Cress Heads and Thermometer

The thermometer has arrived! We went for something robust and easy to read that can be fixed up to a wall or a fence. It's digital and a 'max min' thermometer, which means it will show the maximum temperature reached as well as the minimum - that means we can see how cold it's got at night and if there's been a hard frost. We put it outside the window and watched the temperature start to fall. 

We wanted to get growing even though it's really cold outside. We decided to grow some cress heads. We got some plastic cups and made small holes in the bottom, so that when we water the seeds the water will drain out of the holes, otherwise the cress will get water logged. Then we made faces for our cress heads. 

We put cotton wool in the bottom of the cups and sprinkled cress seeds on the top. We put the cups in a tray and put water in the bottom - the cotton wool will absorb it and hopefully our seeds will start to grow!

We put some in a pot with a cover over the top to find out what happens to the cress if it doesn't have any light. 

Finally we made a temperature chart and checked the temperature on the thermometer. We made a note, but then realised the temperature was still falling - it actually reached about 9 degrees.

Snow!

The garden is covered in snow - no Gardening Club this week. The ties we made for the orchard trees out of old inner tubes have survived  and passed muster with our school gardener.We have been unusually organised and planned our sessions for this term! This means we can order anything we need ahead of time. This week we have ordered a thermometer so we can keep an eye on the temperature as winter passes and spring begins. 

Tree Ties

First week back after the Christmas holidays. Our orchard trees, newly planted last term have been suffering in the wind. We decided to make some new ties to attach them to their stakes. The string we used before could damage the trees so we got some old bike inner tubes and cut them up. We each made a design for our ties, the ones that seemed to work best were the ones that we plaited. They were strong because they were plaited but they were still stretchy.