Hand over for the summer holidays

We have now handed over care of the garden for the summer holiday to folks from the Ellon Resource Centre.  They will be there every Monday to check on things, water, weed, mulch, feed...you get the idea!  We are very grateful for your efforts and hope you enjoy the place as much as we do!

Before departing, we unwrapped our water pipe (donated by Ellon Timber) and cut it into sections...

...to make hoops...

...to hold mesh over our crops.  This will protect it from the cabbage white butterfly laying its eggs.

We did this job just in time - as we were thinning the swedes before covering them, we found some caterpillars under this leaf eek!  We removed them and checked all the other plants before fixing the mesh in place with stones.

Other big jobs were to make a door for the fruit cage...

...and install a sprinkler system for the polytunnel so now it can rain inside (if we connect metres of hose pipe to the school building that is)!

We also cleared the polytunnel of the extra tables and excess plants so now the path is clear.

The excess plants (flowers, lettuce and vegetables) were planted out into the new raised beds...

...at the top of the garden.

More hoops are in place ready for new mesh to arrive.

Some extra flowers went into the herbaceous border which also had a last minute weed.

The chairs all had a wash and the patio was tidied.  It is difficult to leave our lovely garden but look forward to our return in August to see the fruits of our labour and enjoy more fresh produce.  Have a lovely holiday everyone!

Thanks to Ellon Timber and Wilkie Engineering Ltd

This week we have two firms to thank:

Ellon Timber have donated a 50m roll of water pipe which we plan to cut and bend over the raised beds to support protective netting above our crops.

Wilkie Engineering Ltd based in Newburgh have pledged steel rod that we hope to bend into shape to create plant supports.
Thank you to both companies - without such generous support, the garden would simply not exist in its current form!

Swede and kale ready to protect from cabbage white butterflies!

As our plants grow taller, they will need staking to stop them falling in the wind

In other news, folk from Ellon Resource Centre have started to come to help us look after the garden once a week.

P7 pupils have been mulching crops to prevent weeds

We collected shredded bark from the county roads depot so thank you to them too!

The potatoes have come on really well...

...as have the carrots (pots in the foreground here) which are ready to thin out.

At the other end of the garden, Euan strimmed the grass in preparation for laying a new plastic turf protection to create a wheel-chair friendly path.  The S3 Grow and Learn class raked up the grass. 

Euan also taught some other pupils to lay paving slabs.  We eagerly await the result of the Tesco public vote to see how much more funding we will be awarded for our polytunnel classroom.  If we get enough, we should be able to continue path building around the garden too so fingers crossed!

Meanwhile in the polytunnel, plants have all been coming on.  Hanging baskets have been collected by staff as the term comes to an end.