Summer time!

We've had amazing weather for the last few weeks and the garden is thriving and buzzing with life. Yesterday was another really productive day with Annette from Heritage in Schools and we even found some time for storytelling.

We finished off some weeding and added more compost to the rest of the garden beds. Lots of new plants were added to any gaps including annuals like Cosmos and Calendula and perennials such as Ragged Robin and Geum. We included more edible flowers like Borage and Nasturtium too.

The vegetable beds also had any gaps filled with new additions like Kohl Rabi, Kale and Leeks as well as a variety of Lettuce. There are pods on the Broadbeans and the Onions and Garlic are nearly ready. We're still harvesting the Purple Sprouting Broccoli too.

In the Greenhouse Senior Infants planted a Fig Tree and Junior Infants added a Grape Vine. We hope to have lots of fruit before they leave the school in a few years! We also planted Lettuce, Calendula and Strawberries in here. 

We spotted lots of butterflies and bees on all the plants. The bees especially like the Comfrey. A special butterfly that we saw is the Holly Blue, which is very rare in this part of the country.

We added lots more bark mulch around the garden as well, especially in areas where it's hard to mow like between the vegetable beds and between the pond and the sensory bed. This should keep the weeds down too. 

Bealtaine in the garden

 

Today is the first day of summer and the garden is really springing back to life. We talked about the Ancient Fire festivals at the changing of the seasons and noticed all the signs of summer around us already.

Junior and Senior Infants heard the story of Sionnan and how the Shannon got it's name and we added lots of sounds and movement. 

Many flowers are starting to reappear. We spotted an Orange-tip butterfly and were delighted to see its food plant, the Cuckoo Flower, has appeared in our wildflower meadow at the front of the school.

The tadpoles have also grown a lot in the last few weeks and the pond plants have reappeared and are doing their job well, keeping the water clean.

A year after sowing the seeds the Purple Sprouting Broccoli is finally ready to harvest. Radishes, Chives and Fennel were also ready for tasting. The Broadbeans are flowering and the Garlic, Onions and Potatoes are growing well too. Some of the seeds we sowed recently in the greenhouse have also sprouted and the beds are now ready for planting up. The water harvesting system has been set up and we will soon have rainwater for watering our plants.

We also got lots more mulch and compost spread on the spiral beds and around the sensory plants and fruit bushes near the pond. We are all looking forward to seeing how everything continues to grow for the rest of the summer. 

Pallets and compost

We like to 'reduce, reuse and recycle' as much as possible in An Grianán school garden. Today some classes got to learn more about tool safety and try out a handsaw, as we turned donated pallets into raised beds and shelves for the greenhouse. We are delighted with this donation. We'll also make a potting table and other useful garden furniture with the pallets.

There was great excitement when Junior Infants got to watch the big truck deliver more recycled mushroom compost. All classes learned a bit more about the chemical reactions going on as the carbon and nitrogen elements in the heap continue to decompose. We also got a look at the mycelium left from the mushrooms,  that helps plants communicate. The compost will add loads of nutrients to our new beds inside the greenhouse and around the rest of the garden. We'll let it settle for awhile before planting young plants into it directly.

Senior Infants found some Beech nuts under the giant Beech tree today, so we have planted them in pots to see if we an grow some new trees. It can take up to 40 years for the tree to produce nuts, hopefully we won't have to wait so long for the seedlings to sprout! 

Beech nuts sown in pots. 

The Nature Heroes committee have been busy keeping the new seeds and the rest of the garden watered, as we've had some lovely dry, sunny weather for the last while. 

We all checked on the tadpoles, who are getting big already. They are quiet and hard to spot in the morning, but come up and move around more later in the day. We also saw some pond skaters and a diving beetle. We also planted a Marsh Marigold at the edge of the pond today, and some Primroses in the Shady Spiral. 

Another busy day

There was lots of action in the garden again on Thursday. We used another bag of mulch to finish the greenhouse floor and start mulching around our hawthorn hedges. 

Lots of hands made easy work of weeding between the bushes first. We also pruned some of the hawthorn and stuck the cuttings into any gaps. Hawthorn is difficult to grow from cuttings, but some of them may root. 

We also took cuttings from our blackcurrant bushes which are much more likely to grow into new plants. We learned to tell the blackcurrant bush from other currants from its smell. These cuttings are now in pots in the greenhouse.

We sowed lots of the seeds collected from the garden over the autumn and winter. These included Nasturtiums, Great Mullein, Tree Mallow and the yellow daisy from near the pond. 

The tadpoles have hatched and are still eating some of the jelly from the frogspawn. They are tiny and very cute. 

First and Second Class have been learning about bees and pollination, so we had fun coming up with bee dances, which is how they communicate with each other, where the best flowers and nesting sites are.