Butternut Squash Experiment

The pupils inFifth class did an experiment with Butternut Squash. Play the video below to find out how they got on.

The Garden in January

 

 

 

The garden looked very sad because it had been covered in snow

 and ice while we were on our Christmas holidays.

• The first thing I saw was the cabbage.
•  It was green and a bit nibbled.
• I think the slugs nibbled it.
•  I also noticed a tiny red cabbage at the bottom.
  We also saw fennel seeds.
• We tasted the seeds and they reminded us of liquorice.
  Suddenly Eve discovered a dead magpie. Niall the caretaker  said he would bury the dead magpie.

Our Potatoes

 

Digging the Potatoes

We planted a very special variety of potatoes called Sarpo Mira. We choose this variety because they are supposed to be almost blight free.

Our potatoes grew very fast over the summer holidays. They have big green stems and leaves and some of them have white flowers with orange centres. I noticed that some of the leaves have a problem. In the beginning I though they had got blight but then I discovered that it was black spot.

I am looking forward to the day when we will be digging up the potatoes. We hope to weigh our crop to measure how much potatoes we grew. Then some of the members of our club will have to cook them. I am looking forward to tasting them as I haven’t eaten Sarpo Mira potatoes before.

Growing Pumpkins

 

 

The pumpkin plants were about 10 centimetres when my teacher brought them to school.

• We kept them in the class for a few weeks.
• In May I measured out an area of 1 m²for each pumpkin.
• I dug a hole and filled it with farmyard manure.
• I covered it and made a mound with a moat around it.
• I planted a tiny pumpkin at the top of each mound.
• We put a mini-greenhouse around it to protect it from strong winds.
• There were a few yellow flowers on the plant when we got our summer holidays.

 

 

During the summer enormous green leaves grew on the plants and hidden in the

middle were two very large pumpkins. We measured the stem and found that one

of the pumpkin plants had grown over 3 metres. It grew and grew like a giant

beanstalk and covered our herbs and strawberries. We will let our pumpkin grow

for several more weeks.

 

 

 

We let our pumpkin grow until Novenber. Then we harvested then and brought

them inside. We weighed then and found that the heavier one weighed 1

0 kilogrammes.We hope to cook them later in the term

 

 

I Won the Prize

 

One day we heard that the Garden clob was holding a competition to guess the weight og the larger pumpkin. They brought ina 1 kilo weight . We got a chance to hold the weight in our hands before we had to guess the weight of the pumplin. We all had to write down our guess on a list.

The next week I got a marvellous surprise. I was one of six people in the school to guess the exact weight which was 10 kilos. My prize was to help to cook the pumpkin. First I helped cut it into thousands of little cubes. We also chopped up some of thepotatoes and onions form the garden to use in the soup.

We had a large pot and we made Pumpkin soup for over 20 childre. We also made pumpkin ice pops and baked some of the seeds and made a delicious snack.

We  went down to the staff room and ate wedges, pumpkin soup and the pumpkin ice pops. It was a fantastic meal.

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.

Trip to Keelings

 

Orange Peppers

On the 24^th of June the pupils from 4^th and 5^th classes went to Keelings. It took us about 30 minutes to get there. A man called Jarleth took us around an enormous glasshouse. There were thousands of pepper plants growing in the glasshouse. They were really tall and grew up along a string. There were four different colours of peppers red, orange, yellow and green. It was very hot in the greenhouse. Jarleth told us that if there was a spider on a plant it was a sign of a healthy plant… The pepper plants were very tall. Keelings don’t use soil to grow their peppers instead they use coir made from coconut hair. A system of tiny pipes brings water and nutrients to the plants.

 The glasshouse was very hot. Everyone was happy to see the peppers but they were delighted to get out in the fresh air.

 

Next at the Keelings farm we went to see a where they grew the strawberries and raspberries. This time we had Dónal as a guide. The strawberries were growing up high and he allowed us pick two strawberries each. The strawberries were really delicious. Then we went to the raspberries and he allowed us to pick a raspberry too. He gave our teacher several boxes of strawberries. She divided them out in the class when we got back to the school. They were really delicious. Everybody enjoyed the trip to Keelings.

 

 

 

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