Eco-club Diary

Hi all,

in our last eco-club on Tuesday we sowed our sweetpea seeds in the toilet rolls.  We also sowed some basil seeds as we hope to grow some on our window sill for use in HE. 

We also had some visitors from Iraq last week in our school and we were delighted that they loved our garden.  We planted an oak tree to commemorate their visit.

Rachel and Ellen had brought in pumpkin soup recipes so we all looked at the two recipes and mixed them up a bit to suit what we thought would be nice.  The pumpkins will be ready by next week to harvest and we are going to make our spicy pumpkin soup in eco-club.

Here is our recipe below.

Spicy Roast Pumpkin Soup


Pumpkin could be substituted with Butternut squash

Ingredients:

4medium cloves garlic, unpeeled

1kg peeled, deseeded pumpkin

1 tablespoon oil

1 large onion, finely chopped

1 medium potato, peeled and cut into 2cm cubes

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1 teaspoon ground cumin

Pinch of chilli powder

Salt and pepper, to taste

1 litre vegetable or chicken stock

1-2tsp caster sugar (optional, depending on the sweetness of the pumpkin)

To serve:

Cream, for serving

Ground nutmeg, for serving



Method

Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/ gas mark 6.

Chop pumpkin into even-sized pieces (larger pieces will require a longer roasting time). Place pumpkin and unpeeled garlic cloves in a baking tray/dish, drizzle with three teaspoons of the oil and toss to coat with oil. © exclusivelyf

Bake for 20 minutes, then remove the garlic so that it doesn't overcook. Continue baking pumpkin until tender and cooked through. Keep an eye on the pumpkin to ensure it doesn't burn.



Heat a teaspoon of oil in large saucepan over medium heat. Add onion, diced potato, nutmeg, cumin, chilli powder, salt and pepper. Cook, stirring, for one minute.



Add pumpkin and stock and bring to the boil. Reduce heat and simmer, uncovered, until onion and potatoes are soft and stock has reduced, about 20 minutes. The more the stock reduces, the thicker the soup will be.

Peel roasted garlic and add to saucepan. Add sugar if necessary.

Puree the soup using a blender.



Serve the soup hot. Top with a drizzle of cream and a sprinkle of nutmeg, if desired.

I will put some photos up on Tuesday when we cook it next week.  If you make it why not post a comment and let us know if it is nice.Will update next week.

Eco-Club Thursday this week due to teacher training.

Useful web-link for sweet-pea sowing in October.

http://www.gardenersworld.com/how-to/projects/sweet-pea-sowing/

We plan to sow ours in the toilet roll holders - even though it recommends the commercial root trainers.  We are keen to keep costs down and recycle as much as possible so the toilet rolls will be the method we use.

Impact 2010 Awards - Waterfront Hall

We had a great day out to the awards ceremony in The Waterfront Hall in Belfast on 6th October.  Unfortunately we did not win but we came back full of ideas and enthusiasm to make our project a winner in the future.

We met lots of other schools and we made links with schools that were doing similar things.  All the pupils were keen to enter the Eco-Unesco Competion and this will be our next big target.

A great day had by all and we hope to have many more like this - only we hope to win the next time!

Eco-Club Tuesday 5th October

Hi all,

another busy day at eco - club.  Some weeding started but the heavens opened shortly after so we ended up getting more bottles ready for our eco-greenhouse.  We are well on our way to getting our greenhouse completed.

This is some of us in the garden before the rain.


Weeding the potato beds - we even found more spuds!



Pumpkins

Girls proud of their superb weeding!

A lonely cabbage - unfortunately the caterpillers had a field day with most of our cabbages.

Visit from the Minister of Education today.

We are delighted to report that the Minister for Education  Catriona Ruane visited our garden today.

Follow the weblink below to see her very positive comments about our efforts:

http://www.northernireland.gov.uk/news/news-de/news-de-300910-ruane-visits-north.htm

All pupils involved were really pleased that she had taken time out of her busy schedule to visit our garden.  Everyone was left enthusiastic and encouraged to continue  building on the progress that has already been made.

New residents in our school garden!

Hi all,

we are continuing to get more and more wild residents into our garden.

Conor found 3 litle frogs there on Monday.  Here is one of them below:



Somebody kiss me, please!

 We had a wet day today at gardening club but we were delighted with 2 new members - Ellen and Melissa. 

We tried to make a start at getting the weeding done but it was too wet.

We then got on with one of the other jobs that we needed to do.  Here is a photo of everyone getting stuck into cutting up the plastic bottles for our eco-greenhouse.

Recycling time!

Others were getting stuck into making posters for our eco-council notice board.

The girls hard at work!

We also elected our Eco-council members this week - congratulations to all the newly elected members.  We are very pleased with the amount of applications that we received from all year groups, but especially year 9, year 11 and year 14. 

Well done though to all and hopefully we will be one more step towards the goal of a Green Flag Award from Eco-Schools.

New school year - HARVEST TIME!

Gardening club restarted this week - we have a lot of work to do as there has been many weeds grown over the summer.  But many hands will make light work!  We have been able to harvest some of the vegetables that we have grown - we got the last of the peas, the potatoes and onions.  Our onions are huge and they taste really good too!

All pupils were able to take home some potatoes and onions to reward them for all their hard work. 

Our pumpkins are coming along nicely as well and they are getting very big.

We have noticed that there are loads of lovely ladybirds all around the pumpkin plant - we think it must be attracted to this plant.  We also found loads of caterpillars.  Here is Shea with one of them.

Shea with has furry friend!

We decided that some of the vegetables we had grown was not that great for growing in a school as they needed more attention over the summer months than we were able to give them. 

The ones we definitely want to grow next year are:

• onions
• potatoes
• peas
• pumpkins
• lettuces

The ones that we did not think worked well were:

• cabbages
• broccoli

We will try some other vegetables instead of these next year.  Will update next week with our progress.

Beach Litter Clean up in Portballintrae

Hi everyone,

we had a great day today out at Portballintrae.  We went on a beach litter clean-up outing with Jim Allen, the environmental officer from Coleraine Borough Council.  We picked up 14 full bags of litter.  We found loads of things that would be so dangerous to birds and sea animals.  We could not believe how much fishing tackle we found.  Other things that we found were:

• lobster pot tags from Canada
• a dead lamb
• loads of shoes!  (we were wondering how you could leave your shoes on a beach!)
• loads of ropes of all different sizes
• drink tins
• loads of plastic bottles/plastic buckets, etc

This is a picture of most of us who were there with our bags of rubbish.

I think we did a great job today.  Well done everyone!! 
Thanks also to the PIAS TEAM who very kindly had organised a BBQ for all the beach combers on their return.  That burger tasted really good.  It was a great way to end the day and year.  Thanks again!
I have just put some photos from the launch in below.  We really had a great day that day.

I think it is obvious that we had a great day of celebration of our new garden!!!!
That is all for this term.  We will be back in September.  Thanks to Rebecca for agreeing to feed the fish over the summer. 
We have lots of plans for next year so see you all then. 

Garden Launch a great success!!!

Hi all,
what a great day for all involved with the garden.  Our garden launch was today and we were blessed with fabulous weather!
I am so pleased for all the pupils involved with today - you were an absolute credit to the school, yourselves and you parents.  Well done!!!
Also we were so pleased to celebrate the opening of the garden with so many important people -
Mayor Hillis - The Mayor of Coleraine - officially opened the garden
David Mc Clarty MLA
John Dallat MLA
Awards for All Programme Manager
Jim Allen - Coleraine Borough Council Environment Officer
Parents (who were one of the most important guests)
Board of Governors
etc

I know all the pupils loved that your garden was so well received.  I really is something to be proud of .  I want to thank everyone for all the hard work that has been put in in the last few weeks in particular.  The power of teamwork is amazing!!!  Well done!
I just want to thank RACHEL, NAOMI, ROISIN AND MEGAN in particular for the gift of the scrapbook that you made for me.  You must have put in so much time and effort into this.  I will treasure this.  I wanted to share your poem with everyone as it is so funny (I hope you don't mind!)


Mrs Toman's Garden

Mrs Toman would dig and sow
till she made a little garden

And Roisin kept splashing
in Mrs Toman's garden

Of Rachel's there were two
and they had plenty to do
in Mrs Toman's garden

And Becky kept everything watery
in Mrs Toman's garden

Then there's Louise whose smile kept everyone pleased
In Mrs Toman's garden

And Shea made it most days
In Mrs Toman's garden

And for Courtney there were the bees
In Mrs Toman's garden

And Chloe tended leaves
In Mrs Toman's garden

And Aaron weeded onions
In Mrs Toman's garden

And Ellen always had a hand to lend
In Mrs Toman's garden

And Lucie was always busy
In Mrs Toman's Garden

And from Carl there was never a snarl
In Mrs Toman's garden

And that Katy one loved a good scallion
In Mrs Toman's garden


And Ben his advice has no end
In Mrs Toman's garden


And Megan put cuttings in
In Mrs Toman's garden


And Naomi did everything happily
In Mrs Toman's garden

But Mrs Toman let them go
And they all sat down to their toast in a row
In Mrs Toman's garden




I loved this poem!!  You are all so creative!!!

I will put some other photos on of the launch when I get them  - I didn't get time to take any photos today but I will get some and publish when I do.

These are some photos of Conor Mc Clelland in front of the ECO GREENHOUSE he designed.  He is a star!

This is all for now.

Carrots find a home in wellies!

Hi all,

we planted some of our carrots in interesting homes today!  Wellies!  They look really cool and we hope to get more wellies brought in to plant more of them in more colourful homes!
We also planted an old boot with flowers which look really cute.

We thinned out the cabbages and broccoli again  - we have planted some of the thinned out planted up the middle of the potato patch.

Our pumpkins have started to grow as well  - all 6 seeds are growing well.  We are very excited about this!

Our greenhouse is also almost up - just the glass to put in.  Thanks Stephen!

We now have 3 fish in the pond - they look a bit lonely in such a big pond so we will have to get some more.  Each class is trying to raise the money to get one.

We had 17 pupils at the club today which is great for a wet day!  Well done everyone for turning up!

Tidy up day!

Not very exciting today - but we still had lots of jobs to do.  Watering, weeding and thining out the young cabbage and broccoli seedlings.  Becky discovered that you could tell the difference between the broccoli and the cabbage seedlings by tasting them!  The tiny broccoli plants already tasted exactly of broccoli but the cabbage did not taste of much.  Well done Becky!
All pupils planted the thinned out plants into a yoghurt pot and they can plant these into a pot at home to grow on.
Not much else to report.  Will update next week.

Fish have arrived!

Hi all,
lots happening today!

Rebecca and Amy who have been saving their 2p's and 1p's every monday with Mrs Toman for months went to the fish shop and got their 2 baby Koi fish today.  They are very cute and we loved putting them in to their new home.

In gardening club, another busy day:

• planted up the flower baskets with strawberries and mint
• sowed the pumpkin seeds and covered them so that the birds don't get them
• weeded all the raised beds
• staked the peas with bamboo canes and sowed more peas as a full row didn't come up so we think the birds got to them.  We have covered them this time so this might protect them!
• planted chives
• thinned out the letttuces - we ate the thinned out ones - they were yummy!!!
• watered everything  - alot!!!!

Also our potatoes are coming through so this is good.

That is all for now - will update next week.

Weeding day today.

Hi all,

we were busy today with all the weeding in our vegetable patches.  They were also very dry so we had to water everything alot.

The lettuces that we planted last week under their little blanket are doing well.  It is interesting that the little lettuces that were well in under the blanket have grown more than the other ones that were more exposed.  We think the blanket therefore must have worked!

Our pond has got it's liner in and we will soon be able to fill it with water and then in a few weeks we should be able to add the fish.

Stephen has been busy and the rockery is finished with little plants growing in it.  It looks really nice.  We also got the wild grass seed in to sow our wild area and this has wildflowers in it so it should be nice.

That is all for now - will update next week.

Lettuces put to bed today!

Hi all,

we planted our tiny little lettuces outside today in rows in our raised bed vegetable patch. 

Apparentlty Mrs Nutt says that their is supposed to be a frost tonight so we had to put a vegetable blanket over our little lettuces so they don't get killed by the frost.

We also planted some broccoli seeds today straight out into the vegetable patch. 

Our peas are starting to come up but only 3 of our garlic plants are growing!  Ahh!!!!!!

Maybe they will grow soon.

Our sweetcorn is still growing tall.

Will keep you updated next week.

Spuds planted today!

Hello all,
another busy day at the gardening club.  We planted two rows of seed potatoes today.  Mrs Nutt says they should be ready to dig up in September at the start of the new year.
We also repotted our peppers into bigger pots and they seem to be thriving.  They will grow even quicker when our greenhouse is built in the next week or two.
We repotted our one and only sweetcorn into a bigger pot as well and this also looks to be doing well.
We watered our little trees that are in pots  - they were looking a little dry so we hope they will recover.  Mrs Toman says we can plant these out next week as it would be better for them to be in the ground as then they will not dry out.
The lettuce that we sowed in seed trays last week are growing well and should be ready to go into the ground next week.
That is all we got up to today.  Sorry no photos today as Mrs Toman forgot her camera.
Will update next week.

Orchard Area Planted

Forgot to mention that Stephen Elliott has been very busy in the garden and has sectioned out the orchard area with the logs donated by the Forestry Service in Coleraine.  He has planted 2 cox apple trees, 1 pear tree, 1 victoria plum tree and 1 cherry tree.  They will take a while before producing fruit but they will be nice when they do!  Well done Stephen!

Busy Day Today!

Hi all,
we were very busy in gardening club today.  We sowed 3 seed trays of different types of lettuces.  We hope to have these grown by the launch of our garden on the 16th June so that we can serve them on the day.
We also weeded our onion raised bed.  Our onions are coming on really well.
Yesterday Mrs Toman and Ms Nutt were visited by the two members of local gardening clubs (Portstewart and Coleraine) - Mr Lyttle and Mr Turbitt - they were a wealth of information on what and how to grow vegetables successfully.  They advised us to chop the seed head off the rhubarb.  They said that because the rhubarb had been recently replanted from its original home, it was feeling a little bit threatened and therefore it sent a seed head up so that it would know that the seeds would ensure its survival.  By chopping this seed head off, all the energy that it would have wasted in producing the seeds is then sent back down to the roots and makes our rhubarb a stronger plant for next year.  One of the photos shows the rhubarb with the seed head before it was decapitated!!!!

We also potted up our raspberry twig, blackcurrant, blackberry and a rose climber.  They look like twigs just now but you can just about see little buds coming out on them so we hope they will produce some leaves soon and start to grow.

The trees that we received from the Woodland Trust are growing well and now that we hope the frost is over we have moved their pots outside.  When the topsoil is laid out on the other bits of the garden we will plant these out later on in the month.

All in all a very busy day.  We did not get all the task done today that we need to do - still lots of weeding and potting up to do.  We have now agreed that pupils that can come at lunchtimes as well will come down to do a bit of weeding etc. 

Will keep you updated as usual next week.

Back from Easter break.

We weeded our onions and garlic today - little green shoots are coming out of quite a few of them now so they are obviously growing.
Our rhubard is also growing really well and Mrs Toman says we pick be able to pick some of this in about a month so that is not long.
We planted our sugarsnap peas today outside in rows.  They were really easy to plant (we just stuck our finger into the soil; popped the seed in and then covered it up) and we hope they grow well.
We are going to sow the brussel sprouts and carrots next week.
We will keep you up-dated.

This week's update!

This week we planted the first plants out into our raised beds.  We planted onion sets and garlic bulbs. 
Interestingly, out of all the sweetcorn seeds we planted a couple of weeks ago, only one has grown into a plant.  Bizarre!!! They were all planted the same way and we just don't know what was different about that one.  Maybe the other ones are just slow starters!

We also went on a trip to St Colum's Park House in L'Derry today to an event organised by Children in Crossfire and Afri.  We had a great day on the theme of food poverty and how just one action can make a change for a more sustainable life for all of us.

We all gained a great deal from the day and hope that we all are able to undertake one action for positive change!  Ideas that we came up with were to buy fairtrade products so that we know the farmers have got a fair price.  Another one was to buy clothes that were ethically sourced.  These were changes that we felt we could do in the short term.

That's all for now,

Mrs Toman this week (we didn't have time on Tuesday for the pupils to do it as we were too busy planting!)

Sweetcorn seeds planted today.

This is where our greenhouse will be - both the bought one and the one made by us! 

This is some of us where the raised beds will be.

Our seeds that we planted a few weeks ago had started to grow - BUT they had got too stringy as they were not in the sunlight.  We had to throw out the broccoli seedlings but hopefully we will be able to rescue the rest of them.  We have moved them into the light and we have all got lunch-time passes now so that we can check on them more often.

We planted the sweetcorn and we have all got one home with us as well.  Also a parent has given us some gardening equipment - thank you - we really appreciate it!

Today's Blog writers - Becky, Rachel A, Rachel B, Ben, Louise, & Roisin.

Muck to the eyeballs!

Today, we put our compost bin out into the mucky end of the garden.  There will be a path to it soon but in the meantime I think we will need to bring out wellies next week! We spent more time cleaning our shoes today than gardening!  But at least the compost bin is up and working now.
We started collecting Tesco vouchers for our club today.  We are aiming to get 3500 vouchers.  This will buy us a bird box with a built-in camera and microphone.  The camera has night vision as well so we think this is an exciting thing to aim for!
Some of our seeds has germinated!  We think it is interesting that the ones that were in the heated propagator have not sprouted whereas most of the ones in the unheated have sprouted.  We would have thought that it should have been the other way around!  The brocolli, marigold's and pansies have sprouted.  Hopefully the rest will sprout next week.

That's all for this week!
Today's Blog writers:  Becky, Roisin, Ben, Rachel, Naomi, Louise.

Hi all,

The greenhouse and the trees from the Woodland Trust have arrived! 
I think we are going to be busy!
See you all on Tuesday - don't forget!

Seeds planted today!

Hi,
we are very excited that our garden is started and we think it is great.  We have planted some seeds today:

• broccoli - there seems to be a million seeds!
• peppers - we only have 12 seeds of these so we hope they all survive to be little plants!
• marigold - these were funny shaped seeds (like the spikes of a fluffy dandilion) and we did not know if we put them in the right way - only time will tell!
• strawberries - these looked like wee tiny grains of sand - we only had about 10 of these as well so we hope they all grow into big plants as we all love strawberries!

This is all we had time for today but we will be planting more next week.  Watch this space.

Today's blog writers: Becky, Ben, Louise, Rachel.

The garden is taking shape!

Hi all,

I know it is half term but the garden is finally taking shape.  The diggers have been in, the vegetable garden is nearly ready and the concrete for the greenhouses is being set tonight.  The pond has also been dug out.  It looks amazing and I hope everyone enjoys it when we get back to school next week.

Don't forget gardening club on Tuesday - 3.20pm to 4.20pm.  The compost has been bought and we have to plant our seeds for vegetables and flowers.

Bagel bird feeders made today!

Hi all,
at gardening club today we have made bagel bird feeders.  Really easy to make  - here's how:

• cut bagel in half
• butter with loads of butter - the fat will keep the birds warm!
• put the bagel butter face down onto a plate of bird seed  mix.
• Put a piece of string through the bagel and hang up in your garden for the birds to enjoy.

We all got to bring a bagel bird feeder home and we put some around our school as well.  We hope to see more birds coming to our school now.  Making the bird feeders was really fun and we liked the way we could use left over food from the kitchen.

Roisin, Rachel, Louise, Ben, Becky - Today's Blog Writers.

Today in gardening club we were cutting up the recycled bottles that everyone has brought in and we had a lot of fun doing this.  We are now ready to start putting some onto the timber frame of our greenhouse so watch this space over the next week or two and we will add photos of how we are getting on!
We have started to use our compost bin in Home Economics this term which we think is great!
We also ordered 30 native trees from the Woodland Trust to plant in our garden. 
Becky and Ben  - Today's blog writers!

NORTH COAST INTEGRATED COLLEGE GARDENING CLUB

Hi all,

Welcome to the North Coast Integrated College, Coleraine, Gardening Club blog! We have started to make our greenhouse out of the recycled bottles that everyone has been bringing in. We will update you next week on how we are getting on.

Our other greenhouse which we have bought is also on its way and pupils will see it put up hopefully in the next month or so. The seeds have been bought as well - so as soon as the greenhouse is up we will be busy planting and cultivating our seeds.

Don't forget to join in come down to Room 14 from 3.20-4.20pm every Tuesday.

Will update next week.

Mrs Toman