Young Gardeners: What’s in store for 2012?

Regular readers will be familiar with the school garden, having read about our exploits as we got the plot up and running last year. Well, there have been a number of exciting developments since our last appearance in KG back in December. For a start we have use of an unused polytunnel which had been installed in the school grounds some time ago; it’s very long, wide and has the real bonus of a watering system. The watering system is on a timer and applies as little or as much as we want and with the extended season and all-weather working area that the tunnel provides, this should pay dividends.

The first job in the polytunnel was to clean it out. Now you would think that cleaning duties wouldn’t be popular with the students, but I never struggle to find volunteers. We would have liked to use the ground on which the tunnel was built for our crops, but  found that all the rubble from  building the school was buried there. At least it will drain well!

New membrane was pinned to the surface and a sponsor for new raised beds has been sought as we could really do with a revamp in that direction. The caretakers gave us a large roll of sticky backed plastic and any holes inside and out were filled quite easily. A word of advice from the students; if you have a hole, make sure it’s covered on both sides. If you cover it on the inside only then dirt and water can build up in the rip on the outside and soon the polytunnel will droop with the weight. We wish we had another smaller tunnel for the quadrangle kitchen garden, they make all the difference.

Recycled greenhouse

The recycled greenhouse has been taken down and rebuilt. We all decided that the old one was a little too ambitious so we dismantled it and made a new ‘lean-to’ version. It’s great to have the help and support of the caretakers of the school with this and our new recycled greenhouse will house the tomatoes grown in the way they grow them in Japan. We will have more on this as the season progresses.

John Whitgift crisps

This year the school will be growing its own vegetables to turn into crisps. How this will be done is a secret, but the local company who plan to sell them on the open market have a brilliant and quite unique way of producing them. While making the crisps they will be allowing John Whitgift Academy to produce its own and the whole process from seed tubers to vegetable to bags to crisps will be a school venture. We can’t wait for the crisp company to get going with it.

Jobs for February

This month, apart from preparing the tunnel for the season ahead, we are preparing the kitchen garden too. We are painting the raised beds and the shed including the inside of the shed that’s going to be cream and ready for the tool hangers from Nether Wallop Trading Company that we should have sorted last year. We are adding the nutrients to the soil by digging in all the green manure that was planted last November. The green manure worked well and we even had the initials of the school in the Woodblocx bed in the school colours of gold yellow and blue.
We are sorting the compost bins out too and turning over the compost. The more air we add the quicker it will rot and although a smelly job, I have a team of students who don’t mind doing it.

We have the seed potatoes ready for chitting and know too well that we have to keep them cool and dry at this time of year. Too much growth too soon and they use valuable energy that should go to making shoots and tubers in the spring.

Indoor greenhouse

Trapped between two science classrooms we have an indoor greenhouse that’s like a miniature but hot classroom. The history of it isn’t clear but all the school windows are mirror tinted except this classroom. It has a glass roof and heating if it gets too cold, but as it faces south it gets hot even in the middle of winter.

The classroom-cum-greenhouse will be utilised at some point throughout the year. We have discussed all the options with the students and we think that pots with watering systems in them should keep our vegetables going right through the winter months. Also things like tomatoes should be interesting if a little odd when harvesting them in January.

So all in all we have lots of exciting things to look forward to this year. I understand that we are also entered into the Grimsby in Bloom competition, so our kitchen garden will not just be a growing area for fruit and vegetables, but will include a display of flowers too, which of course takes some planning but adds lots more excitement to the overall project.
 
Companion planting and more…

After lots of research, in next month’s article we will be publishing the results of our companion planting trial carried out to discover which plants enhance the growth of others and which inhibit the growth of their neighbours. We have a long list, some of which we have tried first hand and we are going to experiment with more.

This is the start of another great year and we hope you will follow our story.

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The John Whitgift Academy Garden Project

At John Whitgift Academy 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