Thursday 20th August

Six members met today along with Mrs Thomson, Mrs Whyte, Mrs Morrison and Mrs Fraser our new helper.

 

We had a wee chat about all the things that have grown while we have been on holiday and decided there were some things we should harvest today and share between ourselves. So we armed ourselves with big forks for the potatoes (in case there were some where the “shaws” (the leafy green parts of the potatoes) had been taken away. We wondered why anyone could be so mean as to take the shaws or dig up the potatoes we had grown and decided they must never have grown anything themselves. We also took trowels in case we had time to plant cabbages and lettuces.

 

We were quite excited to see the carrots in the courtyard – we could just see the tops of some of them above the earth and the foliage looked very good. But they are still too small to dig up so we need to wait a few more weeks to see how big they will grow.

 

The first thing we did was look at the roses at the main entrance. Mrs Morrison explained we needed to keep taking off the dead heads of the flowers so the plant would put all its energy into new flowers and not into the seeds in the pods behind the dead flowers. The Jubilee Rose has lovely big flowers and a sweet perfume.

 

Then we tackled the potatoes. Triumph! Lots of them and we filled half a trug at least. We will divide these up to take home tomorrow once we have some plastic bags. We learned that you have to take out even the tiniest potato otherwise they will grow next year and mess up the bed. We only put the fork through a couple of potatoes and these need eaten soon or they will rot and affect the others.

 

Then we started on the raspberries. The canes have grown enormous. Mrs Whyte thinks they may have had too much nitrogen fertiliser which encourages leaf and shoot growth rather than the fruit. And of course there are raspberry plants springing up all over the place because they spread by sending out roots and then sending shoots up from the roots. We need to think about this bed next year and what to do with it.

However the fruit was delicious and sweet and the strawberries that were left were excellent as well. A lot of the strawberries were past because they had ripened when the school was on holiday.

 

We picked any peas and beans that were ripe as well. And then we had a look at the turnip. Everyone got one of these. There are still some too small to harvest so we can get at least another one each later on.

 

We each got a wee carrot when we thinned them out again. The carrot plants need to be a bit apart so they can swell up to a decent size. If they are too close together they will stay small. Let’s hope the carrot root fly don’t get at them!

 

Some of us picked sweet peas. What a lovely perfume. Some went to Mrs Murray and Mrs McPherson and some were taken home. There will be plenty more flowers so long as we keep taking off the dead heads. They will last till the frost comes of a very strong wind blows them down.

 

We discussed the sunflower seeds. We agreed to collect some when the petals fall off and leave some so the birds can have some to eat.

 

We got a lovely present of a cold frame from Mr Fraser and we will plant some micro salad leaves next week and keep the in the cold frame.

 

Altogether a very satisfying day seeing the produce that we grew ourselves from seed.

 

Sam didn’t have an interesting fact for us so he is going away to find out about the origin of potatoes for us for next week.

Summer Holidays 2015

While the school was closed for the holidays, everything kept on growing!

The grass needed cut and various shrubs at the main entrance needed to be kept down a bit, so Mrs Whyte and Mrs Morrison were kept busy.

 

Luckily for them, it was quite a wet summer so no watering of the beds was required. But the tomatoes, courgettes, cucumber, pumpkin and pepper plants needed watering and feeding inside the greenhouse. Then rain outside didn’t get to them!

 

We also had help from Ross’s Dad (with help fron Ross) who strimmed the land where the bug hotel is and where we might develop a fruit garden. And Mr McKelvie removed the great big concrete slabs from the courtyard – fantastic!

 

The beans and peas grew and some additional seedlings (we had sowed the seeds towards the end of term) were planted. The radish “shot”. That means they grew big tall flower heads and became past their best. Next year we should remember to plant them earlier to make sure they are ready for lifting before the holidays.

 

The sweet peas grew quite tall and needed to be helped to cling onto the netting; and the honeysuckle, clematis and winter flowering jasmine are all coming along and clinging to their netting as well.

 

Unfortunately the greenhouse has suffered a bit of damage from passersby so we have attempted to repair it and have encircled it with wind barrier white netting. So the light will still get through and the wind will be stopped a bit. Hopefully the plants will do all right with this temporary fix.

 

There are a few cherries on one of the trees in the orchard and lots of apples.

 

Looking forward to our first meeting when school starts again – we are changing day to a Thursday this year.

 

 

 

Tuesday 23rd June

 The last meeting till after the summer!

 

It is the day of the P7 Leaver’s Dance so some of our members were not here. But for those who were it was busy and exciting.

 

We all signed a “thank you” card for Mr and Mrs McKelvie before we went outside. Then we had a wee look at the courtyard and saw some flowers on the alpine strawberries – so even if Mrs Morrison had knocked them over they seem to have survived! A few had died but we can get more next year.

 

The poppy has big buds on it and a wee single poppy has flowered – it must have come in as a seed because we did not plant it.

 

Mrs Whyte and Mrs Thomson took one group to edge round the big bed at the front entrance. That made the grass looks much neater. They also cut back large chunks of the conifer tree that had brown dead branches so it looked better and would grow again.

 

Mrs Morrison took another group to the raised beds where we did some weeding. It is amazing how the weeds seem sometimes to grow better than the things we have planted!

 

We found the first pea pods (not fully grown yet) and a couple of tiny bean pods. The peas have not grown very well but the beans are full of flowers. If our nest lot of peas germinate well in the greenhouse, Mrs Morrison will plant them out over the summer.

 

We each got a radish – it is only two weeks since we thinned them but they are fully grown now. It is just as well we thinned them out so they had room to grow. Some were a round ball shape and some were more like cylinders because we had planted two different types of radish.

 

We all each also got a (very wee) lettuce from the thinnings.

 

Some of us planted wallflower seeds so that we can plant them out in the autumn where the begonias are just now at the main entrance. And we also planted a planter full of gladioli. They should be well up when we get back after the summer and then flower in September. The planter is next to the dahlia.

 

Then some of the mums and dads and grans and grandpas arrived to see our garden. We showed them the raspberries and strawberries, the peas and beans, the turnips, the lettuces, the carrots, the radish and spring onions; all in the raised beds. We showed them the cucumber (it is looking a wee bit peely wally poor soul), the various tomato plants (there are a few flowers on two of them), the courgettes and the pumpkin in the green house. We showed them the sweet pea wigwam and the dahlia (my, how that has grown already). We showed them the fruit trees, the flowers at the main entrance, and, inside the school, we showed them the courtyard.

 

We also showed them the sweet peas and the sunflowers which are getting taller by the day

 

Mr and Mrs McKelvie came to visit as well so we gave them the “thank you” card. Mr McKelvie had brought a present for those who did not get a plant from him last week. So everyone got an “Ornithogalum” which needs to be watered sparingly about maybe once a week. Its common name is the False Sea Onion and its proper name is Ornithogalum Caudatum or Ornithogalum Longebracteatum – what a mouthful! Let’s hope we manage to keep them all alive. Mr McKelvie also said that he had lots of alpine strawberries so we could get some more from him to fill the gaps where some of ours had died.

 

We gave everyone who was at the club a wee note of the web site for this blog and a reminder that the first meeting next term will be on Tuesday 18^th August – see you all there.

Tuesday 16th June

Excitement, excitement! Both P5 groups, the P6s and the P7s were here today.

 

We all got ready for our walk to Woodlands Cottage, on the road to Chapel Farm.

 

It took us about 25 minutes of brisk walking (and lots of talking!) to get to Mr and Mrs McKelvie’s house. When we got there Mrs Mckelvie welcomed us with squash and biscuits which we ate sitting on the grass. We asked Mr McKelvie a few questions such as “Why do you like cactus plants so much”. He said he didn’t really know!

 

After that we split into wee groups to have a look in the four greenhouses where Mr McKelvie keeps around 2000 cactus plants and succulents. Now we know that cactus plants have spikes and succulents mostly do not. That’s the difference.

 

There were some we should not touch because it harms the plants and the plants might harm us. There were plants of all different shades of green and grey. There were some with lovely flowers and some without.

 

There was one plant that had been grown from a seed planted almost 60 years ago. It was over 2 metres tall. And we saw a plant that had a ring of flowers on it. We could tell the age of the plant by counting the rings on it above the flowers – there was a ring for each year. The rings were where the flowers had been each year.

 

We saw the “nursery” greenhouse where Mr McKelvie made new plants. One way of doing it is taking a wee bit of an existing plant and putting the part that had been attached into a sandy mixture where it grows new roots. Another way was breaking off a “leaf” and leaving it alone for a few weeks by which time it will have grown roots.

 

The “nursery” house also had a fig plant growing on the wall. That green house had been part of the walled garden of Houston House and the fig tree was quite old. There were figs on it. We heard that the greenhouse faces south so it gets lots of sun and keeps warm, while the wall keeps the heat and throws it back into the greenhouse – figs come from hot countries and need lots of heat to grow and ripen.

 

Once we had seen all the 4 greenhouses we were allowed to see the rest of the lovely garden. We heard that the garden had been in shade till just two or three years ago when a lot of large trees were cut down. That had let light into the garden and now Mr and Mrs McKelvie could grow lots of different plants.

 

When it was time to go we all thanked Mr and Mrs McKelvie and gave them a “seal of approval”. We also invited them to join us next Tuesday to see what we had done this year, even if our peas are much smaller than theirs were!

 

Then we reluctantly set off for the school again, walking the mile or so through the village. We passed St Peter’s Well which is in a field quite near Woodlands Cottage.

 

We all enjoyed our visit and learning about cactus plants and the succulents – and think we are very lucky to have a star of “The Beechgrove Garden” living in Houston and letting us visit his garden.

 

Our interesting fact this week is that sap from trees does not freeze like water does. That is because sap is very full of sugar which supplies energy to the tree. And in the cold, the sugar acts a bit like antifreeze in a car radiator. Some trees can survive to minus 62^oC – pretty cold!

Tuesday 9th June

Today there was a good turn out on a nice afternoon.

 

We split into two groups.

 

Mrs Whyte took one group to plant out lots of wee begonia plants at the main entrance between the daffodils. The daffodils are now over and we tied down the leaves and put the begonias in between. The daffodils will flower again next year but we want the leaves to keep growing and build up the bulbs so that we get lots of flowers in the spring. Once the leaves die down we can cut them back and we will see the begonias better. The bed will look lovely after a few weeks. Mrs Whyte said she would finish the planting for us in the next few days.

 

Mrs Morrison took the other group to the raised beds. We had to hammer in some posts, lift the fleece and put some netting over the beds to keep the animals (cats, foxes etc.) off. But before we put the netting over the seed beds we had to weed the beds. We were not so keen on that!

One other thing we had to do was “thin out” the radish. We had been a bit heavy handed with the seeds so there were too many seedlings growing. If we didn’t thin the out there would not be space between the plants to get a decent sized radish. The thinnings were wee tiny radishes and we took some home to eat.

 

We are all looking forward to our trip next week.

 

 

Tuesday 2nd June

The P5s had a trip today to New Lanark so we only had the 5 club members – but we worked hard!

 

The weather was windy but dry so we managed to get outside.

 

First of all we planted a box plant (Buxus is the correct name) in the duck in the courtyard. This is going to be trimmed into a duck shape as it grows. It was already too large in some directions so we had to snip bits of it off once it was inside the shape. It should look good in the future and be a nice feature in the courtyard inside the 4 square box plants. Shaping plants like this is called “topiary”.

 

We had a look at the various things we had planted in the courtyard. The carrots are almost big enough now to thin out but we will wait till at least next week. The anemones have a few flowers on them. They are brightly coloured and there are lots of buds just ready to come out. The agapanthus is quite slow growing but the tips are through and we will have flowers in the autumn. The ranunculus are still only leafy plants but we hope some buds will appear soon. The freesia are a disappointment – only a very few of the bulbs seem to have grown so we will miss them out next year we think. The lily of the valley has still to make an appearance but we are sure it will come through soon, and of course it lasts from year to year.

 

As for the alpine strawberries – Mrs Morrison managed to knock over the stack of pots so we had to put some of the plants back in (the ones that had fallen out). There are one or two plants which have died, but maybe we will get “runners” of the better ones and we can use these to create more plants for next year to fill the gaps.

 

Outside we had a look at the raised beds. The strawberries and raspberries are really coming on and we saw the first signs of tiny strawberries. The raspberries have still to flower but we can see lots of buds. Because there are so many raspberry canes, they are crowded in the middle and not so many buds there. Next year we need to thin them out a bit.

 

The lettuce are all through as are the radishes and turnips and even the spring onions. They are covered with fleece – not to save them from frosts because these are past (we hope!) but to stop cats and foxes and any other animals from digging among the wee seedlings. Next week we will take off the fleece and put some netting over them. We can’t put fleece over the peas and beans because we want insects to pollinate them. That means they move pollen from one flower to another so that the seeds (peas and beans) set and grow. The beans are growing well and the peas are coming on too.

 

One thing we need to get on to is the weeding. There are lots of wee weeds coming through. So once we are clear where the lines of seeds are we need to get hoes and take out all the weeds. We took some of the big ones out this week – some of them have very long roots! And we took out some raspberry plants that were growing in the wrong place – raspberries seem to stretch everywhere! The word for that is “invasive”. The roots grow along underground for a long way and then plants pop up along the roots.

 

Next we decided it was time to make some use of the greenhouse. The nursery dad who is kindly making this for us has not quite finished yet but it is nearly complete and warm inside. So we planted a green and a yellow courgette, two pepper plants, two cucumber plants, 3 tomatoes (another got accidentally broken) and one pumpkin. We hope that might be big enough to use at Halloween! We have still to get canes to support the tomatoes when they grow a bit, but we can do that later.

 

Last of all we made a wigwam in a tub beside the picnic tables and planted sweet pea plants to grow up them. We still need to put some netting around the wigwam.

 

It is exciting to see everything beginning to grow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tuesday 19th May

A great day for gardening – not too hot and not too cold. Just a bit of a breeze.

 

We divided into groups again.

 

One group helped Mrs Thomson and Miss McKenzie to stake up some of the wee trees we had planted as a hedge. They had got knocked over by the wind and (we think!) by footballs. So we hammered in the stakes and tied them up properly.

 

We all looked at the lovely blossom in the “orchard” and we are hoping for some nice apples in the autumn. If the wind blows too hard of course, the blossom will be blown away before the fruit has a chance to “set” – so we are keeping our fingers crossed.

 

Another group planted some lily bulbs in the middle of the daffodils. They should make a lovely show of colour in the summer. Next week we need to plant some nasturtium seeds to give some nice colour at ground level as well, because the lilies grow quite tall.

 

And a third group planted annuals along the fence. These are low growing and should fill up the border where the sweet peas are growing higher up. We planted lobelia and alyssum (blue and white respectively).

 

Some of us decided the sand play area could do with a bit of a clean up so the sand was shovelled out of the boats and cars for the smaller children.

 

We also noticed that the carrots in the courtyard – the seeds we had planted in the old bin liner – had just started to show through. And all our strawberry plants seem to have survived. Hooray!

 

We looked at the strawberries and saw that the flowers had begun to appear – and also the tiny wee buds on the raspberry canes. So we can hope for a good crop from each of these.

 

We all went up to the beds that had been put up for a “Digging for Victory” project last year. There were lots of fruit trees but the ground was very overgrown and there was a steep slope (not very safe). We thought we might be able to get the beds organised again by strimming the grass and making the slope a bit safer – so something to look forward to next year. That would give us more space in the raised beds for cabbages and sprouts where the raspberries and strawberries are just now.

 

Next week is an in-service day so we won’t meet for another two weeks. Hopefully there will be lots of seeds through and we can maybe plant the tomatoes and cucumbers and peppers in the green house.