We have loved getting outdoors and sowing some salad crops. We mixed the peat free compost, filled the pots, sowed the seeds and gently watered them in to germinate.
Alba Mixing The Vermiculite Into The CompostEveryone Taking TurnsSowing SeedsHelping Each Other Watering The Seeds
We had fun looking around the garden for bugs, we found snails, ants, butterflies, a dragonfly, wood louse, worm and Fizzy our cat asleep in the shade. Mable and Elliott thought the yellow poppies were pretty.
ElliottMableBug HuntWashing UpOutdoor KitchenWater PlayPlaying Around
We had a lovely time in the garden, we are excited to see our seeds germinate and turn into delicious salad crops, so we can have them for lunch.
First we needed to clean the pots to get rid of any bacteria or decease from last years plants.
We then put coco disks into the pots and added the seeds.
We chose salad and herb crops because they are fast growing and we love cooking and eating them. We added water and watched as the disks filled out and firmed the seeds down.
We covered the pots with cling film to help them keep the humidity to germinate the seeds.
One Week Later….
We had a look in our salad pots to see if any of the seeds had germinated.
In Jacks pot we found a Cucumber seed had grown, it had reached over 1 inch tall.
Tracie very carefully picked up the seedlings in the coco disk and showed us the roots coming out of the disk.
Alba said ‘yuck they are long and wiggly like a worm!”
We then looked in Alba’s Salad Pot, we were surprised to see that her Cucumber had not started to grow. However she had two healthy Tomato plants growing. These were about 1/2 an inch tall.
We decided to move the Cucumber and Tomato seedlings into a bigger pot and leave the herbs in the long salad pots. This was to give them extra space to grow healthy root stock.
We recycled glass jars to cover the seedlings. This was to help them keep the plant warm and to encourage them to grow healthy and strong.
Once we had repotted the seedlings we covered the other coco disks with fresh nutrient rich soil to encourage them to start germinating.
We have so much fun learning and playing in our garden at Tracie’s Treasures. I want to share some of my favourite films from the last couple of months.
In this film Jack is looking in our small barrel pond he is investigating what lives in there. He finds YUK
Jack Exploring In The Half Barrel Pond
George and the girls walk around the garden to check for bugs, George sings ‘Barbie Girl’ all the way around.
George Singing Barbie GirlMr Black Bird Having A Bath
This funny clip George is singing again as usual. This time he is singing to a Snail about being gorgeous.
George Singing ‘Your Beautiful’ To A Snail
My favourite time of day, looking in the greenhouses to see whats growing.
Elsie, Grace and Georgia Looking In The Greenhouse
Hope you enjoyed the films, the children here are amazing.
Today we have been focusing on communication, what better place to use questioning then our garden!
Walking along the path Elsie noticed some Strawberries which we had grown in one of our pots.
I asked the children “what do you think they will taste like? Else’s answer was “delicious, can I have one?” As I gave her the strawberry “ I asked “ what does it feel like?” Jack said “ yum yum” and took it out of my hand and popped it in his mouth. Else’s response was “squidgy “.
“Jack is the strawberry blue?” Jack shook his head to say no Elsie shouted from over her shoulder to me “it’s red silly”
I asked the children if they could find a flower that was red too. Elsie went one way and Jack the other.
Else’s found hers first, I asked her if she knew what it was called and she said “ it’s a Poppies, we sow the seeds yesterday! I explained “we sowed them in Springtime and it takes a long time for them to flower” I asked her if she could remember the parts of a flower she said “Petals and leaves”
When Jack found a leaf with holes in he stopped and looked at it for some time then turned to me and said “o no, o no“ I said “looks like a bug has had his dinner Jack. What type of bug could it be? Elsie thinks it’s a spider, Jack a ladybird and Tracie thinks a bee, we will have to keep watching to see if we can find the culprit. Jack then pointed at a very tall sunflower, “b, b” and signed the words ‘big Flower’ I showed Jack that the Sunflower was taller than me!
We went for a wonder, I asked the children “ how many different colours of flowers can we find in our garden? Jack found one first “blue, blue” well done Jack “ you found a blue flower” can you say flower? “Blue blue” that’s such a fantastic flower Jack can you smell it? Jack put his nose right into the flower and the pollen went on the the tip of his nose. He started wiping it saying “yuck yuck”
Forget-me-not
Else’s found yellow, orange, blue, purple, brown, pink and green flowers. “Wow Elsie well done finding all the colours of the rainbow”
I picked out a beautiful flower and asked Elsie “ how many petals does the flower have?
Elsie counted to 11 in sequence then kept missing out some numbers then said “to many!” I explained I would have trouble counting them too as there where so many. I asked Elsie what colours she could see in the flower, she said “ yellow, purple and white” I asked her what do you think the middle colour will be when it’s fully open? Elsie thinks it’s going to be Green, we will have to look again tomorrow and see.
What a lovely garden activity we had lots of new words, descriptive words, colours, conversations and fun.
George went first to find a treasure in the garden today. He ran around a few times then finally stopped at this amazing flower! He said “its a snowball!” I explained that its an Onion flower. He said “yuk I don’t like onions” then ran off to play.
Elsie chose this amazing Peony, unfortunately it had a baby spider inside one of the petals so off went Elsie in a tizzy.
Jack found this amazing Poppy he smelt it and said ‘Wow!” He loved the Ladybird crawling up the stalk and ran inside for a magnifying glass. He came back and studied the ladybird. He asked me to help him pick up the ladybird and put it in a Jar. We gave the ladybird some leaves and sticks and made him a lovely home.
Jack then went off magnifying glass in hand to find some more ladybirds to put in the jar so they could be freinds.
Jack was still on a bug hunt so Elsie decided to join in. Both of the children looked for frogs they were disappointed not to see any but overjoyed with the tadpoles.
Pool dippingTadpoles
Chloe chose this white Rose as her favourite flower of the week. Chloe also loved the pink climbing Hydrangea, it was behind the rose covering the back wall.
White RoseClimbing HydrangeaWater Canna Sweetpea
Tracie got excited about her water Canna which is starting to flower for the first time. The sweet-peas are coming on amazingly and have an amazing sent.
Today the little seedlings decided they wanted to be explorers and look for bugs.
Jacks first area of interest was the barrel pool which has a solar powered floating fountain. he quickly realised if he moved it into the shade it stopped working. he liked slapping the to of the water and splashing himself.
Elsie soon caught up with Jack and wanted to have a go but she couldn’t quite fit, she started pushing Jack out of the way. Jack edged her away, I explained to Elsie if she moved back a little Jack would be able to turn around and move to give her some space to have a turn. It was a bit tricky because by then Ruby had decided to join the children which caused a traffic Jam.
Baby SpidersLadybug Elsie So Gentle Buzzy Bee
While we were looking for bugs a Ladybird flew onto Jack. He froze and looked down at it. I carefully moved the ladybird off Jack so we could all have a better look. We counted the Ladybirds spots to see how old it was. we counted 8 spots George said “its like a spider with eight legs!’
Next we found a nest of tiny baby spiders, Elsie turned and fled, shes not a fan of spiders! George and Jack where fascinated watching them scuttling about the nest until Jack decided to poked the nest and made all the spiders run in different directions, this made Jack and George feel itchy like they were crawling up their body. Yuk!!
Caught In Magnifying Pot Looking At GraceGeorge Wanted To LookLooking For Frogs
Next on the hunt we found a buzzy bumblebee going from one yellow poppy to another. Tracie explained he was collecting pollen from the poppies. Grace said ‘ to make honeycomb’ Tracie explained that bees make Honey which can be made into honeycomb. (Good activity idea! To extend learning) George said he loves honey and asked if we will have Honey sandwiches for snack time. Nom nom
Elsie decided to go back and look in the barrel again while the others went to the pond. We were so lucky because as we got there (very quietly) a frog was having a swim. Tracie very carefully got her net and caught him so we could have a closer look!
Did you know Honeybees fly about 55,000 miles at 12mph just to make one jar of honey! Today in our garden we found not 1 but 5 amazing nectar gatherers!
Some bees have very long tongues so they can reach into tubular-shaped flowers like our Foxgloves, honeysuckle, and snapdragons. The children are growing all three of these plants so we are hoping the bees take advantage and have some of our nectar.
FoxgloveHoneysuckle Snapdragons
We like to encourage the bees to come into our garden because they are part of the biodiversity on which we all depend on to live and underpin healthy ecosystems, helping all of nature to thrive. Honeybees, wild bees, and bumblebees pollinate our crops which helps them to grow.
A Few Bees From The 270 Found In Great Britain
The Honeybee is the best-known bee in Great Britain but there is actually over 270 species of bee recorded here!
George Looking For Bees
George asked Tracie an amazing question today about the Bees ” Tracie where do the bees sleep?’ Tracie explained she didn’t know but we would find out. We decided to ask Google and she said “Female solitary bees sleep in their nests but male solitary bees sleep outside, they rest in places like flowers or long grass stalks. We also found out you can tell a bee is asleep because its antennae are still, its head, and its wings are tucked into its body.
Wide Awake BeeCute Asleep Bee
Grace asked ‘ do Bees close their eyes at bedtime?’ another amazing question! Bees actually do close their eyes and relax like humans do. George said ‘Human?” We are called humans, George because we are living beings.
Elsie asked if bees cuddle? We looked it up on the internet and the answer was that they love to hold each other’s legs while they sleep! How cute is that!
Two Cute Bees Cuddling
George reminded us that we saw a bumblebee who looked poorly last year and we helped him feel better. I asked the children if they could remember how we made him better ‘ and they said ‘gave him water on a spoon’. I told them they were so clever to remember and that we also added sugar to the water and it dissolved and it gave the bee energy to make him feel better to fly home.
Bee HivesTracie’s DadLittle BeeMedicine
I then showed them the picture of my dad on the Tracietreasures web site, he was in his bee-keeping uniform and I explained how he collects the bee’s honey from his hives and puts it into jars.
We all had snacktime of honey sandwiches nom nom.
What an amazing activity we had today, started out as a walk around the garden and ended up with information collecting using Google, internet, and books all about our Bees, what amazing questions the children asked me.
Today we walked around the garden to look at all the changes we made last year and to make notes on what we want to plan for this year.
Spring In The Garden
The winding footpath we made last year is ideal for walking and running about avoiding the messy mud. The children love how they can run around and peep through the planting bug hunting, plant spotting and watching everything grow. They love the bug pile and saw some worms and ants.
Cold FrameOur Seeds Are Now Young PlantsGeorgia PlantingPetunia
We have sown all our bedding plants this year to save money, we also used peat free compost to help save our planet. The seeds have now grown into healthy young plants so we potted them on, ( put into bigger pots) and put them into the cold frame to wait for the last frost, we will then put them in our living wall.
This years project is to make the decking area into a nicer living ‘Outdoor Classroom’ We have chosen
Petunia, Lobelia and Fuchsia’s to have trailing, ground cover in the vertical wall garden. We will add the Herbs (growing in our greenhouse) for tasting and smelling into the wall as soon as they have matured.
We have Roses, Honeysuckle, Jasmine and Passiflora for climbing up the trelliss and giving off a floral fragrance. Our aim is to make the ‘Outdoor Classroom stimulate all our five senses. To make the decking more accessible for the babies we are going to add Astro turf so it’s safer for them to crawl and play on.
We were so excited to see our frogs while out and about, they were keeping an eye on their spawn, this will soon turn into tadpoles and frogs. Tracie taught us how to carefully remove some of the water weeds and she added some bunches of watercress to freshen up the pond to make the water less Murky so we can see the pond life without disturbing them.
Clear Water Small PondApple Tree PondMr Croak Mrs CroakSpawn
Our Big Plans For This Year 2023:
We have decided in our living classroom we are going to:
Lay artificial grass to make the decking completely baby friendly.
Make a toy box storage area for outdoor equipment
Pot up the Herbs and make labels.
Make a water feature for relaxing sound and to have water play
In the Greenhouse we are going to grow:
Tomatoes, Cucumbers, Loofa , Chilli and start off our Cabbage, Cauliflower, and Broccoli
Sow winter flowering plants to give out Garden all year color and edibles.
In the front garden:
We want to encourage more wildlife in, so we are thinking about making a new pond, putting in more hedging, and adding some hidden bird feeders.
So we have BIG plans, so keep watching our blogs to see how we go….
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 Bee Hives
The garden has grown up so tall and I bet there are 1000’s of different insects thriving, living in the flowers.
Pathway of Wildlife
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!
This is my dad Alan, he and my mum started my passion for Gardening and outdoor learning when I was young.
My Dad and I
My dad worked in the Horticulture business for many, many years. He’s now retired, so he has all the time he needs to potter around his garden, instead of maintaining other peoples’ gardens.
Dad’s garden is amazing, he lives in Boston, England in the middle of the most amazing countryside. I think he should share his knowledge and garden with us all, so I am adding him to our Garden Classroom blog.
One of his lifetime ambitions is to have a beehive and this year he is finally making that dream come true.
The Base is Ready
The Beehive
Beekeeper Alan!
This is Rosie, my step mum. She has been encouraging my dad to set up beekeeping and has been busy growing a wildflower meadow for the bees to collect pollen.
Rosie is also passionate about their garden and providing wildlife which will enhance the bee’s environment.
My brother Jonathan bought Rosie a camera to go in her bird box for her birthday a few years ago.
This year a bird has already made themselves at home! We will follow the bird over the next year to see what they do.
Tracie's Treasures 