Making Compost

Pupils in Scoil Eoin get many opportunities to recycle waste paper, plastic and packaging materials in their classroom. They also generate large amounts of organic waste especially lunch scraps and banana skins which we take to the compost bins. 

• This material is usually collected by two students who then bring it to the compost bins.
• We also add other materials such as garden cuttings, shredded paper and old compost to the bin.
• We keep a lid on the compost bin to generate hear and speed up the rotting process.
• All organic waste will eventually rot down to make a soil-like material.
•  When it is fully decomposed it is dug into the garden.

Making Compost from Banana Skins

Growing Onions

 

We planted our onions in May. We used small onions called sets and left 12 centimetres between each onion.

In the beginning some magpies or pigeons pulled up our onion sets.This is a picture of our onions in June. We had a very successful crop as every single onion grew.

When we returned to school on the 1st of September our onions were ready to harvest.

Our Onion Harvest

We picked them all in a few minutes and then we brought them inside to dry. We will use them next month when we hope to cook some of our vegetables.

Sunflowers

 

In May the pupils in Senior Infants and 1st class sowed sunflower seeds.

They planted out the sunflowers in the garden. The sunflowers grew very tall

during the summer holidays.

When we came back to school we were a bit disappointed because the sunflowers

 weren’t in bloom. We think that the bad weather delayed the flowers.

This week we were very happy to see that the sunflowers had started to bloom.

I measured the tallest plant 

I discovered that it had grown 2 metres 70 centimetres in 14 weeks.

The stem of the sunflower is coarse and hairy.

I used a piece of string to measure the circumference of the thickest stem.

It was 12 centimetres.

When the sunflowers finish blooming we will leave them there so that the birds can eat the seeds.

Here is a picture of some of our sunflowers.

September Podcast

 

We made a podcast about our garden.

Click on this link September Podcast  is a link to an audio file where  we tell you about our garden.

Infants Grew Sunflowers

The children from Senior Infants grew sunflowers. They planted out the

sunflowers at the beginnning of June.The plants reached up to their knees.

 When they returned in September the sunflowers had grown much taller than

the pupils