Preparing the Flower Bed

This week, we were shovelling soil into the raised bed to get ready for sowing flowers for next year. As you can see in the picture, we have a pile of soil to move! This was donated to us at the end of the summer term. It is hard work shovelling just now as it is wet and heavy but we'll get there. We also picked more runner beans and donated some (along with highly scented garlic) to Dave Lynch who provided us with raised beds to start the garden. We hope you enjoy our produce!

Enjoying the garden!

Another week goes by. This week, we did small jobs and just enjoyed being in the garden. The bean canes were almost falling over due to strong winds, so we tied them with string and tent pegs! We ate lots, and did some light weeding. Unfortunately our brussel sprout plants are riddled with holes - and there are lots of caterpillars on them! We will try to leave a couple of plants for the caterpillars, get them off the others, then protect them from being ravaged!

Harvesting More Produce

Another busy week - harvesting potatoes, lettuce and garlic. DiGGers members have been taking produce home to taste. We have also been selling it to staff and had good feedback from them - asking if we have any more! We have also finished the shelving in the shed so it is now much tidier!

Summer harvest after returning to school

We are now at the end of our second week after the summer break. The garden has survived well as you can see from the pictures below. This week, we presented Mr Patterson and Mrs Leiper with their boxes of produce won in the shed fund raffle last December. Both were very pleased and we thank them for their patience!

Also, the sunflowers are doing really well in the garden centre - some are now over 2 metres tall. Above, you can see a bee visiting one of them! We will be measuring their height at the end of next month.

Lettuce Broad beans Pumpkin plant MarrowsStrawberries
Runner beans

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!