The School Garden: the end of an era

Neat and tidy.

It doesn’t seem 5 minutes since I first agreed to help out with Gardening Club but in actual fact it has been 8 years since the day I turned up with my spade and gloves and started to dig over the vegetable bed area for the resident gardening club organiser. At THAT time the vegetable patch was quite literally that – a patch of bare ground in the middle of a grass play area which was dug over every year but plans were afoot and, following a successful application to the National Lottery Grants for All, the vegetable garden evolved into the raised bed, poly tunnel space that it now is, although even that space has since developed further with two of the raised beds being dismantled last year (2017) and used to edge a new long bed by the poly tunnel.

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Gardening Club: House Keeping and Seed Sowing

The poor weather doesn’t seem to affect the weeds!

The prolonged cold weather delayed the start of Gardening Club this year, as I was mindful of my young gardeners and the disappointment they would feel, if Gardening Club had started for the sake of starting and all their carefully sown seeds and the resulting seedlings, had succumbed to the bitter cold, hard frosts, waterlogged ground and/or snow. No, waiting those few extra weeks was worth it and Gardening Club has now begun. Unfortunately the miserable, cold weather hadn’t done anything to curtail the growth of the weeds and our long bed was a carpet of green …… largely unwanted green at that, although there were some onions in there somewhere!

And so it begins

We need it to start turning orange now

Wow! Where has this year gone? It only seems 5 minutes since I was planning what I was going to plant in the school garden, agreed to help in the local community garden and took the decision to back off from blogging for a while to allow my mojo to heal and rejuvenate. As for my own garden, it has had the year off to replenish the depleted nutrients which have resulted from several seasons of year on year growing and in spite of zealous digging in of fertilisers. My beds are currently buried under a generous layer of farmhouse manure and freshly mulched hedge clippings, ready for the autumn/winter weather and local population of worms to work their magic, breaking it down into the much needed, aforementioned nutrients. With any luck growing season 2018 is going to be a good one.

It’s been a while

The Mudlets were thrilled at how well their pine cones sold and my toys did okay as well.

November was the last time I wrote something for my blog and, at that time, it was a relief when I took the decision to put down my virtual pen and walk away. That said, I would occasionally pop in and have a nose around the blogs I follow but for the most part, the WP tile on my phone was left untouched, neglected and alone, passed over as I reached for Google, email, word or the camera tiles instead. I’m not entirely sure what went wrong, other than it became a chore to sit down and start typing which was a shame because I love writing, as is evidenced by the articles I still produce for the village magazine and letters I draft on behalf of Gardening Club or the PTA.

Over recent weeks, however, the urge to reclaim my blog has been growing ever stronger and I am finally ready to re-enter the world of blogging, albeit with a more relaxed approach and to start with, here is an update on happenings in Mudville:

The hidden tunnel – a school garden update

Lovely, lush plums ….. unfortunately the wasps agree!

I am ashamed to say that as much as my own garden has received minimal attention this year for a variety of reasons, the school garden has received even less than that, bordering on none at all, although I did do a decent session of weeding and clearing early in the year. Events at the start of the year, regards my anaemia and the ensuing tests and appointments that have dogged the months since, knocked me for six and it was only in the last few weeks that I began to feel more like myself but with this improvement has come guilt over the dire state of my own beloved vegetable plot, a guilt which was further compounded when I saw the state of the school raised beds when the school reopened on Tuesday. As for the poly tunnel, well I didn’t even think about walking round to the back of the building and looking in on that, as there was nothing growing in it!

Gardening Club: In need of a weed

Nice and green but in need of weeding

School may be closed for the summer with the pupils enjoying a well earned break but the garden hasn’t stopped growing and neither have the weeds. I feel a stint of much needed garden tidying coming on and hopefully I’ll have two Mudlets as willing helpers.

Gardening Club: the beds are very tired

Not the sea of green I would expect for this time of year!

I like a bargain just as much as the next person and can often be found working out the best value per 100g in the supermarket, to check if a so called offer is really as good as it is meant to sound but I have always worked on the thought that a bargain is only a bargain if you actually need it in the first place. Freebies, on the other hand, need to be treated with greater care and given a lot more though as, depending on where you are getting your freebie from, you could find yourself swamped in junk emails or snail mail and even then, it might not be all you thought it was going to be, often proving the adage ‘too good to be true’ correct.

Gardening Club: Seeds and weeds

Slowly but surely the garden is turning green.

Several sessions of Gardening Club have been held now and I have to say that the children are phenomenal. The youngest of the members is only 4 years old and yet he handles the seedlings like a pro, showing a level of care and tenderness belying his age. However, what is really good to see, is that those children who have been members for the last couple of years or so, are helping the newbies, showing them how to do things, guiding them without taking over and these simple actions have helped chase away the last of the doubts I had after the disappointment and disheartening events of last Autumn. Here, in my small group of children, I have learned that whatever else happens in terms of not being able to get people to take and use the harvest, the vegetable patch has brought out the best in these young people, encouraging them to be tolerant, have patience and to help others, even, as was the case with one of my 6 year old gardeners on Wednesday, if by doing so, you miss out on the fun task of planting your own plant that session (she ran out of time).

Gardening Club: getting started

The fruit trees hold the promise of a plentiful harvest

Seventeen children signed up for Gardening Club this time around, split over two sessions per week but as they are mostly from the younger classes, each session is only 15 to 20 minutes long, depending on what needs to be done. Within the two groups we have two children responsible for watering and weeding the plants in the Foundation Area and another two older children, watering the plants in the poly tunnel.

The school garden revisited

Little Mudlet proved adept at using my onion spacing tools

Having ignored the school garden for most of the autumn/winter, the last couple of weeks before the Easter break proved quite challenging, with my dedicated little gardeners regularly asking when Gardening Club was starting again. To be honest, up until then I had still been in two minds whether or not I wanted to invest more of my time in a project that seemed to be lacking support in almost all quarters. However, over the last couple of weeks, I have begun to feel that my band of gardeners deserve to have their enthusiasm recognised and so on Wednesday, Little Mudlet and I went to the garden and set about weeding the beds I needed for onions, potatoes and parsnips …… preparing for Gardening Club.