Elmwood Juniors – Garden Blog

The children’s hard work over the spring term has started to reap the rewards with our current harvest of fruit and vegetables. Our garden continues to provide the school kitchen with healthy produce which are added to the school dinners and salad bar.

It’s harvest time in the Elmwood garden and our children have been enjoying a side dish in their fruit salads at lunch.

Please come and visit our flower display for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee which the children helped design, plant and maintain. It is located on the lawn area by the main school gate.

Mr Ozgu never misses an opportunity to discuss maths. Here he has organised the pots into four rows of six and asked the children to think mathematically and share what they could see. This week’s gardening group had a tour of our current crop and planted lots of sunflower seeds which you will hopefully see…
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The children are busy unpacking our summer flowers. Some of these will be used in our pots outside the school and some will be used to create a display of red, white and blue flowers to commemorate the platinum jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II.

Although we are yet to plant our spring crop, the mint that the children planted in STEM Week 2021 is in full flow so we made sure we delivered lots to the kitchen for our school lunches.

The children have been busy measuring our winter garlic, onion and broccoli plants. Unfortunately, some of our onion bulbs became an evening snack for some local wildlife but our garlic and broccoli crop are doing well and should provide us lots of healthy produce to give to the school kitchen later in the spring.

Mr Ozgu is explaining to the children the benefits of using rain water to water our plants. Harvested rainwater is much better for plants, lawns, flowers, fruit and vegetables than tap water. Rainwater is packed with wholesome nutrients, unlike tap water which is often treated with chemicals and chlorine. Plants and vegetables also flourish more…
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Mr Ozgu discusses the importance of the correct spacing when planting vegetables. The children used a ruler to ensure they kept the right gap between each onion and garlic clove. The onions needed 13cm and the garlic needed 10cm.

After a successful summer crop the children at Elmwood have been working hard to prepare the beds for our winter vegetables. This year, we will be planting onions, garlic and broccoli.