Well, we may have broken up for the school holidays, but it is still all go in the school gardens.
On the last day of term, the Year Six leavers planted an apple tree together as a reminder of their time spent at Fagley Primary. Each child wrote a message on a scroll describing how they felt they had blossomed whilst at Fagley Primary. These were buried with the roots of the apple tree to signify that whilst they have roots at our school, they are growing up and moving on to pastures new.
The following poem accompanied their messages:
As we plant our apple tree,
We take a step on life’s journey.
For success and happiness we strive
Our apple tree will grow and thrive.
As we move on to pastures new,
May our tree grow tall and true.
And when its blossoms bloom in May,
Wish us luck along our way.
When fruit hangs heavy from its boughs,
We will make you proud, as
we do now.
To help the tree along its way, the children placed some bone meal around the roots. Unfortunately, this nutritious plant feed seemed to have attracted an unwelcome visitor. On Tuesday, I called in to school to catch up on some weeding and discovered that our tree had been dug up! The hole had been completely emptied of soil and I can only assume that it was the work of a fox in search of the bone meal. I replanted the tree and added a layer of pebbles over the soil to hopefully deter any diggers. I checked on the tree today and there doesn't appear to have been any more attempts to dig it up, so hopefully, the tree will survive its ordeal.
Elsewhere in the school gardens, things are progressing well. The Olympic Rings are looking splendid and would be worthy of a place on the winning podium (after I gave the grass ring a bit of a haircut!).
In the kitchen garden, the lettuces and peas are doing very well, but the brassicas are suffering a bit. The changeable weather caused some bolting and splitting and the snails, slugs and caterpillars are making their presence known. A spot over-zealous carrot thinning by some of the children before the end of term has left some space in one of the vegetable beds, so I will be planting some quick growing salad crops in the space over the next few days.
The fruit border has already yield some tasty blueberries, raspberries and gooseberries, though the weeds are taking some controlling.
One other job to tackle over the holidays will be to add some bark chippings around the base of our fruit trees to prevent the grass from encroaching and starving the trees of nutrients.
Hopefully, we can rely on some more sunshine over the coming weeks to ensure we have a good selection of ripe produce to chose from come the Bradford Schools Food and Flower Show in September.
