Starting a New Garden and taking Delivery of More Soil!

 Last Friday, 2W2 - a class of twenty second year pupils took turns to help start our new garden.  The Woodblocx team came in to work with them (see woodblocx.co.uk to see their clever system).  It was a lovely sunny day and they worked really hard.

 Here, pupils are left to co-ordinate themselves as a team and work out the layout of the different sized blocks.

 They have already dug out a level area to place the final design and were then doing to start hammering pegs into the holes.

 Connorhan came along to help - enjoying a bit of "Jenga" here too!

 ...removing some pegs from the wrong holes!

 Simona connecting the blocks together.

 The finished product after a hard day's work!

 On Wednesday, Mr Lockett came in with his trusty tractor and skilfully manoeuvred up to each planter...

 ...so we could get the soil into the correct spot.

 He then brought us some more soil into the main garden, as we had some new raised beds that were still empty.

 His wife came to help as well...great news is that we now have a group of community members who are interested to come and help out with weeding and general garden maintenance on a regular basis.

 We also put what was left into our old builder's bag, so we have it ready to use whenever we need it.

 It didn't take long for our resident blackbird to come over looking for worms!

 There was also a young female blackbird looking around on the new seating area too.

 On Wednesday, we discovered that the solitary wasp's nest that has been hanging in the greenhouse for about 2 years has been taken over by social wasps.  There were about ten wasps around it, and we took it down because we don't want a huge wasp's next in the greenhouse!  Here you can see the white eggs and pale brown larvae - they were wriggling around.  In time, there would be hundreds of wasps, so we have caught it before they have put too much effort in - hopefully, they'll move off and find somewhere else to settle.

 In the meantime, Danielle checks out the strawberries - there a quite a few beginning to ripen.

We started to mix some rotted wood chip, horse manure and sand into the soil to help condition it as when it's dry, it goes very hard.  This should give it a better structure to help it hold moisture.