Harvest time

It's been a l

It's been along cold spring so things are a bit late and I was getting worried that we might go into summer holidays before we were able to harvest things. Fortunately the Armitage garden has perked up with the recent sunshine for a nice crop of strawberries, herbs, broad beans, peas and radishes. Interestingly the club members are crazy for fennel and broad beans (not together).

We've been cooking the broad beans in the staff room microwave, toss in a bit of butter and herbs and they've really enjoyed them. One of the group told me she is now asking her mom to buy broad beans and they're eating them at home for the first time.

Spring is here!

Half an hour after we planted our sunflowers at St Chrysostom's on the 13th May!

Making your own bed

 

I've been helping a couple of schools to develop new raised beds for the spring. Children have surveyed school grounds, designed the beds and then done most of the construction. It works out much cheaper than buying beds and gets them doing some applied maths.

Willow stars

When it's too wet to go outside, there's lots you can do in Gardening Club. We tried using some stems cut from the willow walk at Armitage to make willow stars. It's not the easiest thing to do but it felt good when we eventually succeeded!

New year new seeds

The longest day is behind us and the evenings are just starting to get a little bit lighter (honest) and there's nothing like the smell of new (peat free) compost and the rustle of fresh seed packets on a January day.

Children at St Chrysostoms are getting in the swing with contrasting planting. Cress that will be ready in a week and sweet peas that might not flower until June.

Pretty soon though we can start to get a few more things going as February has lots more potential for things like tomatoes, chillies and potato chitting.

Saving energy at school

I've been supporting 3 primary schools to save energy during Eco Schools' Energy Saving Fortnight based on previous work I've done. St John's made the biggest saving, using 7% less than the previous two weeks.

They had children carrying out daily inspections and awarding points for classes where energy wasn't being wasted. Points were displayed on the Health Schools board every day with the overall results also being presented.

They will probably carry on with this and would save around £1000 a year if they could shave the same amount off their whole energy bill. Once it gets up and running this type of monitoring system is very easy and cost free to maintain. Pupils are also taking these messages home so there is also a wider impact on the community.

Manchester City Council's Energy Management Unit were really helpful in providing data.

Tetrapak wallets

We've cut back some of the gardening work at St John's and been doing some other projects with an environmental theme, an eco club and an energy saving competition.

Here's a purse made from a fruit juice container. These are really easy to do. You'll need scissors, a stapler, a hole punch, elastic bands and that's it. There are some good instructions here.