Ellon Academy Gardening Pupils feature in the RCHS newsletter

Last month, the Royal Caledonian Horticultural Society gave us a mention in their newsletter along with a photograph of Dougal:

The Royal Caledonian Horticultural Society (The Caley) is Scotland’s national horticultural and gardening society. We aim to encourage and improve the science, art and practice of all types of horticulture and to advance education in gardening and horticulture for everyone.

GROW & LEARN NEWS

Pupils from Ellon Academy in Aberdeenshire have also been busy making sure that their school garden was left in the best possible way before the school closed. They were planting potatoes, suppressing weeds and maintaining the ‘End Polio’ crocus pots, all before heading home with their ‘Growing Kits’ from teacher Susan Swallow. To find out more have a look at their fantastic blog page, Eagerbunch.blogspot.com

Sue, Ellon Academy's Support for Learning Teacher, has also devised a series of gardening games and activities that complement our Grow & Learn Award. Sue uses these resources as a way of reinforcing the learning in a fun, interactive way. To enhance the additional activities with subjects that include wildlife ID, biodiversity and plant ID, she enjoys using memory pair games and ‘Top Trumps’ cards from various sources.  A set of invertebrate Top Trump cards can be found at www.tes.com. There is also a template card in case you are inspired to produce your own game so you can choose what aspect of horticulture or nature you want to consider.

A picture of Jacob is also featured on their Grow and Learn anchor page - this was taken during the recent S3 Award Ceremony where pupils were presented with certificates from Jim McColl. 

We would also like to congratulate our friend and supporter Mr Jim McColl:

CALEY NEWS   Congratulations to Jim McColl MBE, former Caley Honorary President and an SHM holder. He has been recognised by the Royal Horticultural Society and awarded the Victoria Medal of Honour. Established in 1897, with the assent of Her Majesty Queen Victoria, the Victoria Medal of Honour (VMH) may be awarded to British horticulturists deserving of special honour by the Society. Only 63 medals may be held at any one time, in recognition of the duration in years of Queen Victoria’s reign.

In other news, I am very pleased to report that Pupil Support Assistant Fiona Grant and her husband Sandy have been given special permission to carry out essential work in the garden to keep it ticking over during the current closure.  

This is very exciting as they are both experienced gardeners and are happy to help us out.  They have done a fabulous job so far with strimming and mowing...

...weeding...

...sowing seeds...

... and planting.  

This means we will have crops to harvest, cook, eat and sell on our return to school.  

You can see the potatoes that Dougal planted on the last day here on the right of the photo - they are coming on well 🙂

They are also keeping on top of the weeds just outside the gate - particularly dock plants, to stop them seeding over the fence into our borders!

Sandy even took our mower home to give it some much needed TLC (Tender Loving Care!)

So well done to Fiona and Sandy - we can't thank you enough for keeping our garden in good order whilst we stay at home to stay safe! 

Meanwhile Miss Swallow has been sowing lots of seeds at home - here pumpkins, squashes and courgettes.  She has now taken them into the garden for Fiona and Sandy to plant out soon.  There are also aubergines and a cucumber to plant in the polytunnel. 

So a lot of garden news despite the closure.  We hope you enjoyed the photos - keep checking the blog for more updates in future and in the meantime please stay safe and follow government guidelines to help stop the spread of corona-virus.

National Gardening Week SUNDAY

Deck Chair – a word we all know!  Do you have one?  Today’s word is easy to remember but important none the less!  It allows us to slow down, take a minute, rest and reflect.  We can use it to relax between jobs or just sit out to read a book, skype with a friend, or listen to the birds and other sounds in our garden.  Just like other tools, we keep some deckchairs in the shed at school.  We look after them by putting them away out of the weather and then they look after us when we sit and get rested in them.  We have several so folk can chat with a snack too!

Did you know:
John Cham submitted a patent design in 1855 for simple, wooden folding chairs with comfortable woven backs.  They soon became a regular fixture on decks of cruise liners, and so were given the name 'deck chairs'

Click here to watch how NOT to use a deckchair!

Enjoy the rest of your weekend and see you next week in our TEAMs meeting!

National Gardening Week SATURDAY

Prick Out Seedlings – Today’s phrase is something we do to the seedlings once they have developed “true leaves”.  They might get crowded and run out of nutrients in the seed tray or pot where they germinated.  If we left them there, they would eventually die so we need to pot them up.

The seedlings are very delicate and it is quite a tricky process to prick them out.  If we grab the stem, we might damage it and kill the plant.  Instead we hold them by the seed leaves (remember these?).  The seed leaves will soon die back anyway so we can lift the seedling out by the seed leaves without worrying about killing the plant.  

Once holding the seedling, we drop it gently into a hole in the compost and firm it around the roots and hypocotyl.  A little water, sunlight and time, and the seedling will settle into its new environment so that growth can take off again.  Once it has grown, it will get potted on into a bigger pot and later go into its final growing spot – be it a container or in the ground.

I can’t talk about pricking out seedlings without mentioning the two handy tools that help us!  You have used these and know their name so this is revision!  There are:

 1) A Dibber – helps to make a hole in the compost or ground so will vary in size depending how big the hole needs to be.  A dibber can be like the on in the picture, but if you don’t have one, a pencil, short piece of cane or even your finger will do the trick!

2) A Widger – “wid-jer” – helps to tease out the seedling from all the others in the seed tray.  As I mentioned before, the seedlings are very delicate at this stage.  Our fingers can feel clumsy and big when trying to pull out the seedling especially when the roots have got tangled with the other seedling roots in the tray!  We hold the seed leaves, pull gently and use the widger to wiggle between the tangled roots until the seedling comes out.   Not a lot of people have these, but the are very useful if you are working with lots of seedlings!

This is Saturday today so no school work needed!  I hope the sun shines a little for you so you can check on your seedlings and give them some love and attention.  Please continue to stay home, stay safe and return tomorrow for our final “Word du Jour” for National Gardening Week!

National Gardening Weed FRIDAY

Striking Board – Okay yes, it’s more than one word but hey, who’s counting! 😊 You may have spotted a theme this week seeing as it’s spring.  Sowing seeds is keeping gardeners busy right now and a striking board is here to help.  Many people may say “it’s a stick!” but we horticulturalists know it’s a tool LOL

When we sow seeds in a pot or tray, we want to get the equivalent of Monday’s words (a “fine tilth”).  We also need the surface of the compost to be flat and uniform so that our seeds can germinate well.  

The striking board is used to “saw off” the top of an over-filled seed tray or pot.  We don’t push the compost down hard as we want it to have air in it.  Instead, we then gently pick up and “drop” the pot or tray 3 times to allow the compost to settle.  It is then ready for seeds to be sprinkled on top.

So there you have it – a striking board – can you name any other tools in the pictures?

Don’t forget to come back tomorrow for another word or phrase!

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!