Tuesday 16 June 2015

Planting out

We planted some gourds between our climbing beans - its a bit of an experiment as we don't know how much light they will get.

We planted a couple of climbing roses next to our bamboo arch.


Our asparagus which we planted last year has produced some 'ferns' - I think next year we should be able to harvest our first asparagus?

Wildflower seeds

Making some bee hotels

We hung some of our bee hotels in our little orchard

And some inside our polytunnel

The idea being to encourage bees into our poly-tunnel to pollinate our plants.

Some bean wigwams

Our little orchard.  We have not planted any wildflower seeds here this year, despite this, there are quite a few which seem to have self-seeded.

After incubating some of our duck eggs, two of our female ducks have decided to build their own nests and are sitting on an un-known number of eggs each.  Maybe we will have a few more suckling in the coming weeks?

Ducklings!

Our ducks eggs in the incubator began to hatch.  We learnt that duck eggs take a lot longer than hens eggs to actually hatch.


Our first duckling hatched on Thursday, a little yellow runner duck.


Closely followed by our second the same evening.  Here they are in a broader box which the students helped to make.

It was sunny and warm at the weekend so we let the suckling have a bit of an explore outside.

We discovered the reason they are called 'runner ducks' as they darted about the garden amazingly quickly for something a couple of days old.


Our last little duckling to hatch, two days after the others.

Friday 5 June 2015

More baby chicks

Our baby chicks at about 10 days old - getting much more adventurous, and were often seen climbing onto the back of the mother hen.


A globe artichoke starting to form.

Wildflowers coming up in the orchard - we have not planted any here this year.  Lovely as they were last year, they kind of took over and were much taller than we expected.  We are going to sow the seeds in a different place this year.

The greenhouse, well packed with young plants.

The first tomatoes get planted in the poly-tunnel.  We are again planting marigold with the tomatoes, it seemed to work well last year when we did this.  We are trying to have more of a plan for what to plant where in the poly-tunnel.  Last year the poly-tunnel had just gone up and we were in a rush to get plants in the soil.

Squash plants going into the poly-tunnel.


An arch has been created by the students and our Technology teacher for some climbing roses.  It has been made from some huge pieces of bamboo which were given to our project by the parent of one of our students.

Our bean structure, with some young bean plants just planted.

Here the chicks are a bit bigger still and have started to grow some feathers, so they have some chick fluff and some tufty feathers. The students cannot believe how quickly they have changed.

Things are starting in the incubator - 4.6.15 some cracks appear in a couple of eggs.

5.6.15 a little chick appears.

This on has been named "Lucky" by the students.  It got stuck in its egg and couldn't get out, a heated discussion amongst the staff and students and we decided to help it to hatch.  Some of the staff and students have a stronger stomach than myself as I couldn't watch - but here is Lucky, who is rather tired and sleepy, but he is drying out in the incubator and we will see how he gets along.  We have two other chicks in a broader and three more beginning to hatch......

May 2015

It has been a pretty cold Spring, so things have got to a slow start.  Many of the seeds we planted have germinated but have grown very slowly as it has been cool in the poly-tunnel.  This is Mizuna.


Peas growing inside old toilet roll tubes.

Our first blossom in the orchard - there is a lot more blossom this year, the trees are a bit bigger, and we were forced to move and plant the trees while they were flowering last year, which was not really the best time to do this.

Sweet peas planted in the willow arch, last year they were lovely and provided a fantastic perfume for those who chose to sit underneath the dome on the bench.
Our willow dome has lots of new shoots.

One of our aims for this year was to try to raise some of our own chicks. We bought a second hand coop and the students, under the supervision of the Technology teacher, put it together - we were really pleased with the result.

It was just in time, as one of our Columbine hens went broody and sat on a nest of nine eggs.  We carefully moved her from the hen house, which required two staff and three students, one nesting box and a towel covering the front so that it was dark, the idea was that the hen would be nice and calm.  The broody hen was rather ferocious and did not like being moved in the slightest, but together we managed to move her and her eggs into her new home.

Our first asparagus time was spotted pushing up through the soil.


The ducks are also trying to nest, but have not quite got the hang of actually sitting on the nest.

One week later and the broody hen is still sitting tight on her next.

Early lettuce coming through in the scholarship garden.

The ducks enjoying a swim in some brief spring sunshine.

Out grapevine inside the poly-tunnel has come back to life.

All the peas seem to be doing well, but its still too cold to plant them out yet.

Squash, pumpkins or courgettes?

Our flower bed in front of the EPICC building has been lovely this year, loads of different spring flowers in a variety of clashing colours.

Narcissus

Some lovely double tulips




Our fruit trees have started to put out some little leaves.

Salad crops in the Scholarship garden and some peas

More salad, kale and borage

Our first baby chick hatches.  We were delighted when we discovered that there had been a hatch, the mother hen diligently sat on her nest for three weeks and hatched a total of seven of the nine eggs.  Its apparently rare for a hen to hatch all of her eggs, so we were really pleased with seven.

She kept them inside for a couple of days, we fed and put water in the coop and she viciously defended anyone who put their hand in to change water or give her foot.  We ended up having to wear a pair of wood stove gauntlet to protect our arms from her beak.

Strawberries flowering under the trees in the orchard.

A bit of apple blossom

 We have a variety of different chicks as the hen was sat on a mixed nest, some of her own eggs, an egg from a white leghorn, and a few from the rest of our flock. It was interesting to see the colours of the different colours and markings of the chicks and guess which hen they came from.

 
After a few days the hen braved the outside world with her brood - here she is having a well earned dust bath.  The chicks were fed a diet of chick crumb, which we sometimes mixed with water to make a sort of porridge, which they all seemed the enjoy.  We also found out that the hen and chicks loved dandelion leaves.  To start with we cut them into small pieces with a pair of scissors, to make a "salad" for the chicks.

We decided to put more of our eggs inside an incubator a member of staff kindly has let us use.  If we manage to hatch some chicks this way they will be going to The Tim Lamb centre at The Rising Sun Country Park for the young people to care for.