Today, Lewis, Catriona, Charlotte and Danielle went to Frank Nicols garden centre. The centre have taken very good care of the cabbages all summer and we would like to thank them for hosting our competition.
We measured the height of all the cabbages (though it was obvious from the start that no.2 was the tallest!) Remember, they were sown by a selection of people from school who paid £1 towards our Malawi fund. No 2 was 97cm and grew from the seed sown by our very own Mr MacFarlane! Very suspicious!! We think he might have been sneaking in to feed it or even sing to it over the summer!!
To find a winner - the person who guessed the tallest cabbage - we put the names of everyone who guessed no.2 into a pot and Danielle pulled one out. It was Josh Fraser, a second year pupil at the Academy - who wins the £20 voucher.
Afterwards, we loaded all dozen cabbages into Miss Swallow's trailer to take back to school.
After a quick lunch in the shed, Danielle transports some of the plants into the garden.
Grigor and Connorhan came to help carry them too. The one we are carrying here is the no.2 winner!! The competition has raised £70 which will go to the school's Malawi appeal. At a cost of £6.15 per child, our donation will feed eleven children for a whole year!
For anyone who is interested, the heights of the other cabbages were as follows:
1) 60cm 3) 66cm 4) 32cm (poor thing!) 5) 35cm (another small one)
6) 62cm 7) 52cm 8) 59cm 9) 50cm
10) 75cm 11) 69cm 12) 50cm
During the half term break, our gate was fitted at last! We can now access the garden via the path instead of scrambling up the steep bank! This will be good in the winter when it's raining or snowy.
Miss Swallow and Isabela visited during the holidays to see the gate and do a few jobs. The first was attaching the sign to welcome guests into the garden.
Here you can see the siphon system that Rob set up for us.
The second job was weeding!! Here is before...
...and after! Just a little more left to do.
This week, the "How does your garden grow" class started planting bulbs - in the shape of a "D". 
Once they'd finished, we moved the guide rope and made an "A" to continue planting so in the spring, we'll have Dingwall Academy initials to welcome people to the school! 
One box had this courgette in along with 2Kg of potatoes, a couple of onions, some garlic, lettuce and curley kale.
We had a belated birthday celebration for Danielle - something of a tradition in the shed now!
Grigor and Charlotte spotting "tiny potatoes" on Thursday.
We'll boil them after the holidays and enjoy eating them!
Also we have a new volunteer in the garden - Isabela. She has been helping to get on top of the weeding as you can see in this border (you couldn't see the soil for the weeds before she got started!)
Talking of volunteers, Rob has continued to do great things in the garden! Here you can see a notice board ready for us to put a "welcome" sign up for visitors to see. He has also sorted out the water butts and set up siphons so we can use water from all three containers now - one is handy for the washing station.
Danielle gets artistic with the camera!