultural Society Flower Show (sorry for the small print, but even the employing my techno wizard of a daughter, failed to get it any bigger.)

Class One come to the garden

On Friday, Mrs McHugh's Class One came up to plant the last of the hyacinths.  With all hands on deck, I wasn't able to get many photos myself, but Ali managed to get a few - thanks!  Check Mrs McHugh's blog for more photos!

Lining up for their pots

Covering the hyacinths

The girls have a try too!

Amy and Josh  helping Class One!

Bulb planting and other jobs

85 hyacinth bulbs later and what a brilliant week.

By Thursday I was becoming an old hand at this bulb planting and recruited 4 helpers from Class 8, who were fantastic. The girls got the KS1 children in line and made sure that they all had gloves and a pot before shuffling them towards me.  I supervised the filling of the pot with compost, and ushered them to Jamie who made sure that they put a bulb into their pot.  Joshua helped the children add more compost around the bulb and Jade showed where to put them in the trays.  Then the children covered them with plastic and hessian sacks and then went off for a tour of the garden and a story under the tree.

Today, Ali took over from Jamie and had the added bonus of taking photos of the children and their bulb.  He did a sterling job for Mrs McHugh's Class One.  Amy joined us and did Jade's job. They all did an excellent job and all thoroughly enjoyed the responsibility of it all. I was able to just let them get on with it and was proud of how they worked as a team and made it all flow freely with no fuss.  Thank you, you guys - I know who to call if I need help again!

Jamie, Joshua and Jade also helped me plant crocuses and snowdrops in our wildlife area which was another job off the list, though we need to get a lot more.  It was a start.  We also put some old chairs that were lurking in the garden in our bird hide and agreed that we need to make it all a bit more bird friendly.  Taylor appeared in the garden and between them, they are going to design some bird feeding stations and sort out our existing feeders.

Benjamin watering the geraniums

Doing a grand job!

Benjamin and Reece digging our beds

Matthew sorting out the rhubarb patch

The Snowdrop Planting Gang

Josh working hard

Jade working on the snowdrops 

Jamie and Josh with our birdhide in the background

We had a few bulbs to plant!

Class 3 plant Christmas Hyacinths

On Tuesday, the whole of Class 3, one of our Year 2 classes came up to the garden to plant their hyacinth bulbs for Christmas.

They loved it. They filled up their pots with compost, went to Mrs Hallatt to get their bulb and their photo taken and then put more soil around their bulb before covering them all up.  Some children went into our wildlife garden to plant some crocuses and snowdrops and others just had a good look around. We managed to get 30 bulbs planted within the hour!

Mrs Hallatt's photos will be on Class 3 blog.  I had my hands quite full with keeping 30 children moving and couldn't take photos!

On Thursday and Friday, we repeat the process all over again with Class One and Two, so we'll end up with 85 hyacinth bulbs flowering for Christmas (fingers crossed). I have googled the subject several times to make sure that I am doing it right and not to disappoint anyone!  No pressure, then!

Within minutes of Class 3 going back in, Class 7 appeared and after a brief hello, just set off to their jobs. It was lovely.  The sun shone and it was quite warm. There were children all over the garden, working and helping each other.  Even the two special needs children who came up were part of the group and happily digging and looking for worms. We had a little difficulty encouraging the boys to put their worms back into the undergrowth!

I got quite cross when my camera decided to run out of battery - there's no warning at all - just a brief flickering message and then dead.  And it eats batteries!  So I missed some really great photo opportunities today which was quite frustrating, so I went to our office and took a pack of batteries for my garden box! Hopefully, I won't get caught out again!

Today, we were running a bit late, but Mrs Whitwam, Reece and Taylor appeared to help with some rather little jobs. First was to empty the staffroom teabag caddy - we are training the staff to put their teabags in a compost caddy rather than the bin - and it was getting rather full.  Then it was visiting the classrooms with trays of tomatoes on their windowsills to see if there were any red ones.  We collected quite a few and we created two boxes - red tomatoes and green tomatoes and set up our market stall on the playground.  The boys were a little reticent to start shouting "come and buy our lovely tomatoes" so ended up taking the box around to the parents and managed a couple of sales.  Well done, boys.

Today was my first lunchtime Garden Club. The staff have been asked to run a club either at lunchtime or after school.  I was tempted to run an after school club as we could do at least an hour after school, until I realised that we would be gardening in the dark by the end of October!  So over the winter months, we'll do the lunchtime which isn't easy as the children need to eat their lunch (and so do I) which gives us no more than half an hour.  Six children were due to come up, but only three made it for various reasons - we need to iron out a couple of teething problems. So we couldn't really start anything serious, so we cut some lavender and had a good look at the pond. Hopefully it will get better over the next couple of weeks and the children get used to meeting me on time.  But it was fun and more children are getting to the garden, which is the main thing!

Aaargh!

Last week, I thought I had posted lots of lovely photos and some witty dialogue to describe last week with Class 7 making their regular trip up. However, when I published, the words disappeared and the pictures stayed in draft.  It was a big "NOOOOO!" moment.

So back to Class 7's trips to our garden. Basically I just open up everything up and the kids get the tools and just get stuck in!  The boys are doing a great job weeding the beds, I've got dedicated band of girls planting up the rockery, another group planting up pansies in pots, Ben is pruning the herb garden and two boys have picked up every single fallen tomato off the polytunnel floor.  The teamwork is fantastic and they are so eager. It's really great to see and I love seeing the children making the most of it all.  They are quite reluctant to go back to class!

The classroom tomatoes have been turning red and last week, Billy, Thailan and Alex started to sell them to our parents (in between eating the profits!)  It's 50p here and 50p there, but it all helps.

Sorry for such a sorry blog, but I can't remember what I wrote last week, so just enjoy the photos!

Class 7 come to the garden

The Rockery Planting Crew

The Weeders

The Tomato Sellers

The Diggers

More Diggers

The gang in the garden

The Rockery Crew from a different angle!

The Polytunnel Cleaning Crew

The Weeders

A wide angled shot

Garden from the other end

Billy the tomato guy

The hard working Class 7

You need to put it over there!