Downsell Greedy Garden

Cooking Club: New Batch

Adam — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 18:55:34 +0000

Hello cooking fans. The Downsell Greedy Garden cooking club has finally here. We have been stirring up some fabulous food with year 1 and 2 children for the past 5 weeks. Children had a crack at Chinese stir-fry, mini pizza bread, apple muffins and fruity yoghurt smoothies.

Many thanks to Joanne, Katharine, Karen and Nusrat for helping with the cooking club this year. We hope to give every year group a chance to join in with cooking club and to spread the word about the fun and excitement to be had by cooking food from scratch.

Here are a few pictures of the mucky munchers that will hopefully one day give Jamie Oliver a run for his money.

DON’T FORGET to visit the recipes page to see all the recipes we have cooked so far.

Thanks for popping buy. Please leave a comment and keep cooking.

Yum Yum Yum

Halloween Cooking

Adam — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 10:30:17 +0000

In Class 15, we had a Halloween themed party.Children were able to dress up and be more ghoulish than usual. Cooking was on the menu as kids took home some Halloween recipes to make at home. Spider cakes and pumpkin biscuits were enjoyed by all and the kids really got into the Halloween spirit, all in the name of good fun and fiendish frights.

Junk Food

Adam — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 21:14:38 +0000

In June 2010, year 3 pupils began work on a recycled garden. We planted strawberries in a teapot, sweetcorn in a wicker basket and beans in recycled bin. The children wanted to plant leeks and peas in a recycled toilet. but we just couldn’t find one.

This garden initiative is linked to the main Downsell Garden project. The recycled garden theme was selected to be entered into the 2012 ‘Capital Growth’ competition http://www.capitalgrowth.org/home/

Pupils from all year groups were encouraged to touch, smell and pick the crops that were being produced. We had fun making this recycled garden and the children had fun exploring and sampling it.

Click to view slideshow.

The Last Friday

osc13 — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 18:25:26 +0000

This Friday was the last time we will meet after school due to trips and the school Fun Day. We tied up the tomatoes and harvested some courgettes (loads more to come). The lettuce is growing faster than we can eat it. The kids had a great time digging for our first potatoes which went home with them along with the courgettes. We hope that throughout the next few weeks the kids can take home some more vegetables and that the rest is ready for them in September.

a few days

osc13 — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 19:13:35 +0000

This post is a collection of several days. Once we had the plants in the raised beds we were struck with several days of strong wind and some of them looked poorly. R.I.P. melons.

As time went by most of the plants survived the weather and the half-term. R.I.P. chives. The tomatos are looking great. The onions, beetroot, carrots, potatoes and courgettes are all doing well. The basil and sage (not pictured) are also slowly getting into shape.

We don’t forget to have a bit of fun. That can mean having a laugh about a failed sunflower competition, water fights in the rain or just plain silliness.

And finally the garden has paid off and we have had our first harvest of lettuce.

We have also started the great plant hunt to create a Downsell Plant Encyclopedia. We are collecting and pressing all available plants and flowers to combine them into a book that children can use to identify plants around the school.

day 7

osc13 — Thu, 07 May 2009 17:13:14 +0000

Back to working on the raised beds. We finished the second raised bed with the rest of our soil and planted tomatoes, courgettes, mustard, and melons. The foxes have so far stayed off our raised beds but we put some netting over them just in case.

day 6

osc13 — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 19:35:08 +0000

Big day today. This week we received 1000 kg of soil for the raised beds and today we filled the larger one. Unfortunately only two members of the club came along. We were however lucky to find some enthusiastic volunteers. All the children helping moved at least their weight in soil today. We began by putting down several layers of cardboard and newspapers at the bottom of the raised beds as a water store. Then came the job of filling the bed with about 800 kg of soil and mixing in some compost. Finally we sowed some broccoli, carrot, beetroot, leeks, and planted some onions.

day 5

osc13 — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 19:19:09 +0000

No club that Friday because we broke up early for the Easter Holiday. Yeeeeaaahh! Just some pictures of what our plants are doing. The cress-heads went home with their creators.

day 4

osc13 — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 19:12:58 +0000

Sorry for the irregular updates… therefore three posts in short succession. The week after our weekend raised bed building effort we inspected the raised bed frames with the rest of the club. We also finished the plastic lining of the smaller bed.

Once that was done we looked at how our vegetables, herbs, and flowers were doing. Not much to see yet so we made some cress-heads.

Saturday Session 1

osc13 — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 18:19:19 +0000

Once again the weather was great to work in the garden. Our wood had arrived for the raised beds so we wanted to get those built as soon as possible. The timber was kindly donated by T. Brewer & Co Ltd and we also received a generous donation from the Timber Trade Federation (London & South East) which allowed us to buy topsoil and seeds for our raised beds. A big thanks to them for giving us the chance to have some raised beds. The three weekend warriors were very helpful and thanks to the expertise of our chief gardening engineer Ben, all went well. Thanks to him for bringing his tools and organizing the wood. We now have two raised bed frames that need to be filled with compost. Can’t wait to plant them.