Visitors to the Garden and Lots of Jobs to do!

 Last week, there was a Royal Horticultural Society course for teachers run at the Academy.  The weather was very wet and windy so they were indoors most of the day.  They did however have a quick tour round the garden and were very impressed with what we have achieved.  On Monday this week, the Highland Outdoor Learning Group (above) had a meeting here. They also had a tour of the garden and thought that a lot of hard work had been done - we can agree with that!  Other schools are interested to learn from our experience and create gardens (and courses) of their own.

 On Wednesday, we started getting bags of compost ready for planting out the potatoes for our competition.

 Connorhan weighs a bag - each one has 2kg of soil in for planting one potato.  As the plants grow, we will add more soil.  It has to be fair so each potato must have the same amount!

 Also, Miss Swallow bought some weed barrier for the base of the greenhouse.

 On Thursday, it was a lovely sunny day.  Grigor helped to weed a raised bed...

 ...and planted out our blue potatoes ("salad blue" variety)

 Meanwhile (behind), Connorhan gets busy weaving branches back into the willow seat.

 He then raked up some grass as contractors had been in cutting it.

 He added the cuttings to the compost.  Next week, if it's dry, we'll use some as mulch between the leeks (once we've weeded them).

On Friday, Connorhan helped transport gravel up the path and onto the base for the new greenhouse.  Still lots to do, but we are progressing steadily.

Also, Lewis and Catriona came in from study leave.  They planted potatoes into their own raised beds ("Catriona" variety of course!  And "Highland Burgundy Red" which is red all the way through.  We still have "Charlotte" and "Witchhill" varieties to plant out.

 The potatoes have chitted well and are ready to plant out.

This week, Miss Swallow also collected some new raised beds - we are going to sell these to raise money for the club.

Pupils in the Elective Gardening class have put gravel into the bottom of the barrels.  They have started adding upturned turf and will put soil to plant into on top next week (weather permitting).

 Meanwhile, the leeks continue to grow well.

Our Rhubarb has started to flower!  We but the stalks back, to encourage the leaves to grow for cropping.

The foxgloves are filling half a raised bed too!  Looking very healthy.