Raised Beds For Each Year Group

From next week, and in readiness for the forthcoming revamped Peaceful Area, each raised bed in the Belleville Vegetable Garden will be allocated to a Year Group.

We're aim to get a team from each year that will include teachers, students and parents, and they will look after their own raised bed from now on, although I'll happily help and keep an eye on things.





[Left] YEAR ONE

Yellow bell peppers and sunflowers

This bed is the closest one to the artroom. Most of the beds already have things growing in them as shown in the photos, but some of these are ready to crop and will need replacing with new seedlings.





 [Left] YEAR TWO

Aubergine, chilli, parsley

In reserve we already have some seedlings: Curly kale, carrots and leeks, and most of these are almost ready for planting.

[Left] YEAR THREE

Swiss chard ('Bright Lights'), parsley and coriander.

All students will be encouraged to take care of their year groups's raised bed, whether they're on a gardening team or not.


Nicola Hedley has a fund donated by Waitrose (which can hopefully be topped up by the PTA if requested) for buying further seedings and tools if required.

[Left] YEAR FOUR

Self seeded cougette plant (touch and go - we need a little more warm weather!), chilli, yellow bell peppers, rocket and dwarf runner beans

[Left] YEAR FIVE

Aubergine, tomato, chilli, strawberries and three pots of baby leeks. These need to be about the thickness of a pencil before transplanting into the ground

[Left] YEAR SIX

Ready for action!

School Food Matters

School Food Matters teamed up with Waitrose to encourage local schools to grow their own veg. They supplied Belleville with plug plants for growing on in the raised beds, and even supplied the paper bags for selling the produce in. Miss Hedley took five of her class to Waitrose today to sell the produce which sold out in just over an hour. She also asked the children to decorate the paper bags and make posters which added a splash of colour to the display!













We even had a visit from BBC London News who were covering the initiative.

RUNNER BEANS - A FRENCH MUMMY'S GUIDE

Speaking to a charming group of French mums at the school gates I realised not everyone knows the traditional way to prepare and cook that old English classic, the Runner Bean.





























There you go - easy!
Steam for 5-6 minutes, max.
Bean strippers will be available at La Cuisiniere I expect.

Garlic Garlic Garlic Garlic!

This year's garlic crop was easily the best yet. We sold all of the crop (about fifty bulbs) at the summer fair.

Disappearing Potatoes Shock

I'm not sure what happened but the potatoes have vanished. Until quite recently there were huge plants emerging from the bed closest to the artroom, but now all that is left is an empty, raked-over bed.









These photos were sent to me anonymously and show a gang of suspected desperados -possibly starving outlaws forced to forage for food wherever they can find it.






Good luck to them I say!

Tomato action!

Yes, we have no bananas, but we've got these tomato plants, last few remaining.




Tiny flowers about to appear! Treat 'em well and they turn into tomatoes. How do they do that! Have planted four plants in the school garden so far.

Strawberry cage

Fed up as I am with foxes and pigeons messing with me plants I´ve built a little cage - or at least some sticks with netting attached - to protect these stawberry plants. Fingers crossed!

Spring harvesting

In the foreground you can see the nasturtiums which we planted in order to attract blackfly and greenfly away from the runner beans. The beans themselves were grown by year one students.




I salvaged strawberry plants from the bed that was removed to make way for the new quiet area entrance. Most have been sold but the last few will be for sale on Friday at drop off, in the upper playground. The pots have been placed amongst the garlic plants.





The cabbages are fairly small then!






















Broad beans are almost ready for harvesting.














The potatoes are the ´first early´ type, so we should see the plants flowering soon.








These lettuces were sold yesterday. Mine had a few tiny slugs in amongst the leaves. Very nutritious!







Onions in the foreground. The leaves are delicious!

Quiet Area developments and new plantings

Click on images to enlarge
Major renovations of the 'Quiet Area' have begun. The idea is to make it less of a thoroughfare and more of a place for the children to go to read, play games and sit and talk. A new canopy is being built and walls are being painted a shade of olive green. Very calming!


Both access gates will go, to be replaced by a single central gate that will allow access from the lower playground through the veg garden along a path made from the new quiet area covering, which will probably be a form of artificial grass.
The upshot of this is that the strawberry bed [left] will have to go.....




.....so in order not to have to throw away the plants that survived the winter I've repotted about twenty of them into pots, and they seem to be doing well so far. These will be available for purchase if any parents fancy having a pot or container of strawberries in their garden or patio. The strwberries are famous for being very sweet although they do have a habit of disappearing, especially during break time for some reason.



[Left] This bed has been allowed to veg out over the winter and is half empty as the earth was used for topping up the other beds which have settled over the years. After a quick weeding job I planted two rows of potatoes. Hopefully these ´earlies´ will be ready in June or early July at the latest.





Of course the fox/foxes dug some of them up overnight, resulting in the new (chitted) growth getting removed. This will probably result in some of the new plants not growing successfully. Grrr.
Speaking of foxes, lets hope that the new single gate access will result in the Quiet Area becoming a fox-free zone! (Plea to Baki, can we not have a large gap under the gate so the foxes can't squeeze through?)



The earth from this bed has also been used for topping up the others, but prior to it being topped up with earth from the strawberry bed I added a layers of sand, then bark chip, then a layer of half matured leaf mould (real leaf mould takes two years to mature, ours has had one).



Keeping the pigeons off the cabbages been a bit of a battle over the winter, and I´ve added an extra layer of netting to keep the greedy #*!%*s at bay. Pigeons, this is your final warning: One more nibble and I´m reaching for the shotgun.





As mentioned in the previous posting I´ve dug a trench where the beans will grow and filled it with half rotted compost from the tumbling composter. Very smelly but great food for the beans and worms.
Speaking of worms, it´s almost time for holding another ´bring a worm to school day´!
Nature alert: Look out for the Lesser Spotted Crombie, seen in the area in the last few days!


Any Belleville parents who would like to get involved with the veg garden in whatever capacity please contact me.
Cheers, Jim Dutton.

Spring is in the air?

At last, after what has seened liked the longest winter ever, the weather seems to have changed for the better, making the idea of gardening seem much more pleasant!

I have a couple of egg boxes of potatoes chitting away in a sunny window, and have been about to plant them a couple of times when the night frosts have intervened. I'm hoping to get them into the ground on Friday, so long as the weather holds.

I'm also going to try a bean growing trick that I read about recently. The idea is to dig a trench where you intend to plant your beans, and fill it with half rotted compost. This forms an ideal supply of food for the beans which can be quite hungry plants. I'm thinking of growing the purple podded variety again this year as they were popular and easy to harvest (being purple, rather than green). It's also good fun watching them turn green when boiled or steamed.

The garlic and onions seem to be doing well despite the attention of foxes (who dig them up in their pursuit of worms). As usual the pigeons have nibbled the cabbages, which they'll do when there's no more easily available food around. They'll hopefully stop when the cabbages are bigger and the leaves they've nibbled can be removed and added to the compost.