Giant carrots from a bucket

We had a few carrot seeds hanging around so we planted them in a bucket filled with compost and left them over the summer. I was expecting a few skinny specimens but we pulled out some whoppers. Carrots always do better when they are raised off the ground about 18 inches as the carrot flies can't fly that high.

Grow it, cook it, eat it

 At the end of term at Ravensbury we harvested potatoes, onions, garlic, broad beans and peas ...

cooked them up into a soup and sat down to eat together. We invited the Head and Deputy to join us. A great way to end the year.

Saving pea seeds

You always miss a few peas and end up with some that dry out on the plant. It's a nice job to collect these, shell them and keep them for planting. It also demonstrates the life cycle of plants. We planted these straight away in July and had peas when we came back to school in September.

Onion harvest

Onions are easy to grow. Put the little sets in the ground in the autumn or early spring and just leave them until June. It's really nice for children to come back to the garden and harvest what they planted. Here they are getting onions and garlic.

Parents and kids gardening together

We have a nice little group at Ravensbury where parents and children do some gardening together first thing in the morning. Two of the parents have gone on to get allotments and are now teaching me things I didn't know.

Pea maths

Just when the gardening group think they've got our of doing maths, it's pea maths time! Planting seeds is a nice opportunity for children to practice counting, do some multiplication and division.