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: Apple picking

Little tree with a decent crop

The schools’ apple tree may only be a small one, standing at little more than 3 foot high, but this year it had a respectable number of apples ripening on its’ branches. Over the last few weeks we’ve been carefully monitoring its’ progress, waiting for the apples to become fully ripe.

Operating an ‘if the apples on neighbouring trees are ready, ours will be to’ policy, other parents with larger trees and therefore more apples to spare, having been checking their fruit and keeping me up to date with the seed darkening process and finally, apples from these trees have seeds which are now fully dark brown and have developed, where applicable, a healthy blush of red on the skin.

Plums, acorns and Gall Wasps

From little acorns ……

Yesterday was an exciting one for the school garden, as it managed to supply snack items for the whole of years 3, 4, 5 and 6! Children aged 4 to 6 which includes Foundation, year 1 and some of year 2, get free fruit or vegetables as a snack every morning which is a national initiative but children aged 7 and older have to bring their own snack item. So it was a great feeling when another mum and I managed to get 37 lovely ripe plums off the lower branches of the plum tree that lives in the bottom corner of the vegetable patch.

Mindful that not every child would like plums, we also picked a handful of cherry tomatoes and the last few pea pods to try and ensure that each older child had the chance of a snack from the garden. As it turned out there was actually enough for even the year 2 children (who share a class with 3 and 4) to have a second piece of fruit. All in all a very successful and rewarding day.

Gardening Club: Fruit trees and a mobile garden

A small tree with a good number of apples on it

As I wondered down to the polytunnel yesterday, I actually remembered to stop and take a picture of the schools fruit trees … well two of them, the apple and pear trees have fruit on them but the plum should come into its’ own later this year. I guess you could say that I inherited the trees, along with the rest of the garden when I agreed to take over Gardening Club but, to be honest, I haven’t a clue what I’m supposed to do with them and have kind of left them to their own devices.

Last year, the dreadful weather impacted badly on them all, with only about 7 fruit setting between the three and the wasps dealt with them, so it’s quite nice to see the apple and pear with a combined potential harvest of around 20-25 fruit.