Making Mini Scarecrows

We are getting ready for our open day as part of the Chelsea Fringe. www.chelseafringe.com/event/how-does-our-playground-grow/

We decided to make mini scarecrows to decorate the beds and welcome people to our garden.

We used old socks, straw and two lengths of bamboo.

We stuffed the socks with straw and tied them on with string. We snipped two holes in the sock and pushed the 'arms' through.

Some people made little jackets out of other bits of old sock.

Other people made little hats and scarfs to keep out the cold wind.

Soon there were lots of mini scarecrow people. We had time to do a bit of watering and sow some salad seed.

If you want to make your own mini scarecrow, buy plants, eat cake or just look at what we are growing come along to Lauriston School on Saturday May 18th.

Watering the School Orchard

Over the winter we planted a small orchard of heritage apple trees in a corner of the playground.  Each tree was sponsored by parents of children at the school.  As they're newly planted it's important to give them plenty of water, especially in this warmer weather.















We've got some small watering cans but they're still quite heavy to carry when they are full of water. It's good exercise taking two cans full for each tree across the playground!

It was good to have a chance to inspect the apple trees.  We're trying to make sure all the children at the school know that we have to be careful when playing near the orchard. We don't want our lovely trees to be damaged. It was exciting to see they are coming into leaf.









Meanwhile there were still potatoes to be planted - we managed to dig up a couple that we planted last week!  Never mind - we just put them back again and found another space in the beds. The signs we painted a few weeks ago are coming in handy - it's useful to know what we have planted where.

Inside some of us were having a go at printing a 'herbal' - a collection of pictures and descriptions of plants. We used beautiful printing blocks and coloured ink.

Then we coloured them in and gave them names.  It's been a busy week at gardening club!

Spring has Sprung

Over the Easter holidays we've been looking after our bean seeds at home. We bought them in to Gardening Club today - everyone is very excited to see how big the bean plants have grown.  Some of us have been measuring them.  The tallest is 36cms!

Spring has certainly sprung so it's time to get sowing some more vegetables outside. Our seed potatoes have been in trays in the potting shed chitting - in other words sprouting shoots.  To get them ready for planting we rubbed off the smallest shoots and left two. These will become the shoots and leaves of the potato plant.  

We dug some deep holes in our raised beds, far enough apart so that the potato plants have room to grow. It was quite hard to dig a deep hole. Some of the earth is very solid - and there are lots of worms living in it which were a bit distracting....

     

Then we planted the potato seed, making sure the sprouts were pointing upwards. 

It's fantastic to be out in the garden planting in the spring sunshine. So, we planted some carrot seeds as well. They are tiny! We sowed them in shallow trenches.  We used the wooden labels we made last term to mark where we planted the seeds. 

We gave everything a good watering and are keeping our fingers crossed that this warmer weather is here to stay.