Insect hotel with a green roof

When we finished the insect hotel at Armitage it looked, well, a bit unfinished. It's just a nice height so we stuck a mini green roof on top and have planted it up with a variety of herbs. It's in the early years playground so they're already combining looking for creepy crawlies with sampling the textures, smells and tastes of the herbs.

Red Rose Forest gave us some advice on the green roof based on their experience from the Green Streets project. 

Comfrey tea

There's a giant comfrey plant that grows through the greenhouse floor at Armitage. We've been harvesting the leaves for a couple of weeks and put them in a bucket of water to make a comfrey tea. It stinks but it's great plant food. Comfrey will grow anywhere and it's worth getting hold of.  Good for tying into learning about life cycles as well.

Radish fever hits Longsight

I've been growing a lot of radishes with children this spring and these beauties at St John's were probably the best so far. They're quick, look good and they're fun to eat.

Watering cans from old drinks bottles

There are lots of ways to reuse objects in the garden and here's another one. Garden Organic sell great little adaptors that you can fit to drinks bottles to create a watering can. They're much more manageable for small hands than a whole watering can, have a really good rose and also stop eager children drowning new seedlings!  Children just love watering and this means you can love them watering as well!

Garlic sprouting nicely

We planted some garlic in amongst the flowers in containers at Armitage and it's now really sprouting nicely.  It's an easy one to grow, just put a clove in the soil and that's it!  "Proper" seed garlic works best but you can try ordinary ones as well, the results are just less reliable.

While it's growing you can pinch the tops a little and really get that garlic smell, which is what's going on here.

Potatoes going crazy

We've planted some potatoes in sacks at St John's, with the help of Hulme Community Garden Centre. You need to add compost to the height of the leaves as they grow. These have gone a bit crazy and the ones planted more conventionally have yet to produce any leaves. We'll have to see which produce the better crop. Still, the Gardening Club seemed to enjoy working with the compost.

Cress Heads in a potato

An imaginative take on an old favourite in the Nursery at St John's. They scooped out the top of potatoes, put in a layer of tissue paper and added the cress seeds.  One week later - Cress Heads!

Children painted the faces and stuck on googly eyes.Time for a hair cut soon.