Switch off Fortnight 2012

This year for Switch off Fortnight, the Eco Group Members visited our classrooms during lunch break for a 5 day period. 
They carried out an audit of which classrooms had left their lights on and their computers and projectors on standby.

We discovered that out of 70 classrooms an average of 20 classrooms left their lights on regularly.  We are  holdong an assembly in Feburary to share our findings with the school and highlight why it is important to "SAVE ENERGY" by switch off lights and appliances when not in use.

We will then carry out the same audit the following term to see if we have "Made a difference!"

Let's grown vouchers 2012

A huge thank you to everyone who collected "Let's grown vouchers 2012"  you collected 728, which has enabled us to buy a 3 tier wall planter and some plant pot bases.

Rockhopper Penguins

We held a cake sale and raised £97

In aid of the Northen rockhopper penguins that live on the island Tristan da Cunha.

Over 1 million penguins have disappeared since the 1950s and we urgently need your help to find out why!

 

 

Seed collecting in October

Beans

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Seed collecting in October

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sunflowers

 

Fennel

 

Easy Home Seed Drying & Storage

This is a really important bit. You need to dry your seed out, or it will not keep. Seed that is air-dry is not really properly dormant - its just napping; so it is still burning through its stored reserves of energy and will soon run flat - like a mobile phone left on.

Also, you can't put it in a sealed container as it is still breathing - it would suffocate. And without a sealed container, it will soon reabsorb water from the air on the first humid day, and start getting ready to germinate.

How can we dry the seed at home?

We'll use dry rice to suck the water out of the seed & get it really dry. Then it will hibernate completely.

You need to get:

·                    a big jam-jar with a good lid,

·                    an old pair of tights,

·                    a rubber band,

·                    and some rice

You need to use at least twice as much rice as you have seed. It doesn't matter if you have too much rice, but too little won't work.

Bake the rice on a tray in the oven for 45 minutes until it is bone dry. While it is still hot, put it in the jam-jar , about half full, and screw the lid on .

Wait patiently until the rice is cool. (If you rush this you'll cook your seeds.) So you now have a jam jar 1/2 full of very dry, cool rice.

Put your seed in a bag made by cutting off the foot of the tights, and tie it in with a rubber band. Put it in with the cool dry rice. Put the lid on tightly, so damp air can't get in.

Leave your seed sealed in the jar with the dry rice for a fortnight, and the dampness in the seed will be drawn out into the rice.

You now have bone-dry seed that you can safely seal in a plastic bag, and it will keep for several years. So you don’t need to grow each thing every year.

Passing it Round

This is also important. You will have huge amounts of seed. If you are sure you avoided crossing, and that your plants were nice and healthy, then you have a valuable thing there.

Suppose you are growing kale seed. You would get about two and a half kilos of seed from a 20-foot-long bed of 30 plants. Now that's actually three-quarters of a million seeds - and if every one of those was given away or swapped, and then grown, you will have created more than 500,000 kilograms of kale! More than enough to feed all your friends and neighbours, and their families.

So you can see that even one person, on a small scale, can make a real contribution to local food security. Take your spare seed to a local seed swap, or even better, organise your own. Get to gether with your friends or family and set up a seed-circle: one person can grow kale seed, another parsnips, another cucumber, etc etc. You'll all have bags of seed - you can all just swap with each other, so no-one has to save seed from more than a couple of things, yet you all get seed of everything.

It will save you a fortune, and you'll get great, locally-adapted varieties. Just remember, all this is only possible because you are growing real, open-pollinated seed. You can't do this with hybrid (F1) varieties. Funny how the seed companies are so keen on selling you hybrid seed, isn't it?

This document by The Real Seed Collection Ltd (www.realseeeds.co.uk) is licensed for public use under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works Licence.
This means you can copy or share it as much as you like for noncommercial purposes, as long as you say where you got it, and don't change it.

September 2012

The start of the New Term!

It was fantastic to return in September and see how things had grown. And thank you to the staff who watered when they could.
Some plants have done better than others.  The tomatoes were not great, because some of them got blight, but we did have a few. We had lots of cucmbers, and the peppers that were grown were most definately "Chilli" peppers. 
Note: remember to label plants with full name.........

The butternut squashes did not do as well as expected, but I think that is because they were in small pots and we have also had a very wet summer, so next year we will try planting in the ground.

Eco Schools Green Flag

YIPEEEEEEEEE

 

JBS Green Flag

At the end of last term we were really excited to hear that we had achieved our "Green Flag".  Click image to read what the Gazette and Herald had to say.

Calne in Bloom 2012