National Gardening Week THURSDAY

Compost.  A great word!  It can actually mean two things:

1. The process of rotting.  We compost food left over from the canteen in our hot RIDAN composter.  We mix it with sawdust so it can rot down more quickly without getting too smelly!
2. A growing medium.  We use bags of compost for potting up our seedlings and potting on plants.  Compost is different from soil but both are used to grow plants in. 

Compost is made from the process of rotting (point 1 above) – so anything that was previously alive can rot down and create compost (point 2 above).  

We sieve our compost heap once it is well rotted.  It turns a lovely black colour and the sieved compost is fine and crumbly.  We have been adding it to our raised beds both in the polytunnel and outside to add nutrients to the soil.  

We have also used some to pot up seedlings in the past. 

If you are wondering, soil is also a growing medium.  Soil is the thin layer of material covering the earth's surface and is formed from the weathering of rocks. It is made up mainly of mineral particles (tiny bits from the rocks), organic materials (things that used to be alive but have now died and rotted down – like leaves or twigs), air, water and living organisms (bugs, bacteria and mini-beasties) —all of which interact slowly yet constantly.  Soil is talked about according to the type of rock that is it formed from – like clay, sand or chalk.  Our garden has quite “clayey” soil so we need to add composted material to open it up and improve the structure.  The perfect garden soil is called loam – every gardener’s dream.  It feels soft and crumby between your fingers.  I love loam!  Do you?
As you take your exercise today, look down at the soil and think about what rock it might be made from – is it light or dark, hard or soft, crumbly or chunky?  Also look around the ground and spot things that will be starting to rot down – they will be composting into compost!  S3 pupils: try to remember three things that you spot and make a note for next week’s TEAM meeting!

National Garden Week - WEDNESDAY

Photosynthesis.  Many of you will know this is one of my favourite words!  It is made up of two parts:

1. photo = to do with light (like photography, photo-sensitive)
2. synthesis = making, putting something together (like a synthesiser for making music, or putting together ideas to write an essay, or mixing substances to produce a compound in a chemical experiment)

Green plants do this every day all day!  They use sunlight to power a chemical process.  It is very complicated and yet very simple too!  Let’s keep it simple here:

Plants USE light, carbon dioxide and water to MAKE sugars

The complicated word for different kinds of sugar is carbohydrates (“car-bo-hi-drates”).  The plants make leaves, stems, flowers, roots and seeds out of their carbohydrates.  This means we can eat salad, potatoes, carrots, apples, raspberries, tomatoes, pumpkins…I could go on and on!  Even if you love burgers and steaks, they wouldn’t exist if the cows didn’t have grass to eat – and of course grass is a plant that uses photosynthesis to grow.  Even fish in the seas depend on phyto-plankton which are plants and they use photosynthesis to grow and reproduce.

The process of photosynthesis produces not only sugars but oxygen too.  That’s handy for us as we need to have oxygen in the air to be able to breath!

So as you venture outside for your exercise and fresh air today, spare a moment to look at something green – something that is using photosynthesis to grow.  It is spring and many seedlings are just starting this process.  See if you can spot some seedlings – even if they are just weeds.  Also, look up to the bigger trees and branches to see if you can spot a leaf starting to uncurl.  Photosynthesis is like an engine that powers life on our precious planet.  Take a deep breath and then say the word out loud: PHOTOSYNTHESIS!

I love it!  Do you?  S3 pupils – you can tell us what seedlings you spotted in our TEAMS meeting tomorrow 😊

Picture Copyright: By At09kg : originalWattcle : vector graphics - This file was derived from:  Photosynthesis.gif:, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49183032

National Gardening Week TUESDAY

Tuesday's word is:

Hypocotyl - this is a great word!  It is pronounced "hi-po-cot-ill".
Say it a again just to show you can!!

It is the name we give to the young stem of a seedling - the part below the seed leaves that develop.  The "seed leaves" are the first to grow and start photosynthesising to make food for the plant to grow.  Once "true leaves" grow these seed leaves die away as their function has been performed.

See how hairy these hypocotyls are?  These are tomato seedlings.  You can see the seed leaves with true leaves above.  When they are potted up, the hypocotyl can be sunk down into the compost so the seed leaves are just above it.  Roots will then grow out from it and this will help make a sturdy plant as it grows taller.

This is a pumpkin seedling - look at its large seed leaves!  Seed leaves are usually this simple shape.  True leaves will be different for each species of plant - the true leaves are growing well here.  Again,  I will bury the hypocotyl below the soil when I pot up these pumpkins.

Have a great day and please come back tomorrow to find out the next word!

Happy National Gardening Week 2020!

It will be rather a different National Gardening Week this year as school is "from home" during the coronavirus pandemic.  I did return to the garden today to check things over and everything is doing just fine!  See below for a few photos.

I hope my lovely pupils are managing to get out into your own gardens or do a walk outdoors each day to spot some signs of Spring.  I thought each day this week, we could have a "Word du Jour" for you to learn and talk about so here we go:

Monday - "A fine tilth" - A phrase rather than a single word but a lovely one all the same!  If you have been sowing any seeds outside recently you may well have created "a fine tilth" to sow the seeds onto.  It is the end result after you have weeded and raked to create a lovely crumbly fine textured surface to the soil.  This means there are no big lumps or stones for seeds to get caught on.  Seeds can fall on the perfectly prepared surface and germinate with ease so long as they have some water and the correct temperature of course.

Our crab apple tree is in beautiful blossom...

...as well as the tree grown in the shape of a fan.

The polytunnel beds needed some weeding.  Here are the onions before...

...and after!

The salad rocket has gone to seed so bees are enjoying the flowers...

...and the winter purslane too!

The grape vine is coming into bud in the polytunnel...

...and outside the rhubarb is well on the way!

The pansies are still alive thankfully!  They are a lovely colourful sight.  I'll keep you posted over the coming weeks and months and there will certainly be many jobs for us to do on our return to catch up with things again!  In the meantime, please stay safe, keep up your good work at home and speak to you soon on TEAMS!