Grow Your Own Magazine

When I was at school we had Rural Science which taught us all about growing things ect,we even kept bees and had an ant farm.
It seems nowadays there is no such lesson and there seems to be a big emphasais on IT.

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The greatness comes not when things go always good for you,but the greatness comes when you are really tested,when you take,some knocks,some disappointments;because only if youv'e been in the deepest valley can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain.

I am sure that is the case in most schools. though after a numbers i thought it would be a good idea if i could get some help with my gardening so i asked at the local school would they like the kids to learn about gardening and got a great response from the principal it was not long before i had the kids doing a lot of work for me which of course was free plus it was helping them.

Max.

I'm a teacher of a Reception class ( 4 and 5 year olds). We have a vegetable garden in pots! The children water, plant out and look after the vegetables and all the flowers everyday. It is a big part of our teaching, the kids love it.

It seems now to rely on an enterprising teacher, parent or TA. I regularly hand over stuff to my son's old primary because one of their TA's is an allotment neighbour and gives her spare time to garden with the kids, most of which in this area live in flats. This certainly didn't happen when my son was there as the headmistress wasn't keen (health and safety nut).

Most science was rural when I was growing up (Northumberland) but I don't remember a dedicated lesson - I'd have loved the chance to look after bees, all I got was the class gerbil

did you ever do the kent county show cloud
i did rural science at school loved it, my sons school has gardening club once a week, ive seen there patch but its not watered during the rest of the week the bedding plants look so poorly, the tomatoes are looking good but then toms grow pretty much anywhere gonna mentioned tomorrow about it, i have made sure my some knows his carrots from his tommies chicldren should learn more and get off the computers surely not everychild can end up in jobs solely using a computer

hmmmmmm now theres a thought, get an allotment, and invite all the schools in the area to bring a class down for a day ........ get it all dug for free, and i just get to do the good bit of planting seeds

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http://teachy.myminicity.com/env please visit my town and make it better

http://quiz.ravenblack.net/blood.pl?biter=teach_me please sign up to be a vampire, i get 10 pints of blood if you do, and it's fun as well ....... i have an interactive map if anyone wants it.

I did!!! Detling Hill.
Nightmare - steam engines and cows everywhere. And you were inundated with brochures for absolutely nothing relevant.

I now never go to county shows just in case.

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Andrea :wavehello

http://www.growfruitandveg.co.uk/gra...logs/zazen999/

moon trials completed:
tomatoes
[46% increase in crop per seed sown and 10% increase in crop per plant]

currently underway:
calabrese
garlic

http://linearlegume.blogspot.com/

Schools don't concentrate so much on spelling, either. Hence, a lot of written English nowadays is hard to understand. However, this is true in the older generation as well.

Our school has a veg patch, but realistically there isn't the time to tend it properly. You know how long it takes to do your allotment? Well, consider doing that and a full time job herding 25 children around.

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~ What do I think of Western civilisation? I think it would be a very good idea ~ Gandhi

It doesn't help the schools either that the main harvesting and weeding season is in the holidays.

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Andrea :wavehello

http://www.growfruitandveg.co.uk/gra...logs/zazen999/

moon trials completed:
tomatoes
[46% increase in crop per seed sown and 10% increase in crop per plant]

currently underway:
calabrese
garlic

http://linearlegume.blogspot.com/

i am just setting the school i work in as an Eco School, they are 3-4 years, also we are growing things and trying to grow more next year, as i am fed up with the lack of recycling etc.....so guess who got the job.

Also, my kids school is at the back of my school and myself and a friend have planted, with the kids, 4 raised beds full of veg, lets hope it gets looked after at breaktimes, they are between 4-10 years old.....

i know what you mean though, i will educate my kids on growing themselves, i think they are impressed so far, well they are with the straws!!!!

SS

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Gardening - A labour of love that begins with daybreak and ends with backache!
http://clarkiesveggieblog.blogspot.com/

We did 'gardening in primary school. (Back in the middle of the last century!) It was only when I got older I realised they were using the 10/11 year olds to keep the garden srubberies tidy, trimmed and hoed! Blimmin' cheek!

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Earth laughs in flowers. Ralph Waldo Emerson

www.vegheaven.blogspot.com

Updated November 30th - Mr Stinky's Excellent Adventure (and a Christmas Cake)

Rural science was a class in our secondary school, but unless you were in the lowest set, you had no option to do it. I think their reasoning behind it was the likelihood that these kids needed valuable manual skills to get them by in the real world. I'd have loved to have grown things in school, meanies. Oh Siani Blewog, teaches graphics, woodwork, engineering, and metalwork, but she says there is little practical work undertaken these days as there simply isn't the funding. They have all the hitech cam machines going(donated by local business) but no one gets to plane a bit of wood anymore. Her capitation per pupil for the year is just over £1!!!!!, £1 for all teaching materials for a year, this worlds gone mad. If it wasn't for the generousity of companies in the community, they would have no materials at all.

I never knew much Welsh Mikey, but isn't Siani Blewog a hairy caterpillar? Or did I dream that?
Strewth I have some odd dreams - must give up the cheese suppers!

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Earth laughs in flowers. Ralph Waldo Emerson

www.vegheaven.blogspot.com

Updated November 30th - Mr Stinky's Excellent Adventure (and a Christmas Cake)

daisy's school have lots of pots outside each classroom & also regularly go to the allotment nearby,another local primary school have a plot on our lottie site,but as zazen99 pointed out most of the harvesting is done in the summer holidays!
like Mikey I also remember in high school rural science only being an option for the "lower set",I guess the rest of us were supposed to get out in the real world get ourselves a high paying job & be able to afford to pay someone else to grow our veg!not having any links with high school now I dont know what they do/dont do?

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the fates lead him who will;him who won't they drag.

Happiness is not having what you want,but wanting what you have.xx

We had Rural Studies too! OH thinks that I'm mad when I talk about it - but everyone had to do it up to 3rd year and then it was really a subject for the less able who were probably destined for work on the land (I'm only 37 by the way, so it wasn't quite the dark ages!) Although there was Farm Club outside of the school day.

We learned about preparing the soil, planting etc as well as tending to the school farm - sheep, goats and pigs. We also had 2 Jersey cows which used to jump gates and make a run for it every so often. We had to lobby the EEC to get a milk quota for them! The best bit though was that the sheep used to graze on our best hockey pitch, those of us in the team would spend days before a big match piling up the droppings at strategic points on the edges of the pitch to stymie the other team...happy days.

yeah they do over advertise irrelevant merchandise, but i loved it very fond memories there, sneeking out me tent joining those at mainline, not getting bk till 4 am having a few crafty bottles of beer that were kept cool in cattle water buckets and had to be opened against any lump of wood you could find, rabbit hutches came in usefull (i was 16/17 then)only to have the tent tapped on cuz some silly twonk had hammered a fence post through a main water pipe and the cows were ankle deep.freezing cold showers as they hot water didnt come on til a certain time, hairdrying sheep (thats still makes me giggle that ) useing a 2in paint brush to oil a bullocks hooves,shoe polish in the horn buds, talc for bunnies white feet, ooo giveing away trade secrets here, but everyone showing did it anyway so what the heck, was a great laugh, and met some cracking people i do miss it, just to clarify none of us ever got drunk or got silly, cuz we all knew all the work we had to do was a very strange grown up atmosphere, we all cared for the animals and knew what we had to do, sigh i do miss it

Our maths teacher used to run the allotment sized garden at the rear of the school.
I remember having to make a wooden cold frame for the garden in woodworking class.
The woodwork teacher nearly came to blows with the maths teacher when he came into the workshop and said to me" Oh, No don't bother with all those fancy mortice and tenon and half lap joints! Just glue the flaming thing together and stick a few tacks in until it dries and it will be fine"

And it was!

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My Majesty made for him a garden anew in order
to present to him vegetables and all beautiful flowers.- Offerings of Thutmose III to Amon-Ra (1500 BCE)

You're not far off, blewog does mean hairy!!, OH has wirewool for hair, so the name stuck between her and friends as a kid, being an extremely confident person, she deems it a term of endearment. Are you Welsh by origin flum?

No, but my maiden name was Roberts! In my first year at University I was put in a shared room with a Welsh speaking north Wales girl - they obviously thought we had much in common. I was studying geology, she was studying botany and zoology. I wish I'd paid more attention when she was wittering about plant genetics - but I don't suppose she EVER wishes she'd listened to me chuntering about carboniferous fossils!

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Earth laughs in flowers. Ralph Waldo Emerson

www.vegheaven.blogspot.com

Updated November 30th - Mr Stinky's Excellent Adventure (and a Christmas Cake)

I've never understood the northerners much, (by that I mean North Wales), there is far too much fanatical welshness for us mid and southerners. If the word is easier to say in English we say it in English, there's no problem, its called Wenglish. Its hard watching Pobol Y Cwm, most of the actors are from North Wales, and I end up scratching my head saying to OH what did they just say!!

I'll give an example I was taught grammatical welsh by a gent from North Wales, and you would say a simple phrase like, I like coffee, as Rydw i'n hoffi coffi, but at home you would say Fi'n lico coffi. The former is so much more formal, and completely different from what you would say in normal conversation, so sometimes even as a welshman I have no idea what has just been said.

I still occasionally feel like that about Yorkshire folk. (I'm from Manchester!)

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Earth laughs in flowers. Ralph Waldo Emerson

www.vegheaven.blogspot.com

Updated November 30th - Mr Stinky's Excellent Adventure (and a Christmas Cake)

I guess language is a funny thing, and we do have a great diversity of it in the UK.