Gardening Activity Days

Lots of progress has been made this week! For the Monday activity day, volunteers came to help us create four large raised beds - three of which will be filled with wild flower seed in August to attract butterflies and bees into the garden next year. The timber was bought with an "Action Earth" grant, supported by Morrisons supermarket as part of the "International year of Biodiversity." Below are (left to right) Toni Clarke and Mrs Barclay.

We had a huge delivery of soil. Due to the dry weather, the ground was very hard. Mr Locket expertly reversed his tractor and trailer right into the garden and tipped it straight into the beds - which saved us lots of work with wheelbarrows!
This paved the way for day two - Tuesday. Pupils started the day planting up the raised bed with herbs for the food technology classes to be able to use for cooking. Below are (left to right) Mr MacFarlane, Danielle Burton (S3), Catriona MacIver (S3) and Douglas MacLeod (S2). We then planted all the vegetables that had been needing to come out of their pots. For example, courgettes, kale, outdoor tomatoes, radish, more peas and beans - you get the idea! School staff also came out to help on both days. Below, Mrs Mackie is busy weeding.

We did many jobs - for example putting up shelves in the shed. We topped up soil in all the potato bags, made a compost bay from the pallets and did a lot of watering. This involved many trips down the hill into the school building, returning with watering cans full! Well done to everyone for making the activity days so productive and sucessful. All your hard work has set up the garden nicely for us to leave over the summer holidays. Let's hope there is some rain to keep everything alive until our return in August.

Meanwhile, don't forget about the sunflower growing competition at Frank Nicol's garden centre - they are now over a metre tall and looking very healthy! Call in to see them and guess which will be the tallest to help us raise money to buy a goat for a family in Africa.So, the DiGGers wish everyone a happy summer holiday and look forward to returning to the garden in August.

Welcome to primary pupils!

If you are a P7 pupil, then well done for finding your way to this blog! We hope that you enjoyed our assembly last week and got to taste some bean sprouts! Don't forget to draw a poster for the "Betty MacKenzie Greenhouse" ready for August, and visit Frank Nicol's to see the sunflowers growing to raise money to buy a goat for a family in Africa.

Well, it's been another busy week. On Monday we planted a courgette plant into a tyre. We have twelve more needing to be planted, but have run out of soil! (Thankfully, there's some due to be delivered on the activity day next Monday). It was hot and sunny so we ate more peas and watered as much as we could.

On both Wednesday and Friday we dug in more raised beds ready to fill with soil next week. The ground was very dry and hard to dig. Below you can see a barrel that we want to convert into a water butt to help with watering in future.

Strawberries planted

Another busy week has passed. After starting the sunflower competition last Wednesday, we planted up the two barrels at the front of the school on Friday. They needed to look good for the Awards Ceremony this week! The grass was also mown which was a blessing as it was getting quite wild! On Wednesday 16th June we planted out the strawberries at long last into a tall tub. We also tasted our first peas - they were very sweet! On Thursday, Josh Craig (S5) helped Miss Swallow to construct a raised bed for the Food Technology department. It's situated behind the canteen. We will plant it up with herbs in future so that classes can pick them for cooking with. On Friday 18th June, we added more compost into the potato bags and also appeared in the North Star encouraging the public to enter the sunflower competition! Some first years also visited classes to let people make guesses and we raised £13 already towards the "goat fund!" So keep guessing people!

Sunflower competition launched

Today, three members went to Frank Nicol's garden centre with the sunflowers. We planted all 16 of them into big pots and created a display. Anyone can now visit the centre to see the flowers and take part in the competition. It costs 20p to make a guess. The aim is to guess whose sunflower will grow the tallest, and how tall it will be (to the nearest cm). The winner will win a £20 voucher to spend in the garden centre. We would like to thank Frank Nicol's for hosting the competition and looking after the flowers as they grow over the summer months. We will measure them in September. In the pictures you can see Alexander MacKinnon (S1), Lewis MacKenzie (S2) and Lewis Ross (S3) setting them up. Don't forget, all money raised will go towards buying a goat (or two) for a family in Africa, so feel free to come along and join in the fun!

Beans Peas Pumpkin and Lettuce planted

This week has been good weather and we got lots of planting done. This involved wheelbarrowing more soil down from the top site to fill the raised beds (Wednesday). On Monday the Runner beans went into the tyres we filled last week: On Friday we filled the raised beds with peas, some broad beans and lettuce:

Oh yes, we planted some pumpkins out on Monday too as they had really outgrown their seed tray!

We have put a padlock on the shed so now it is secure. Also, we obtained two old apple juice drums - we need to put a hole in the bottom of them so we can use them as water butts to collect rain water from the shed and greenhouse!