It was time to enjoy the fruits (and vegetables) of our labour. The children enjoyed bowls of delicious vegetable soup made from the vegetable harvest grown in the school garden.
Category Archives: School Garden
Soup Time
It was a busy time in the kitchen as the children washed and chopped our crop of vegetables to make a large pot of delicious soup.
Harvesting the vegetables
We have been looking at our crop of vegetables for the last four weeks – licking our lips and keenly anticipating the harvest. Jessica from the Heritage Council called this week to organise the harvest, help prepare the vegetable soup (the important bit) and get the vegetable garden ready for the winter.
Harvest Time
We harvested a wonderful crop of organic squashes, courgettes, carrots, turnips, onions, garlic, beetroot, potatoes and peas and we learned some important lessons about locally-grown, organic produce. Some of our vegetables did better than others – our beetroot was hugely successful but most of our potato crop was lost to wire-worm. We managed to produce beautiful turnips but our fine crop of carrots must have been some of the ugliest looking veg ever produced. In our second year of trying we have finally grown two handsome pumpkins and we had a fantastic crop of squashes but our pea crop was quite poor. So what did we learn?
When growing organically a wide selection of fruit and veg is preferable and ugly is beautiful! A third of commercially produced vegetables are discarded because they are not “perfect enough” for the supermarkets and the food/kilometers for most commercial fruit and veg is unsustainable. Everyone should Buy Local and Buy Ugly.
Look at what we found!
While we were away over the summer Mother Nature has been very busy – helped by Cassie (Kimi and Levi’s Mum) and her watering can. We were delighted to find our pumpkin seeds had produced these beautiful pumpkins. Our efforts to grow pumpkins last year were unsuccessful – the slugs won! so we are really looking forward to harvesting these pumpkins at Hallowe’en.
Junior Room Planting
A few of the pots in the school yard were looking a bit tired so the Junior Room decided to freshen them up with some new plants.
Walking on eggshells
No one likes walking on eggshells! The saying suggests an atmosphere where everyone is tense and someone could be easily upset. Slugs don’t like walking or sliding on eggshells either but they would be delighted to feast on our crops of vegetables.
Eggshells are a perfect way to deter pesky slugs without just whacking them with toxic chemicals. We want to create an unwelcome environment for slugs in our garden. Every-time you make an omelette or just boil an egg send the shells into the school and we will add them to our slug defence. Egg shells are welcome at any time of the year!
Incredible Edibles
Incredible Edibles is a healthy eating initiative for Primary School pupils. It encourages schools across the country to get busy growing carrots, lettuce, potatoes, strawberries, turnips and herbs. Schools are supplied with grow packs containing everything needed to grow a veritable feast of healthy foods. We were busy indoors today planting seeds, seed potatoes and strawberry plants. We also set onions and garlic in the school garden.
Our Butterfly Garden
Once again, Ms. O Connell’s class decided to get a butterfly garden school kit which includes:
A reusable butterfly pavilion hatching habitat with super clear mesh for easy viewing and dual zippered entry for access. We also received caterpillars and their food.
All of our caterpillars have been named.
Here is a selection of just some of the names:
Togher Queen, R.J., Ringo, Tiger, McGregor, S.M.G, Scar, Tommy and Wilson.
We have them since Monday and they are making great progress.
Planting seed potatoes
It’s a tradition in Ireland to plant potatoes around St. Patrick’s Day but what with the Beast from the East, Storm Emma and the generally cold weather, our seed potatoes have been left inside for longer than usual. Normally we give more time to getting the soil ready and planting the potatoes but this year we took the first weather window to get the chitted potatoes into the ground.
While it has been a difficult spring in the school garden, it does help the children to understand that success and failure in farming/horticulture can be very much weather dependent.
Hopefully we get a nice early potato harvest in June.
