Garden Classroom – Page 6 – Tracie's Treasures

childminding, family, Garden Classroom, rangers, Seedlings, wanderers

Garden Challenge 2021: Tracie’s Update

Posted on 6th Aug 20216th Mar 2022 by Tracie Dowling

When Sophie and I walked around the garden, I asked her to pick out her favourite fruit and vegetables we are growing. Well, she chose these lovely Lilies. Not quite what I asked for but she’s right they are lovely.

While we are talking Lilies, look at our amazing 8 foot Lily trees. They tower so high and they are so fragrant you can smell them all around the garden.

Back to our fruit and vegetables, below is our cucumber and we have grown conjoined twins! Double the trouble and size! Poppy ate it in one sitting!! She said they were delicious.

Our apples are coming on nicely, they are getting plumper, Monty Don says you can tell when they are ready as they twist off easily. Guess we’ve got to keep waiting. Be worth it though. We also have onions, tomatoes and strawberries growing strong.

In the greenhouse the Luffa vines are growing tall and strong. When they fruit the children are going to make luffa soaps.

The Cucumbers and Chillies have now left the greenhouse and are in the garden growing strong. Tracie watered everything and added tomato feed to give them a boost.

Our new project this summer is the bath pond. We had our bathroom turned into a wet room and thought the cast iron bath could be up cycled into a large pond. Our growing tadpoles and frogs will have more space and we might even get some fish! We will add photos next time.

childminding, Garden Classroom, Seedlings, wanderers

Garden Challenge 2021: Phyllis’ update

Posted on 6th Aug 20216th Mar 2022 by Tracie Dowling

Phyllis has been busy collecting her fruits and vegetables that she started growing earlier in the year.

Phyllis has grown some lovely beetroot which is Tracie’s favourite. They are tasty in a salad or as a compliment in a comforting Scouse. The peppers in the greenhouse are looking good! Chloe loves to munch on these for a healthy snack.

At the moment the tomatoes are still green, but by next week with a lot of sunny weather, they will soon turn red and be ready to eat with the beetroot in a summer salad!

The carrots are looking fabulous watch out for any rabbits Phyllis this is their favourite snack!

As you can see, Phyllis has a vast variety of fruits and vegetables growing. Looks like all her time in the garden has paid off.

childminding, family, rangers, Seedlings, wanderers

Summer Holidays: Week 2

Posted on 23rd Jul 20216th Mar 2022 by Tracie Dowling

The weather turned too cold and wet for a couple of days. We went to the park on the Monday and got drenched so we all decided to have a games day. The sun ended up coming back out!!

We loved the game ‘Fast Fish’ it was fun rolling the dice and predicting the colours of the fish we had to rush and find. Jack beat Tracie and Martha beat everyone!

Poppy and Sophia love anything Japanese at the moment so after the cinema we decided to pop in to Yo Sushi to try some new foods. The girls loved trying to use chopsticks, it made our lunchtime last forever!

While in town, we decided to have a walk about. The girls loved climbing the suitcases on Hope Street.

Back at our setting we were busy painting our rocks that we made last week.

Tracie and some of the children went on a trip to Acorn Farm. We went into the petting station and loved sitting still and stroking the animals. Tracie made a friend with a goat and Jack loved the meerkats.

Emma went on a trip to Hollywood Bowl. They all jumped on a bus, played a couple of games and had a lovely lunch! What a lovely fun end to a busy second week!

Wonder what fun we will have in week three!? The summer holidays are going fast!

family, Garden Classroom, rangers, Seedlings, wanderers

Fun Day With The Children

Posted on 21st Jul 202110th Aug 2021 by Tracie Dowling

We have had a lovely day today playing in the garden and going to Breckside Park.

Sophie looked at all the flowers and asked me to take photos of her favourites.

Mason wanted to make a snail home using different items from around the garden. Jacy and Jack loved the idea and made their own. They asked me to choose my favourites. I explained they were all lovely and the snail will judge by going on the one it likes best.

After playing in the garden it was time for lunch then off to the park.

The younger children enjoyed a kick about, quoits and catch the ball in the net. They ran about so much all they wanted was the pram, bottle and sleep. Job well done!

The bigger children set up the goal posts and had a kick about trying to see who could get the most goals. After about 2 hours and lots of sweat, tears and moans we decided to go back and have a cold drink and ice lolly’s. Four very over heated children!!

childminding, family, rangers, Seedlings, wanderers

Summer Holidays: Week 1

Posted on 16th Jul 20216th Mar 2022 by Tracie Dowling

We have had a ball this week, the sun has been out every day and the children have all been so good!

Alfie was so tired one day he was nearly asleep while playing! Izzy had her first day with us and she was such a little giggler, her favourite play was jumping up and down in the activity centre.

Tracie is so relieved it’s Friday, we have had an eventful week but now time for a few days rest, then it all starts again!

family, Garden Classroom

My Dad and Rosies Bee’s

Posted on 8th Jul 202110th Aug 2021 by Tracie Dowling

This is my Dad and Rosie’s garden in Lincolnshire, it is so beautiful and well kept. They both must spend all their time mowing lawns, dead-heading flowers and watering the plants.

Rosie has been working hard to produce a wonderful wildlife garden ready for my dad’s bees to arrive.

The garden has grown up so tall and I bet there are 1000’s of different insects thriving, living in the flowers.

My dad has mowed a pathway to enable them to get through to the hives and greenhouse. I just want to go and run through, looking at all the different flowers there are.

All Dad and Rosie’s hard work has paid off and here is the evidence Thousands of bees have made it their home. They will be busy bees making lots and lots of delicious honey!

How do you all like your honey? I like mine on a chunk of crusty bread mmmm. Hopefully, later in the year I will be able to post photos of the honey!

Garden Classroom, rangers, Seedlings, wanderers

Garden Challenge 2021: Tracie’s Treasures

Posted on 25th Jun 202110th Aug 2021 by Tracie Dowling

We have been so busy over the last month. Today we were able to harvest our Mangetout. The little seedlings tried them once Tracie had washed them.

Three seedlings wanted to try them and no matter how much we encouraged Sophie she wasnt up for tasting them.

Alfie and Georgia loved the Mangetout and ate loads but Emma and Fearne were not so keen. We loved the faces Fearne made, at least they tried them!

Below are our other tasty fruits and vegetables we have growing in the garden.

This is a collection of photos of the plants the Rangers and Wanderers wanted me to post.

We also had a few whoopsies! We had some visitors come and make holes in our cabbages! Georgia thought it was a hedgehog, Fearne thought it was a snail and Sophie said “I don’t know Tracie!” When I told them all it was a slug they all said yucky!

Our other problem was the giant Poppies, they have over taken our vegetable patch!

family, rangers

Garden Challenge 2021: Gemma’s Garden

Posted on 20th Jun 202110th Aug 2021 by Tracie Dowling

Gemma’s vegetable beds are amazing and full of lush green produce. When the days are sunny Gemma gets Chloe to help water them.

Gemma loves Pac Choi and hers have grown really well. Once they start to flower, which is called bolting, the seeds grow for Gemma to collect for sowing next year!

Gemma’s radishes are amazing, they are as big as a large marbles.

Unfortunately my radishes have not turned out so well! Mine are as big as a grape, but not so juicy.

Garden Classroom, rangers, Seedlings, Uncategorized, wanderers

Garden Challenge 2021: Tracie’s Treasures

Posted on 13th May 202110th Aug 2021 by Tracie Dowling

What a wet May we have all had! Its been so hard gardening because every time we go to do some, the weather changes!!

The garden has loved the wet weather and all the plants and grass are all growing lovely.

Early in the year, we sowed tomatoes in various ways to see which would grow better.

Jacy sowed his tomato seed in a Bisto pot, he thought it would protect the roots when he potted it on. Eventually the Bisto pot will disintegrate when the plant is placed in the grow bag giving the roots extra space to grow.

What a fantastic idea Jacy had. His tomato plant is the strongest, tallest and has a tomato already growing on it! We are so impressed that we are collecting Bisto pots now!

The pictures below are of Tracie holding Jacy’s tomato plant up so you can see the amazingly strong roots!

The middle picture is a tomato plant we grew in the green house in a plastic pot. As you can see there are less roots and they are wonky (we do love wonky veg so thats ok!) they are much smaller, thin and scraggly. The bottom pictures (above) are of our other seedlings which we are growing in toilet rolls and they seem nice and strong! We will start hardening them off soon, ready to be planted among our flowers.

Above is our pot we sowed the Melon seeds in. We have no idea how but we have a tomato plant and weeds! No sign of a melon!

We have tried to grow cucumbers as we had a bumper crop last year. Unfortunately they didn’t grow even though we sowed 6!

We decided to go to the garden centre and buy one already established. Within 2 days they had slug damage! So back to the garden centre we went. This time we have put a water marker on it, covered the pot rim with copper (to keep slugs away) and placed it on gravel. We will see how they go in our next garden post.

family, Garden Classroom, Seedlings

Strawberry Wall

Posted on 12th May 202110th Aug 2021 by Tracie Dowling

Today, in between the rain and the wind, the Seedlings braved the weather to plant up the Strawberry wall. Tracie prepared the wall by filling it with peat-free compost.

At the weekend Tracie dug up the strawberry plants from our plot that the seedlings made last year, she prepared them for the seedlings to replant in the wall.

We have decided to build a new pond in the old strawberry bed for all our growing frogs!

This is Mr Frog, he made Tracie jump! She was sitting on the sofa watching us play when the frog jumped next to her to see what she was doing! We all thought it was funny! Tracie very carefully picked up Mr Frog and took him over to the pond.