Spring is in the air
Abbotsmede Primary School, Peterborough
24/05/2013
Since Roast Dinner Day we were delighted to be presented with 2 Veg Trugs as a prize for our winning blog. The Trugs were presented to us in our Well-done Assembly by Joe Denham, International Director of VegTrug http://www.vegtrug.net/, who kindly showed Mr Courtman, our Caretaker at the time, how to assemble them. Mr Courtman then completed their assembly, prior to his retirement in March, so that they were ready for us to start Spring planting.
We decided to involve the children and asked them to write letters to local DIY stores, inviting them to donate products to school to help get us started. The year six girls wrote some lovely letters which lead to our new Site Manger, Nick Langham, and Mary Hughes, Catering Manager, introducing the school to Danny, the Recycling Coordinator, at our local B&Q store. B&Q kindly donated a large bag of waste compost and informed us what sort of products they normally have available to schools which may be of use to us in the future. We managed to bring a large quantity of compost and assorted other items, including some imitation grass matting to use for display purposes within the school.
We were able to use the donated compost to fill our Trugs, adding just a little John Innes Compost to the mix for good measure.
We have planted some Tomatoes, Peppers, Coriander, Parsley, Spring Onions and Chives in our ‘Pizza’ Trug and the children are using any spare water, left in the Dining Room at lunchtimes, to water them.
Our School Business Leader, Catherine, ordered a Greenhouse Topper to help with the start the seedlings off and protect them from the elements. This has proved both helpful and necessary (good old British Weather)
The seed the children planted were obtained from Morrisons. We asked parents to donate their Morrisons, ‘Growing for Schools’ Vouchers. Our Gardening coordinator, Sarah Hellary, ordered an array of seeds which have been shared out between the Gardening Club and the Pizza Gardeners. Some also went to Teacher, Sarah Allum, who has challenged each class throughout the school to grow Tomatoes and record their progress. The winning ‘Tomato Farmers’ will be awarded a prize by Mary Hughes, Catering Manager. The prizes have been ‘purchased’ from the Catering Team suppliers (3663) using Safari reward points collected on an ongoing basis.
We are looking forward to the Gardening club supplying the Cooking Club with some ingredients again this year, as the Pumpkins grown last year were used to make Pumpkin Cake, which was a very popular item for sale at the Christmas Fete.
Growing and developing knowledge for ‘Field to Plate’ is becoming a Whole School Philosophy. Our new Site Manager is starting off a crop of Quinoa, which is a new ingredient we are using in our School Dinner recipes, a super food alternative to rice and which we currently buy in from Local Supermarkets, boosting our Organic spend.
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