Now you see it : now you don't !

Holly Bush in place- 3:45pm Friday

It may be half-term, but that hasn't stopped us working on the garden.  There was, until this afternoon, a rather ugly, unsightly (and very prickly) holly hedge outside the Dining Hall and immediately next to the raised beds in the Centenary Vegetable Garden.  No good to man nor beast : it's only purpose appeared to be to regularly scratch unsuspecting youngsters who leant too close.  This afternoon it was removed - leaving space for Phase 2 of the Centenary Garden project.  As they say - now you see it : now you don't.   All shall be revealed shortly.

Ready for Phase 2 - 5:45pm Friday

If you look at the photographs : the first was taken at 3.45pm, the second at 5.45pm.  The roots have been removed too - which leaves a clear, flat area for the next stage of the project.  Any guesses?  

Before half-term Casper set up the PlantCam to watch the fall of the autumn leaves from one of the large trees behind the Science Lab.  Hopefully he'll return to school to find a series of time-lapse images of the tree shedding its leaves.  This he will then edit, and post on next week's blog update.

Nearly ready for the Salad Bar!

And what of the four raised beds themselves?  Again, the weather has been kind : sunlight, rain and warm temperatures mean that everything has grown fantastically over the last seven days.

Take a look at this image photographed this afternoon.  A very healthy crop awaits our return. In fact, it shouldn't be too long before we can again enjoy a Friday lunchtime 'Salad Bar' at school.

In particular, the runner beans, carrots and herb baskets have made fantastic progress. 

All the hard work and preparation the pupils put in during the early part of the term has been worth it.   The weather is so good at present that we have opened the 'windows' on the poly covers to allow the plants to breathe over the weekend.

 

Garsons Farm, Esher

And finally a mention for our friends at Garsons Farm in Esher, who have been so supportive of our project.  They have just launched their new website - which now includes a Community Section and  features our Centenary Garden blog. Visit their website  www.garsons.co.uk and follow the links to the Milbourne Lodge project.

Growing Fast

After the excitement of our full school salad tasting last week the Centenary Garden has been quiet and the raised beds look rather empty.

Hopefully, under the protection of their poly covers, the harvested plants will begin to grow again and it won't be too long before we can hold another Salad Bar event.

Over the half term break we are looking forward to the removal of the prickly hedge at the side of our garden which will leave space for the development of 'Phase Two' of our Centenary Garden project.

All will be revealed soon!

 

(Larger version of this time-lapse is on our Vimeo Channel www.vimeo.com/channels/mlcreative)

Sophie and Ben (Form 3b) edited their time-lapse video of watercress growing.  It was filmed using a Pico iMage webcam  and I Can Animate software, with a 'daylight' bulb which allowed them to leave a lamp safely switched on constantly for several days.  Image quality and clarity is not great : but sometimes you learn more from your difficult projects than your successes.  It was filmed over 72 hours.  There was also the problem that the iMac would not run for longer than 24 hours without freezing, so there are edit points in the footage.  The watercress seeds were planted on paper towel and allowed to germinate, while kept moist.  Ben was keen to taste the cress when grown : but thankfully was persuaded not to!  Well done both of you.

Finally, George ( Form 4b) is our 'Blogger of the Week'.

This is his contribution -

Last Friday I loved the salad bar and I think I was the one with the biggest plate of salad. I really enjoyed having the salad and I did not want to waste any, because I had helped to grow it. I am grateful that Waitrose donated the buns for us to eat.

We had many different kinds of lettuces, which tasted different in every way.  I was really surprised because I had not known that all of the different types of lettuces and greens could taste so different.  I hope we will have another salad bar soon as I look forward to having a wider range of vegetables for us to eat.

Most days I stop and look at the vegetables, to see if they have grown.  I love the fact that they always seem to be getting bigger.

Thank you to the teachers for organising the salad bar and thank you to Waitrose in Esher.

Salad Days are here ...

While the four raised beds continued to flourish outside in the garden this week, Art lessons for Form 1 and 2 allowed the children time to decorate the covers of their Garden Journals using wonderfully decorative material prints. They really are going to provide an excellent  record of their garden adventure.

At last  -  pupils were able to enjoy huge platefuls of their own salad leaves at lunchtime today.  The queue stretched the length of the Dining Hall and everyone tasted a wide selection of their own produce : which they themselves had picked from the beds this morning.  Kale, Tatsoi, Giant Red Mustard, Land Cress, Corn Salad, Pak Choi - the list goes on. It was really good to see that everyone had a healthy appetite : and a healthy curiosity about the different varieties on offer. 

A huge thank you to the Lower Sixth boys who gave up their lunchtime to help serve at the Salad Bar, without them it would have been impossible.

The Pre-Prep children were the first to arrive, and encouraged by Mr Payne, placed a variety of leaves on their plates. It wasn't long before the bell went and the rest of the school arrived and enthusiastically piled salad leaves on their plates alongside their jacket potato meal .

Pupils also had the chance to rate their favourites on the 'Tasting Sheets' provided. Here are the results of the votes :

1st Place went to Lillian Lettuce. ("fresh, tasty, nice texture, super, scrummy, I liked this as it had a caterpillar in it!")  Score 22

2nd Place was taken by Diana Lettuce  ('crunchy, great,quite strong and two smileys')  Score 15

3rd Place went to Little Gem Lettuce  ("mild, mostly yummy, like popcorn, yummy yum,")  Score 14

4th Place was chosen as Spinach Perpetual  ("a little bitter, quite good, a little bit sour, cool, sweet")  

Score 13

5th Place was a tie between a number of salads including Rainbow Chard, Corn Salad, Land Cress, Tatsoi, Mizuna, Pak Choi, and Red Russian Kale. These  produced a variety of positive and negative responses including "weird, amazing, awesome, love Russia, didn't really like it but I ate it!  Score 10

6th Place was Giant Red Mustard and Pak Choi. (Thanks to Mr Cowdrey for his jokes here!) Other comments included " Spicey , loved it, bitter"  Score 9

7th Place was won by Cavolo Nero Kale where comments were divided some thinking it "too strong" while others said "amazing" Score 6

8th Place was awarded to .... the Chocolate Brownie ( Mr Cowdrey again!) and Alex - who only liked the bread! Score 1

Our sincere thanks to the team at Waitrose in Esher, who supplied us with hundreds of brown and wholemeal rolls and a variety of salad dressings today in support of our participation in  the RHS Campaign for Gardening in Schools. 

In ICT, pupils in  2S designed posters this week to advertise the Salad Bar - and these were displayed around the school.

The fine weather since the start of term had led to a really healthy crop of leaves  : and hopefully there'll be plenty more before Christmas.  Plus, there are still carrots, cabbages, spring onions and numerous other vegetables and herbs still to enjoy.

A reminder that we break up for half-term next week, and if you could volunteer to help  to keep an eye on the vegetable patch please get in touch with Mrs Bawden.

Hugo's home thoughts (Form 1)

Hugo and his brother have joined  Milbourne Lodge this term.  We are constantly encouraging pupils to write about their experience of working on this project.  Congratulations to Hugo who's taken the plunge!

This is Hugo's story:

I love the spring onions  because  I  like shoots that come out of the ground  and I like the beans.  The lettuces are spiking out and spreading their leaves.  The carrots are spiking to the top and the carrots are growing underground.

I like the garden since we are going to have the vegetables from the garden for lunch at school, I want to try some garden vegetables from our school plot as this is nice and healthy.

I used to live in Hong Kong:  it was polluted and we did not have a garden.  There were skyscrapers all over the place and no one had vegetable gardens.

There were lots of hills, but you couldn't  plant vegetables: you had to get them from other countries.

I am glad that I can be here because I like the vegetables, it is not so polluted and we are also growing some herbs and vegetables at home.

I am glad to be in England, because I like the school and I liked building the vegetable garden.

Hugo / Form 1

Success - RHS Campaign for School Gardening

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Congratulations to everyone who helped to make the garden the success it has been thus far.  We have just learnt from the RHS Campaign for School Gardening that we have successfully passed both our Benchmark 1 'Planning your Garden'  and Benchmark 2  'Getting Started' targets.  This is fantastic news as we are now well on our way to achieving our target of all five benchmarks by the end of term.

Amazing temperatures over the weekend produced extra excitement on Monday morning when everyone discovered that the broad beans had emerged.  All the vegetable beds have grown so much this week and the Lillian lettuces are almost climbing out of the salad bed.  Hopefully we will be able to pick a variety of salad leaves next week to serve in the Dining Hall as an accompaniment to the childrens' lunchtime main meal.  It will be really interesting for them to sample the different flavours and discover what they all taste like.  Many of the vegetables are a 'cut-and-come-again' crop which hopefully means there will be a steady supply of baby leaves throughout the term.

In the classroom Form 1 and Form 2 have been busy catching up on their garden journals. They are also making some really professional bookmarks for their journals - gathering leaves and adding materials to create an Art collage on one side of the bookmark, and using 'Wordle' in ICT to create word clouds of the words that spring to mind when they visit and work in their vegetable garden.   Form 1 have also been making some traditional wooden labels for their vegetable beds which will give extra information about all their plants.  Many other Art classes have been enjoying the last of the warm weather to create drawings and watercolour paintings in the garden.

In ICT pupils have looked more closely at the soilscape  of Surrey.  Using interactive tools available through both the the government Defra MAGIC programme and Cranfield University's LandIs Soilscape maps they have identified the soil type specific to our area of Claygate.  





Next week we hope that some pupils and parents will volunteer to help  to keep an eye on the vegetable patch over half-term.  (Please contact Mrs Bawden if you feel you might be able to spare a few minutes one morning or evening over the holiday period).