We are delighted that today we have heard that we have just been awarded our level 3 RHS schools gardening award. The children have all played their part by watering, repotting, making the fertilizer and feeding the plants. We now look forward to working towards level 4!
In the garden the pumpkins continue to swell, the apple tree is laden with fruit and we have now picked a total of 12 cucumbers!
At the start of the summer term we were very busy repotting our sunflowers, planting out our cucumbers and beans and now we are seeing the results. The sunflowers are growing daily and have their flower heads appearing, we already have beans to pick and a cucumber that will be soon ready too. We have picked the last of our strawberries and served them up for snack. We also made our own nettle fertilizer which we all agree is very smelly!
We are working towards our level three RHS schools gardening award and part of it is to encourage wildlife into our garden. As always we are making sure our bird feeders are always full and as one of our Forest School activities we made some bug boxes which we have put together to make a bug hotel.
Everything is really starting to grow now despite having a little visitor who enjoyed digging up our seeds. The beans that we saved from last autumn that we planted have now grown big enough to be planted into the planters and are already starting to climb the canes. The strawberry plants are covered in flowers, the apple tree has been full of blossom and our herbs are starting to grow again. This year we have decided to design our own labels for our sunflowers and you can see from the photograph below we have some lovely illustrations.
The brilliant news is that we have some Great Tits nesting in one of our boxes and we have enjoyed watching them taking in nest building material; and then last week we saw the mother feeding one of the babies through the entrance hole.
We are leaving cutting the grass in the wildlife garden for as long as we can to let the insects make the most of the daisies and dandelions. The crab apple is also continually buzzing with the sound of visiting bees.
With the warmer weather arriving the wildlife garden is coming to life, the grass is growing and the area is now full of daisies. The willow is beginning to show signs of new shoots and leaves and will need to be tied in soon. We have already started to sow some seeds and we are now watering and waiting for the sunflower seedlings to appear.
The strawberry plants have started to produce new leaves and even a few flowers have appeared. As the plants were new last year we cut off the runners to allow the plants to establish themselves. However, somehow two small plants rooted themselves next to the planter so we have now planted these up.
The birds are continuing to visit the garden on a daily basis, with our two friendly pheasants always around waiting for the fallen seed. We have cleaned out our existing nesting box and have put up a new Robin nesting box on our shed in the growing area, now we just have to wait to see if they are used.
