Do you want to grow vegetables at your school but don’t know where to start? Try our easy to follow ideas month by month for top tips and easy growing techniques for school or home.
These videos form part of the School Gardens Project
January
When you think it’s too cold to go outside and start off your school garden, you’re probably right! This is the best time of year to get excited about the months ahead. Think about what you want to grow, and get some seeds. Start them off indoors on a windowsill. All the instructions you need are on the seed packet. View video
February
If you have compost which is smelling really bad, here’s how to rescue it. Often people see a compost bin as a garden rubbish bin, but if you mix brown woody material like small sticks or cardboard, with green floppy waste like grass clippings or green leaves, then the air can get in and make fantastic garden compost quite quickly; here’s what to do if you have a smelly compost heap – no matter what kind. Re-mix! View video
March
Do you realise that tomato seeds come from tomatoes and you can plant tomato seeds from delicious tomatoes bought in the supermarket. View video
April
There’s no need to do a lot of digging to start a small vegetable garden. Because plants need light, air, water and nutrients to live, you can just cover a weedy patch with layers of cardboard and plant through them. If you wait a few months, the weeds or grass below will have died off leaving you with clean and ready soil. In this video we show you how our cardboard layering has resulted in clean soil to plant our sweetcorn seeds in. View video.
May
Growing potatoes in very small spaces. Here’s a way to grow a good crop of potatoes in a space as small as 60 square centimetres! You need very little specialist equipment to get a brilliant crop and they take around 10-12 weeks so you can plant these from March to August and still get lovely potatoes to eat. They are a great idea for outside your classroom door into the playground so they get lots of attention. Just water once a week. View video
June
It’s the time of year when we want to ensure we are going to get the best out of tomato plants we may have bought or grown from seed; here’s how to support your plant and make sure all the energy from the water and sun goes into the tomatoes. View video
July
Harvesting beans and peas; veggies in the legume family (Broad beans, peas, runner beans) are so easy to grow in the UK and broad beans especially as they can be planted as seeds outdoors as late as November – when you harvest them, leave the roots in the ground, they ‘fix’ nitrogen from the air into lumpy nodules on their roots which rot down and release that nitrogen into the soil so new plants grow even better. By this time of year, your broad beans will be ready and delicious. Don’t leave them til they’re too big and if they’ve gone a bit brown on the outside. Leave them on the plant to harvest as dry seed for this autumn’s planting. View video