Friday 16 September 2011

Making an insect hotel



I don't like calling them "bug hotels", they say "bug" in the US and I think we have enough US culture here already. Anyway, we've started to make one at Armitage. The nearby construction site were kind enough to donate some pallets, bricks and pipes. In fact I nipped over to ask and half an hour later a mini digger came rumbling round the corner loaded with materials we could use.

The pallets needed a bit of sanding and I removed some nails before pupils got to work filling it with 5 Star insect facilities.  A great job for younger children this. Reception and Year 1 children scoured the school grounds for twigs and branches and then put these in the pipes or just scattered them in the pallets. We simply put one pallet on the ground, filled it up and then put the second one on and so on.

The top will be a green roof planted with drought resistant herbs such as rosemary, sage and thyme giving us another precious growing area.  Now I just need to go back to the building site and see if they've got any old scaffolding planks.

It will be interested to see what moves in.

Wednesday 7 September 2011

New school year

I'll be working in two Manchester primary schools this term to help them get more into gardening (Armitage CE Primary School and St John's CE Primary School). At Armitage we'll be finishing off our wildlife stack by making a green roof, collecting leaves for leaf mould and generally getting things ready for the spring.

St John's have a greenhouse attached to the school building so we'll be deciding what to grow over the winter. Oranges from Longsight, there's a thought. And how are the parsnips in the raised beds doing?