Bean hair and bean moustaches

It was time to pull down the runner beans at Armitage as we want to save some of the beans for planting next year and we don't want them to get frost damage. The Gardening Club found there are more uses for beans than I realised.

We picked most of the beans quite young but left a few pods to dry out so the beans inside get nice and hard. We'll store these over the winter. You can also cook them like you would any dried bean.

Another good thing about the wet summer

The strawberries at St Chrysostom's really seemed to enjoy the wet weather and have matured into magnificent looking plants sending out runners in all directions. We are trying to capitalise on all this growth and pot the runners to create new plants.

If you have never done this before, the idea is to place the roots of the new plants on the runners into relatively small pots, wait until they have established themselves and then separate them from the main plant. They can then be planted out. It can be a little bit fiddly to get the runners to stay in the pot but the idea of more strawberries is a strong motivator!

It's a carrot!

One bad thing about the cold, wet summer meant that lots of things we planted at St John's were not ready to harvest before the summer holiday.

One good thing about the cold, wet summer was crops that we planted in the spring were well watered over the summer holiday and were just waiting there for us when everybody got back to school.

These little carrots are an Italian variety (Franchi seeds) and grew very well in a relatively shallow container. Yes, they really are carrots.

Stinky Stew

If you thought comfrey tea smelt bad, try nettle tea.  Not nettle tea that you'd buy in the shops, this one's a plant food. We used the nettles that had sprung up over the summer in our raised beds at St Chrysostom's and soaked them in water for a week. Then it was just a matter of decanting it into a bottle. While it's brewing keep it well away from anyone as it really does stink.

You can then dilute this and use it for a plant feed. Put the left over leaves into the compost.

Children called it Stinky Stew but assured me they hadn't named it after me. 

Leaf mould

A year ago we put leaves in plastic bags at St Chrysostom's and we got them out today. They'd rotted down very nicely and we spread them on the raspberries for a nice mulch over the winter. Children really enjoyed seeing how they'd changed.

Really easy to do, just make sure water can get into the bags, making leaf mould is a wet process whereas compost is best kept dry.

Salad Days

Every Monday has been Salad Day at St Chrysostom's. We go out and pick a couple of bowls. One goes onto the school salad bar and the other goes into the staff room to perk up the staff's lunches. When they know it's grown at school a lot of children have been trying the salad although there are some who don't like the ideas of eating something that's been in the soil!

We've grown a variety of lettuces, rocket and oriental leaves such as Mizuna, Mibuna and Osaka Purple. You can easily find packets of mixed seeds and they easily produce a crop during term time. Many are "cut and come again" where you simply take a few leaves and the plant carries on growing. Our best Mizuna grew where someone dropped a handful of seeds and we didn't get round to thinning them out!

Harvest time ... potatoes

We dug out the potatoes from sacks at St John's and a got a great crop (this was just the first few) of a different earlies. It was a big surprise as we hadn't done this before and didn't know how it would work.  There was nearly a riot at the end of the after school club when we hadn't harvested everything; "We don't want to go home, we want to finish this!!"

Katherine Moores at Hulme Community Garden Centre helped us plant the sacks back in February and did some work with the children to help them learn about potatoes. Thanks Katherine!