St. Andrew’s School Allotment Project

This morning Otter BR worked their very own miracle up at the allotment. As it had been a couple of months since our last visit, when we got up to the allotment it looked incredibly neglected. There were weeds everywhere, plants out of control and in the wrong places. However, by the time we left the place had been transformed.

The children worked amazingly hard digging weeds out of the beds, clearing the paths and getting everything back under control, and by the time we left we’d even managed to plant out the runner beans, tomatoes, sweet peas and cosmos. We also moved some of the strawberries into better positions to give them more of a chance.

Our current topic is habitats, so we made the most of the opportunity to find minibeasts, with lots of children finding 1 spot and 7-spot ladybirds, caterpillars, snails ( ) and worms. I think the most impressive find though was the cockchafer beetle which someone unearthed as they dug up a huge clump of grass!

One of the most impressive things about our efforts up there was our attempt at getting a world record for how many children you can get in a very small garden shed. There was the most incredible rainstorm while we were up there that seemed to come out of the blue, so we got as many children as possible into the shed. The photo below shows our first attempt, but a few minutes later we had another downpour and this time got all but 6 children inside! The others (the brave ones!) hid around the side of the shed taking shelter…or hiding under Mrs Latham’s coat! As you can see from the photo, it didn’t stop us smiling!

I am incredibly impressed how well the children did today: they’ve got the whole allotment ready for everyone else and worked wonders! Well done everyone!

Unfortunately I don’t have time to do anything amazing on the blog with thesse photos at the moment, but I thought you’d rather see the photos now than next week!

We spent yesterday afternoon up at the allotment planting our amazing Rocket Garden, which we won in the Dig Down competition last month. It was delivered on Tuesday so we were itching to get it all planted before the long weekend…

A big thank you too to David, Amber, Lauren, Amber’s mum and Lauren’s grandad who came up after school to help me get the rest of the plants into the ground!

Taking the plants up to the allotment…

Before we started work…

Work in progress…

Planting after school…

NEWSFLASH from the School Council!

 Alert! Alert!  We, St. Andrew’s Primary School, have actually reached the final of the Cash for Schools project with the Gazette!

 You may remember there being a note in the Contact a little while ago about the Cash for Schools project and it’s been a great success!

 We are competing against four other schools and are guaranteed to win some cash for developing our school allotment.  We will win from £500 to £4000, but for an exact amount we need your help.  Every Tuesday, in the Gazette, tokens will be available from 9^th February to the 23^rd March and we need them to be collected by you, your friends, family and neighbours.  So spread the news, start collecting and win some cash for our school allotment!

Many thanks

The St. Andrew’s School Council.

p.s. keep your eyes open for more information about the bid and our photo in the Mid-Devon Gazette on Tuesdays.

It’s almost a year since we first had the allotment and look how it has come on! Well done and thank you to all of you who have planted something, helped with weeding, dug things up, picked things and even to those of you who have eaten the produce!

We are now busy making plans for next year, when we can improve on all of the things we have already tried out. Plans include class projects and even a bumble-bee cafe! Please come and help!!!!

We now have a regular system of watering our allotment and it is helping our plants to grow really quickly! Today we all went up to see what had changed since our last class visit. We spotted that there are lots more of the plots are now being used, the fruit is ripening and there is now even a pergola with a grape vine growing up it by our shed!

Having got the soil finally into our raised beds, we have been up twice this week to plant our seedlings. The plot for our class is finally beginning to take shape, with sunflowers, carrots and lettuce seeds from the National Trust’s “Food, Glorious Food” campaign, tomatoes, potatoes, kale and cosmos!

It’s early days yet, so things are rather small, but we’re keeping our fingers crossed that things grow quickly!

After gaining an incredible 111 Lunchtime behaviour stickers, we decided to have an extra class reward today-so went up to the allotment and spent half an hour gardening!

It was really sad to see how many weeds had grown in a short time: the paths were covered and you’d hardly know it had ever been dug. However, after 30 minutes of 2B tackling it with hoes, forks and trowels it looked amazing again!

Have a look at the photos and video ( allotment-006 ) on here. Things will change a lot over the next few days when we have the soil delivered, so watch this space!

How many changes can see in these before and after photos?

In the top one you can see the allotment as it was before our “Big Dig,” and the one at the bottom shows how it looks now!!!

This morning we had our first “big dig” to get the allotment underway! In just one morning we managed to get the entire area cleared, dug over, rotivated, the rotten posts removed and a fence put up around the entire plot!!!!!!

Well done all those people who helped! There was a really nice atmosphere, buckets of coffee (literally!) and we got loads done. Thank you!

Hi again!

Thanks for all the really nice comments we have been getting on this blog!  For technical reasons any comments you make may now take 24 hours to appear on here, but please do keep on sending us your ideas! We love having them!