Young Gardeners: Growing gardeners of the future - August 2011

This month we have had some changes within the Whitgift School kitchen garden. As the school has now achieved academy status there is a new system for lessons and this has made way for more students. So I have all the original students plus a group of year seven students and another group in the afternoon. This is great news and of course has added some excitement to the project as lots of students are now involved and this spreads the message to more of the school.

Water problems solved

Firstly this month I must talk about water; even with a hook up to the drain pipe the water barrel wasn’t filling up because we have had no rain. In fact for eight weeks we hadn’t had a drop and as you can imagine this was having a great effect on what we could grow and how quickly it was developing. So to combat this we invested in a 1000 litre water tank. It originally had Worcester    Sauce in it so needed pressure washing out, but there is still a faint smell of the sauce and that caused much amusement among the students.

Of course having the means to store a large amount of water was only the first step, we now had to fill it. No rain was forecast so we borrowed the fire hose from the top of the stairs in the building, led it down and out of a top window. We turned it on to clear the sulphur and filled the barrel. I know it’s cheating because we are aiming to be self-sufficient, but it’s so dry it’s impossible for anything to grow, so thanks go to Jim the caretaker for the idea in the first place.

Now with water in place Amber took charge of extracting it from the barrel. She took the spare hosepipe, chopped about 4m (13ft) off the reel and sank the whole hose pipe into the top of the barrel. Then Amber put her finger over the end of the hose with the whole hose submerged, drew it out of the barrel putting the thumb end lower than the water level and hey presto she had created a siphon and we have running water! So bottles, watering cans, containers and all sorts were filled that day to soak all the beds through.

One thing that has fascinated the students is the colour of the potato flowers. They hadn’t realised that potatoes flower in the first place, but the ‘Blue Danube’ potatoes have a lovely blue flower with a yellow centre and just about everybody who passed through the garden asked what the vegetable was.

Whitgift radish fest

know last time I mentioned radish, well we have an abundance of this salad growing in the garden. It is ideal for us as it is quick to grow and there is a certain satisfaction for the children in pulling the roots out of the ground, especially when they have grown them themselves. So radish in abundance is wowing students, teachers and parents. Skie is especially keen on this veg and was delighted to pull a handful of ‘Pink Dragon’ radish from a small space in the corner of one of the beds.

Katie pulled a whole bag full of ‘Zlata’ Radish and Morgan pulled even more ‘Pink Dragon’ ‘Ilka’ and ‘Amethyst’ Radish, which he only planted four weeks ago and was already large and full of flavour.

The radishes have also proven a great opener for the new year seven students. They haven’t got around to planting yet, but I had saved a little for them to pull out. Sophie pulled out a 13cm (5in) long ‘Shunkyo’ radish. It was deep pink in colour and as she said, looked very much like a carrot, but pink. After giving it a scrub in the caretaker’s office, it was sliced and eaten and even I was surprised to find a sweet, but hot flavour.

One problem we have had is with the ‘Mooli’ Japanese radish. It has bolted very quickly (flowered and run to seed). We were looking forward to long white radish with a mild flavour, but now the students understand that even the fastest vegetables in the garden don’t always grow as they should. The problem was probably due to the hot, dry weather and it shows them the link between their produce, gardening and the weather. So even our failures are useful in teaching the children some valuable lessons.

High tech spuds

New technology was brought into play when two new students decided to plant a bag of seed potatoes they had been given. We found a bed deep enough for them and before I had a chance to tell the pupils how deep and far apart to plant the tubers they had looked the variety up on their mobile phones to get the planting information from the internet. I was most impressed at their initiative!

Mixed mustards

Mustard has also made a refreshing change. In the corners of the triangle beds we planted seeds of mixed mustard leaves. This too caused amusement as the students see mustard as a creamy brown and yellow paste that they put on their hot dogs, so to see a leaf vegetable with the same taste did make them wonder. Some of the students washed the leaves and tried them straight away. Some added them to their sandwiches and some refused point blank to try them as they know how hot mustard is from a jar. What’s great here is it’s making them think about what they are growing, what they eat and where it all comes from.

Full of beans... and other veg

We have broad beans growing in the middle triangle beds and French beans on the other side of the centre. The bean pods are already growing well and this adds to the excitement as the students can now see how fast the beans are developing. We also have kohl rabi growing in three different colours. The varieties are red ‘Azure Star’, green ‘Luna’ and white ‘Lanro’ which are now attracting attention as the stems are starting to grow and of course are looking different to all the others!

We also have white, yellow and red beetroot, purple carrots, black, yellow, red and white and long green climbing beans. A collection of secret vegetables has also been planted in a separate area of topsoil that was accidently covering an old Juniper bush. What has been planted is anybody’s guess, and maybe they will grow and maybe they won’t. It’s an experiment and I am sure if they do flourish my apprentice Darren Hayden and Morgan will be most impressed!

One thing that KG editor Steve Ott commented on when we were chatting recently is the fun that the students seem to have when they are gardening and I was glad to agree. It is a relaxed time for them in the garden and there isalways a little joking around, which does go towards the overall atmosphere as you will see from some of the pictures reproduced here. I hope you enjoy them.

The Whitgift Garden Project

At Whitgift Senior School the Inspiring Communities Government Fund made it possible for the school to team up with John Cavill to design and build the garden and help educate the children through gardening. It aims to lift the aspirations of all the children in the school through learning outdoors.

Follow progress each month in KG and you can also log on to John Cavill’s website at www.simplygardening.co.uk/whitgift.html to view the latest information.

If you have a school project you’d like us to feature in KG simply contact Steve Ott: sott@mortons.co.uk

Go to the on-line gallery for more photos>>