The roof garden project this school year..

 

October 2017

3 IB students led sessions with a group of 2ºESO including a presentation about why gardens are needed in cities, a planning session to decide what to plant, and two gardening sessions where they cleared out the old summer veg and planted radish, lettuce and spinach seeds. We planted seeds straight in the ground as the automatic watering system would guarantee regular watering!

November 2017

We watched the seeds grow and applied a sawdust mulch to trap water in the soil and stop evaporation. Temperatures were surprisingly warm in November and there was little rain.

January 2018

We organised an Eco-committee meeting and had the idea for Gardening Club so that pupils could come to the roof garden at break-time on Wednesdays and work in the garden with Miss Gurney.

We learnt about an ecological gardening technique called "Tree Guilds" where you plant support species around the trees. The support plants are chosen so they add nitrogen to the soil and provide shade cover to the bare soil around the trees. Aromatic plants around the trees will attract insects that may be predators to any pests that could damage the trees. We ordered plants that could be used for guilds from Escoles + Sostenibles.

February 2018

We harvested radishes from the roof and took them to the kitchen where the chefs made them into a salad for teachers.

March 2018

The pupils organised a special type of cake sale where students across the school were encouraged to collect seeds from organic fruit and veg, dry them, label them and bring them to school. For each packet of seeds that students brought we gave them a piece of cake.

Here are all the seeds we collected :

At the seed sale we left a box for any students and parents to take home veg we harvested from the roof: radishes, lettuce and spinach.

April 2018

Students spent time in the roof garden observing, planting seeds and planting the support plants around the trees, and eating some peas from the primary school garden!

We noticed that two pea plants have started growing under this tree, which is where we left our pea pods to be taken away for compost!! So we gave them mulch (sawdust cover) to help them survive and thrive in the sun. The other plants under the tree are attract insects - thyme and chamomile.

Here is a report from some of our gardeners :

In environmental enrichment we do a variety of things to help our environment plant a variety of different seeds like: kiwi, chia seeds, avocado, tomatoes and apples. Last week a group of us went up and watered and cared for the different plants. We harvested lettuce that was already fine to eat and plucked out plants that were harming other plants. We also cut of the tops of the spinach so they could grow healthier and stronger. Another of our tasks is to make sure all the plants have water in the hot climate of Barcelona. 

Another activity we do to disconnect from our stressed minds and the internet is listen to our environment , our surroundings, so we can notice things that we never pay attention to in our daily life.

Every week, we observe how our plants are growing and we make sure they keep on doing it. We have a very pleasant time up on the roof that relaxes us all and helps us connect with nature.

May 2018

Seed collection project

The radish plants from October are now a huge mass of seed pods

We were amazed that what looks like loads of huge plants is actually just three radishes. Each huge plant comes from just one tiny seed, and we did some calculations to see how many seeds each plant produced :
approx 8 seeds per pod, approx 10 pods per stem, we counted 30 stems and the guessed that there were 5 times this many stems on the whole three plants.

TOTAL = 12,000 seeds!! from the original 3 seeds we planted.

Nature follows a model of abundance!

The seeds from the brown pods are ready to collect. The seeds from the green pods need more time to mature.

Seed planting project 

Here is what we planted and our results.:

We are amazed that two tiny apple trees started growing. Sadly we don't have a picture and they have gone - probably eaten by birds.

We learnt some more about the apples, however, and we suspect that because the apples were not organic (people collected them from the school dining room to bring to get their cake!) the trees would probably not have produce fruit.

Interesting facts about apples :

• Farmers add hormones to the fruit so that the seeds don't grow into fruit producing trees. They do not want people to be able to "copy" their variety of apple.
• The apple trees that are not organic have 15 chemical treatments which may damage the seeds
• The apples have two more chemical treatments before they arrive to the shops.

The most successful project is from the tomato seeds - we looked after the seeds and now they are growing really well and will soon produce fruit!