This week at the allotment was an exciting week as some of the children had not visited the allotment and were intrigued by what they might see while they were there. During the bus journey we talked about what things might be growing at the allotment and Olivia thought we might see flowers and even pumpkins!

As we walked through the allotment gates the children were amazed and quickly wanted to explore the space, but first we gazed across the allotment and decided which jobs we would need to focus on today. Very quickly the children thought of six different areas to focus on and were ready to get busy. As this was the first time for some of the children Tara took the children on a tour of the allotment to explain each area and what the spaces are used for.

The apple tree was bursting with big juicy apples and were over hanging the path so we moved the branch to walk down the path. We looked at the greenhouse, fruit cage and poly tunnel and then walked towards the pond, thats when Olivia spotted the pumpkins and pointed to show everyone they were there. Joseph began counting them and Lily asked when they would be ready to pick and was thrilled to discover it is very soon!

We collected our tools from the shed and all decided to help with the biggest bed that was filled with potatoes (and weeds). As the grown ups began turning over the soil Rupert spotted a huge potato and rushed to pick it up. Everyone was excited and continued digging to see how many we could find, before we knew it we had a huge bucketful and an even bigger pile of weeds. Our vegetable beds are ready to be renewed this winter so we removed the wood from the edges and continued to dig the weeds out. We very quickly had a big clear space ready for the new beds to be added.

Everyone helped to dig and it was very hard work so we stopped for lunch and sat on the benches for a rest.

After lunch Sam, Rupert and Joseph wanted to look at the pond and they discovered a tiny little frog sitting on the edge! Sam was so excited and wanted everyone else to see so Tara let the frog hop onto her hand, the children were amazed by how small it was.

Some of the children wanted to continue digging with Lisa and Tara and some of the children began a new task with kirsty which was collecting sunflower seeds from the huge sunflowers that were dried out and ready to harvest. Lisa talked with the children about the sunflower heads and what we could do with the seeds once they were collected. We also discussed leaving some of the sunflowers so the birds could eat the seeds. Jenny agreed this was a good idea as the birds might be hungry and would love to have sunflower seeds to collect. Toby carefully picked the seeds and then put them into the pot and was sure there was at least 100 seeds in there! Rishaan looked at the pot and guessed there may be 29, this sparked lots of conversations about numbers. The time had passed by very quickly and it was time to return to nursery. We returned to our list to see how many things we could tick of our list and we had completed four tasks, rupert reminded everyone we could continue the others next week.