We all gathered to hear that some of the seeds we had
planted were through – sunflower “Russian Giant”. To stop them getting too
“leggy”, Mrs Morrison said she would take them home to her greenhouse until we
had a cold frame made at school. None of the peas, beans or sweet peas had
germinated yet. We chose two new “monitors” to make sure the seeds were kept
moist this week.
We heard that the honeysuckle we had planted had been taken
out of its planting hole. When we had a look it seemed that perhaps an animal
had taken it out so we replanted it.
Then we heard an
interesting fact. Worms eat earth and leaves and other rubbish in the soil and
then pass it out the other end. This helps to loosen up the soil and makes
plants grow better. Charles Darwin called them “nature’s ploughs”. If you see a
patch of land with no worms it is not good for growing. We also heard that if a
worm gets cut in two – perhaps by accident when we are digging – the bit with
the head grows again instead of dying. Very clever! But if a worm gets squashed
then that’s the end of it. So we are all going to take care of worms when we
find them and not squash them because they are so good for the ground.
Andrew and Ross are on the Newspaper Club and they are going
write something about what we do for the next edition.
Then we decided what to do today. Two of us with Mrs
Morrison tidied up the raspberry canes. There were lots of canes that were last
year’s and needed to be taken out. And the rest were too tall and needed to be
cut back. So we learned how to use secateurs carefully (special gardening
scissors!) and filled two black bags with the cuttings and other rubbish. The
bed looks much neater now.
Most of the rest of us, along with Mrs Whyte, went to plant
the hedge plants from the Woodland Trust. Mrs Whyte had dug 120 holes at the
weekend for the plants – she says her knees will never be the same again! We
managed to plant about half of the wee trees. There were canes to keep them
from blowing over, and clear plastic tubes to keep the wind off and let the
light through so they can get well rooted. We will have to plant the rest next
Tuesday.
Two of us started to clear up overgrown grass and trees at
the far side of the car park which we getting into a bit of a mess.
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| Honeysuckle replanted |
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| Tree planters hard at work |
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| Mrs Whyte and tree planters |
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| Newly planted hedges with canes and tubes |
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| Picking litter around the hedge |
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| Raspberry canes |
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| Some tree planters |
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| Newly planted hedges with canes and tubing |
