Sowing and Preparing for Apple Day

We managed to get our last peas for wintersowing in on the 10th, the other ones are already showing. Filling the bed we made the week before with a mixture of soil and well rotted manure we hope all will grow well.

Sowing peas

There are so many moles in our garden, but good, we can use the soil they are digging up to fill up our raised beds - and its fun at the same time.

digging up molehills is fun

In preparation for Crosshill Apple Day on the 23rd of November we dug out the plant holes already, what hard work that was as there are soooooo many stones in the ground. But they found a place around our tadpole puddle and make that look all nice and provide hiding places at the same time.

Digging out plantholes

Bulbs, Seeds and kind Donations

We were lucky with the weather again and were able to plant a lot of spring bulbs (kindly donated by Wilkinsons in Irvine as well as a huge bag full of seeds - THANK YOU VERY MUCH).

We did some wintersowing of peas:

Build new raised beds for more peas (and later raspberries as well):

And had lots of fun whatever our task was. See here our new and very useful wheelbarrow which we were able to buy with money kindly donated by Carrick LETS, who gave the Eco Club £400 - how wonderful is that? Thank you so much and it has already proven to be of so much help.

Crosshill Savoy Bug Hotel Open for Business

 

After weeks of hard work the Crosshill Savoy Bug Hotel has finally opened its doors for business.  Rooms come with all mod cons, en-suite and at a weekly rate of only 60 stones. So come on bugs, toads, mini beasties, enjoy the luxury of a beautiful place to overwinter, elevators and spa available too.

Sunflower Competition winners

The tallest sunflower was grown by Louisa with nearly 3m height.
Lauren grew the sunflower with the biggest head with 21 cms.
Very well done you two and well done and thank you everyone else for taking part. This competition raised enough money to buy some apple trees for the garden which we will plant beginning of November.

Sunflower Competition

Will all participants of the sunflower competion please measure their sunflowers and hand the results in centimeters into the office/Pam/Annette by 20/09/11.

The winner will be announced at the first eco club meeting this term and also here.

Please measure even if the storm has kicked down your sunflower or its has started dying down. We will only need to measure the length of stem from on top of soil to where the stem enters the flowerhead for the tallest sunflower, and the diameter of the seedhead (not the yellow petals) for the biggest head.

Please leave your sunflowers to develop their seeds, the birds in your garden will thank you.

Good luck!

Litter, litter, litter

On our second committee meeting we conducted a survey outdoors to find out just how big the issue is:
It is BIG! We found 142 pieces of litter, but not only crisp packets and sweetie wrappers as you would expect to find in a school. NO! Our survey teams found beer bottles en masse, and also, in the car park, cigarette ends. Meaning that not all adults seem to be the positive role model they are supposed to be.
For the sake of our health and the environment, can we ask everyone to please keep Crosshill Primary healthy and tidy and be a good role model for the children?

School has begun and Eco Committee has started

It is nearly three weeks now that school has started again, feels like we have never been off....

The school has now regular hands on committee meetings every week when all pupils can choose a committee of their choice to take part in. We have 10 pupils on the eco committee and three adults.

During our first meeting we decided to concentrate on achieving the Green Flag for Crosshill. For this to happen we have to work on three topics of which one has to be "Litter". The second topic we chose to work on is "Bio-diversity" as we are well into this one already with our masterclass last year, the variety of habitats we have already started and all the planting we have done. The third topic we chose is "Food" - here we have already prepared the way last year by raising money to buy fruit trees, making raised beds and planting our own fruit and veg (and were they yummy!). Kids who did not even want to plant peas ("yuck I am not planting peas - they are disgusting") were very very keen to harvest them and proclaimed the to be absolutely delicious!

So we are looking forward for the eco club to start again to get all those things that need be doing in the garden done before winter puts an end to it.

Plumtree Success with Primary Seven

Primary 7 were given a plum tree by the parent council on their last day of school to commemorate their time at school. This is the first of a new tradition of P7s planting a tree at end of term. the Eco club wishes you lots of fun and great success at Carrick Academy.

Woodpecker on our birdfeeder

This woodpecker always comes to our garden to feed on the birdfeeders. Recently he has taken to bring his mate. He is very secretive and shy, but we managed to catch him on camera, so we thought we share, enjoy.

Lucky to have sunshine again

Last eco club meeting today before the summer holidays and we could harvest a lot of peas.
We had some plants to propagate and there was weeding to be done (again).....



We were lucky to see tadpoles in all stages of development:

And we topped up the log pile to create an even nicer habitat for wildlife and to give the emerging froglets (soon hopefully) a nice shady spot to hide away.

Sunshine and Summer Flowers (and the First Peas)

We were so lucky today with the sun burning down, so we all could get out to do some serious planting and got all the sweet peas and herbs in.

The community garden group gave us some plants they had left over and we planted them at the little tadpole puddle (which also has a little water snail inside). Looks very pretty and colourful. Thank you!

The first peas were ready to harvest today and some of us could have a really yummy snack.

 

Crosshill Summer Fete

At Crosshill's summer fete last Saturday we had a plant stall to raise money for fruit trees to plant in our school garden. The children (and adult helpers) worked really hard, sowing, transplanting seedlings, making labels, making recycled bird scarers and decorations. The weather was really lousy, so we all had to cram into the school, but still, we sold some plants and made enough money to buy some trees. Thanks to everyone who bought something.
We sure have some really good salespeople in the eco club!