Tuesday 12^th December 2017

Presentations!

 

Last week we were busy putting all of our crop yield data together and learned how to present our data in tables, pie charts and bar charts. We then had to analyse our data to discover which crops had been a success and which crops maybe we shouldn’t grow again next year. Today we were to present our data to Siobhan from Adnams.

A big part of our business is managing public relations. We have a small team of pupils who are in charge of this so their task today was to work with the accounts manager to email ‘The Plough’ at Wangford and find out which crops they have been the most impressed with this year, which crops they would like to see us grow again and which crops we might not grow this year.

Siobhan was very impressed with or data. Back in July she ran a few sessions for the pupils on ‘presenting’ and ‘public relations’ so it was wonderful to see all the teams looking so confident and presenting their data with such precision.

By the end of the session we had taken questions from Siobhan and the growing team had kept notes so that next term, when we have heard back from ‘The Plough’ we can write a ‘growing plan’ for 2018.

It’s been a wonderfully productive year. We have exceeded our targets and made almost £800 having grown 157.05kg of crops! An incredible second year as ‘Vegetables R Us’ and the learning just goes on and on!!

 

Tuesday 28^th November 2017

Every cloud has a silver lining!

 

Sometimes things happen that test us and sometimes you just have to find a silver lining in every cloud!

This morning we came to school after a dark and stormy night to discover that our wonderful poly-tunnel was wedged in our school sycamore tree.

With lots of hard work by the adults we managed to remove the poly tunnel from the tree…but as we worked to take the framework apart, we noticed that most of the bars had been bent or indeed broken beyond repair so sadly the poly-tunnel was no more!

Siobhan has often taught us about ‘resilience’ during her sessions with us…so that’s exactly what we practised! After a whole business meeting we decided that we would write some persuasive letters to local businesses who have been so generous in their support of our venture.

When analysing our crops we had decided that the tomato crop hadn’t been as good as it should have been. Similar was said of the cucumbers. After lots of discussion where we thought about the science of growing cucumbers and tomatoes, we decided that the location of the poly-tunnel (under a large tree) just wasn’t giving our crops enough light to grow and ripen. Also the growing team noted that the green cover didn’t let much light through. After some research they found that poly carbonate greenhouses let more light through and as they are not made of glass…are safe for our school grounds.

So there we are…our silver lining! Hopefully with the wonderful support of our local business community, we can put up a poly carbonate poly tunnel in a much brighter location and grow a much larger and healthier crop of tomatoes and cucumbers next year!!!!

Tuesday 14^th November 2017

After lots of number crunching we finally analysed our growing results today.

We had some really surprising results. It turned out that a lot of our high income crops were actually from established plants like trees and bushes. The Apples were a great seller as were the plums and medlars (can you find out what they are?!)…all in our top ten yield/income list.

When we analysed the vegetables we discovered that Rainbow chard was by far our highest earning crop. We then tried to reason why this might be. Possibly the soil is just right for rainbow chard or maybe we just set it somewhere where the pests couldn’t find it. It was also suggested that maybe the weather was just right for growing it this year!

One of our most disappointing crops were the tomatoes. After some thinking we decided that the biggest problem for the poly-tunnel is a lack of sunlight. The class suggested investigating different, more transparent covers but obviously this would be costly. Other suggestions were asking if we could trim the overhanging trees or simply investigating other crops or varieties of tomatoes that grow better in half light. It’s good to think and I’m sure we will come up with a good solution to improve our yield.

The market research group had a busy day trying to find the favourite fruit and veg for all the adults and children in school. It was no surprise that their completed bar charts showed that strawberries were the top choice for the children! The adult tastes at Wenhaston Primary School are a little more refined with Asparagus coming out on top! Food for thought when it comes to planning next year’s crop!!

Table completed by the Finance Team...thanks to Ty, Jessica and Freya

Crop	Rank Ord.er	Total Income
Rainbow Chard	1	£91.50
Desert apples	2	£82
Rhubarb	3	£76.80
Cooking Apples	4	£60.26
Courgette	5	£50.68
Plums	6	£43.13
Lettuce	7	£37.80
Medlar	8	£28
Marrow	9	£18
Tomatoes	10	£15.48
Blackcurrant	11	£10.10
Beetroot	12	£7.50
Gooseberries	13	£6
Cucumber	14	£5.04
	15

Tuesday 31^st October 2017

 

From today a lot of our blogging will be handed over to our team from ‘Vegetables R Us’. Today’s guest bloggers are Alexis and Emily who will talk you though today’s happenings!

 

Today we have been promoting our ‘Vegetables R Us’ business. The class was split into four groups. One group is making a power point presentation to explain our business to Adults while the other three groups are making presentations for class 1, class 2 and class 3.

We hope that our presentations will help us to spread the word about our business as well as teach the younger children how they can join in and help us with our business as one day they will be doing what we are doing now!

Our finance team has been preparing our invoices to ensure we get paid by Adnams. After using lots of maths skills to work out our totals (we had time times the cost per kg by the weight of fruit or veg we had grown!) we discovered that we had made a grand total of £604.10 in 2017.

Some of the money we made is profit…you have to knock off the amount we have spent on poly tunnel covers, wood for raised beds and seeds to work this out. Now we can use the money to improve our garden and business and if there is any leftover we may be able to afford to buy something we can all use at school to improve our environment.

We are very proud of what we have achieved in our first, full growing year!!

Friday 16^th June 2017

Our first big harvest of 2017

 

After much effort we have finally made our first harvest of the year. Look at our lettuces…they are GIGANTIC!! We managed to keep the pests at bay and keep them well watered though the recent dry spell….our reward…42 perfect lettuces and some succulent rhubarb.

We also had a special visitor today. As much of our produce would be sold to 'The Crown' in Southwold, we invited their head chef (Rory) to take a look at the produce we would be growing for him to cook in their restaurant in 2017.

Our next job was to work out which crops Rory could take away with him today. As a result we also did some mathematics in our gardening slot this week. After working out the average of lettuce prices, based on the four biggest supermarket prices and adding a little for our ‘organic' approach, we decided that 60p would be a fair price to charge. A little multiplication later and we came up with a total of £25.20 for the lettuces with which the pupils would invoice Adnams themselves. Not a bad start at all!

Harvesting our iceberg lettuces.

The Lolla Rosa lettuces look juicy too!

Packaging the lettuces for transport to The Crown, Southwold.

Our next harvest was the rhubarb. This time we had to use our skills of estimation to work out a price. We weighed a bunch of stalks to give us a good idea of the cost per bunch. We then had to multiply that by the number of bunches of rhubarb that we had harvested. Again we discovered a total close to £25! That means that we have already surpassed our income from 2016…a great effort…well done ‘team Food for Thought!

 

 

 

 

 

Tuesday 20^th June 2017

Organic Growing

One of our aims as a business is to grow organic food. If we are going to sustain this (keep it going!) then we are going to need to make our own compost. This would also be a  great opportunity for us to investigate micro-organisms in science!

With class 3 keeping chickens, there was an opportunity for using the chicken manure to make our own compost, full of the rich nutrients that our plants would need to grow strong and healthy. Once produced, we might need to do a science experiment or two to work out an effective dose of our organic compost!

This afternoon we also need to replenish our lettuce beds which have been emptied from our first harvest. We have Italian ‘Canasta lettuce’ to fill the rear beds and cucumber plants for the poly tunnel. We will also need to prepare our first invoices to send to Adnams for the crops we have harvested so far.

Our business is a great way for us to learn our maths. It’s a great ‘reason’ for learning estimation, multiplication, division, percentages, ratios and much, much more. It makes us ‘think on our feet’ developing our mental maths skills in problem solving. A part of our maths challenge this year will be to keep a running total of all of our produce for this year. Up to June the business 'Vegetablesrus' has already made an impressive £50 which will eventually be spent of upgrading the garden further throughout 2017 and beyond. Well done team!

 

 

 

 

 

Thursday 29^th June 2017

Spread sheets and book keeping

 

After all the excitement of seeing our news report on Monday…today we settled down to learn how to use Microsoft Spread sheets to keep a track of the money we were making.

Working in teams, the pupils familiarised themselves with how the programme works. We are hoping that this will help to make our  ‘book keeping’ so much easier and manageable.

By the end of the session we discovered that we had already made £66.10 from our crops so far!

We quickly worked out that by using our spread sheets to keep a track of our profits, we would soon be able to see which crops are worth growing and which crops we maybe should pass on next year.

In terms of helping us to develop our thinking skills….this project is beginning to really take off and here we have the business women and men of the future learning key ICT and maths skills!

 

Thursday 22^th June 2017

Look East

Wow! What am amazing day we have had! Siobhan called us a few days ago to say that our local, TV news station ‘Look East’, would be coming to film our garden and interview us about our business. We were going to be on the local 6:30pm news!!

What a busy day it turned out to be. We learned lots about news reports and how they were filmed. All we see on the TV is a few minutes of reporting. In reality it took over an hour to produce a 5 minute TV slot! Lots of takes and retakes for the presenter and camera man.

We met the look East news reporter Kim Riley who interviewed a lot of the pupils about their experiences in setting up their ‘Food for Thought’ business. There was only one cameraman…but he had to carry around some heavy looking equipment for most of the afternoon...including a quick dash inside with it all as a storm broke above us!

Before the rain came we managed a bumper harvest. Siobhan was able to take 2.7kg of potatoes, 2.7kg of rainbow chard, 2.5kg of rhubarb and 2kg of perpetual onions to 'The Plough' in Wangford where the film crew would follow its preparation to the restaurant plate!

Next week we will calculate our proceeds so far by learning how to use a spreadsheet and begin to think about invoicing Adnams for our sold items of fruit and vegetables so far!



Preparing our harvest for the big day!

Preparing our latest harvest for 'The plough' at Wangford.

Filming the tomatoes with Kim Riley in the poly-tunnel!

 

It takes A LOT of 'takes' to make a news report!



 

Kim Riley interviewing Siobhan and the pupils about their business.

 



Filming the 'crop weighing' process. A great focus for our maths!



 

Weighing the onion crop in the classroom.

 





Our latest crops all ready to deliver to 'The Plough'.

 

Kim Riley asked us lots of questions. We let him know how proud we all our of our hard work to build our garden and grow our business: 'Vegetables R us'! 

Tuesday 6^th June 2017

A day to be proud of….we have earned the RHS Level 5 Award!!

Today we announced to the pupils that we have earned the RHS level 5 award. From the beginning of our ‘Food for thought’ project we had been saving photos and evidence to show how our business and garden had grown together.

We quickly worked our way through the first four awards but the fifth award needed a little extra effort to achieve with lots of written evidence and photos to support our case for being awarded the highest of the RHS school awards. We had to prove to the RHS that our gardening was a part of our curriculum and that we had shared our success with the local community as well as with other schools.

Here we are sharing our garden with Kathy Oliver, a member of the Wangford Allotment Association.

Kathy was amazed by our lettuces too!!

Luckily we had help our ‘big dig’ community events and with the help of Adnams we are now helping other schools to develop their own school gardens and ‘food for thought’ businesses.

As a part of the level 5 award we receive £200 worth of ‘National garden centre’ vouchers. We are now going to work out what we need to make our garden EVEN more efficient….and then reward ourselves with a garden centre shopping spree!!

Our RHS Level 5 award being proudly displayed around the garden!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tuesday 9^th May 2017

Poly tunnel building and planting in our new, raised beds!

 Another VERY busy day in the 'food for thought' garden!

Today’s challenge was to complete our poly tunnel (using logic as we didn’t have instructions!) bark chip the floor and build raised beds out of decking so we could set our tomatoes and cucumbers!

We used DT and mathematical skills to measure, cut and join the wood for our beds. We also needed to know lots about angles as making our beds ‘square’ (or rectangular!) was a challenge which we had to overcome. We eventually did by using existing corners that we knew were ready made right angles which we then used as a guide.

Making the floor of the poly tunnel was a challenge too. We needed a way to stop the grass and the weeds from growing. We decided to but a black, weed membrane down on the floor. From our science experiments earlier in the year we knew that this would stop the grass and weeds from getting any light which would eventually kill them off.

Finally we had to learn how to set our tomatoes. We knew we needed compost to provide food for our plants. We also learned through research that it is better to set tomatoes deep into the compost as they will sprout new roots from the stem that will make them even stronger and healthier, giving us a much better yield!

Sky was looking at the root systems of our plants. You could tell which plants were healthy!

We also set a curiosity….CUCAMELONS! We aren’t a ‘green eggs and ham’ kind of school! We like to try new things so it will be interesting to see what these little plants turn out like…and even more interesting to see what they taste like! See if you can find a picture of what they look like!!

Planting our seedlings in neat little rows!

Here we are…what a blooming success! We have a poly tunnel, an allotment with six beds, four large beds at the side of the school with pots of potatoes to boot! At the back of the school we have a further four beds. All this in little over 12 months! We have become real problem solvers, developed numerous academic skills (in context!), learned LOTS about teamwork and perseverance and achieved something magnificent that we can actually use, eat, sell and be proud of! Well done everyone!!

Angus is watering our 'Ailsa Craig' tomatoes.

How much water will our seedlings need?



The new, raised beds at the side of the school are now filled!!

The next stage is looking after our little plants! We’ll be learning lots about mini beasts and caring for plants as we try and make our biggest yield EVER!



The raised beds at the back of the school are filling up fast!

 

We have some tiny gooseberries already! The rhubarb needs water in the sunshine!