Denes High School Wed 24th Oct 2012

Location: Denes High School, Lowestoft
Project: EastFeast and Waveney Food for Thought.

A slightly drizzly start to the morning working with a group of 8 year 7s and 3 adults on a plot in school. I have worked with the school previously, doing apple pressing and participated in their Food Awareness Day back in the summer term. Denes High has a dedicated growing area, with compost bins, a pond, some decking, a large polytunnel and a large raised bed.  There are also patches of ground as yet unused which could be planted up if we wanted.

During the summer holidays EastFeast held a Big Dig Day to clear the area of weeds and everyone did a marvellous job.  However, due to the lovely wet weather we keep having, the weeds keep growing so when we came to our Autumn planting we had a thorough weeding job to do first. Pat, who used to work at the school and now helps out in the garden, led the way.

Equipped with forks and spades, and thankfully, wearing old clothes and welly boots, the year 7s set to with great gusto and began by clearing the raised bed of weeds.  Apparently oblivious to the rain, they made short work of it. Several of the children planted the bed with white and red onions, garlic and then a couple of double rows of broad beans, still leaving us plenty of space to plant other things in the spring.

At this point some of the group broke off to do a tool audit; 27 pairs of gloves (+2 odd pairs), 15 trowels, 16 hand forks, 2 watering cans, 4 extendable rakes, 2 normal rakes, 3 scoppers (not sure what these are but we have them!), several hoes and a few large forks. There are hundreds of different sized pots. There are also at least 2 wheelbarrows.  The projects I work on often require some reference to what the school has to begin with and then we repeat it again at the end of the project. It's just a simple way of recording progress.

Top left: Picture taken during the summer holidays before any work was done. Top right: Re-growth after the Big Dig session. Bottom left: Team work is an essential part of gardening. Bottom right: Lovely and weed free.

After a short stop for tea and biscuits (in important part of keeping team morale high) and we turned our attention to the overgrowth beside the polytunnel.  The group armed themselves with various tools and equipment, some more effective than others, and pulled out nettles and couch grass and any other nasties they found. They also cleared underneath the hedge, finding all sorts of treasures including broken pots, bottles full of ominous-looking liquid and various bits of rubbish.

Another job well done we moved into the polytunnel. The school had had little success growing directly in the soil so the group decided to build a raised bed which we could fill with a mixture of top soil and soil improver, hopefully resulting in a more fruitful (aha) harvest next year. That would leave the other side of the polytunnel for potting benches and an area to use in wet weather. So the next task was to measure the area and decide how big to make our raised beds - the group came up with the plan below:

One of the children suggested using some wood we found whilst clearing, which was a great idea and an essential part of keeping costs low, unfortunately the wood wasn't robust enough but totally the right sort of approach. The wood I tend to get comes in lengths of 4.8m and I try not to waste any - maths challenge anyone?! - luckily for me the group I was working with was much better at maths than me:

Cutting list: 3 pieces of 4.8m (2 x 8 inches) and 12 pegs, one for each corner and 2 in the middle for luck.

All in all a very successful morning with a lovely bunch of children and a lot of work done. I'll keep you posted on progress!