Courtyard-Day 5

On our fourth day as a class doing horticulture we did a lot of planting!
          Firstly we did some indoor planting. We planted hyacinths in blue plastic pots, onion sets in brown plastic pots and white daffodils in brown plastic pots.

Onion Sets

The Hyacinths; We planted these by putting compost at the bottom of the pot, then the bulb, and then more compost. We then watered them.
The Onion Sets; We planted these by filling the whole pot with compost. We then placed a load of the bulbs on top of the compost near the top of the pot.
The White daffodils; We planted these the same way as the hyacinths.

While planting all these flowers we had to be careful to place the bulbs into the pot the right way, with the radicle (beginning of the root) at the bottom and the plumule (beginning of the shoot) at the top.
          When all the plants were in their pots we put them in a warm, dark cupboard. This represents what it would be like for the bulbs to be actually outside under a lot of soil. As they grow we will begin introducing light.


Lollypop sticks were a very important part of our indoor planting. We had to write the name of the bulb on a lolly pop stick before sticking it into the compost in that bulb's pot. This allows us to know which pot contains which bulb. We also made some lolly pop ticks for the plants outside.



After cleaning up the tables, we then got all our equipment, eg gloves, trowels, forks, cultivators, rakes, shovels and wheel barrows ect. before going outside. We were split into different groups and me and Laura were given 'De Hide's baby', otherwise known as an amaryllis, to plant.



Amaryllis

We went out to the courtyard and began digging a deep hole in the ground next to where all the other plants were planted a few weeks ago. When the hole was big enough to fit the amaryllis, we put compost into the bottom of it, then the amaryllis bulb and then some more compost. We covered it over with some topsoil from the other groups flower bed.

We then went on to plant four hyacinths next to the amaryllis. We planted them in a square so they would look neat and presentable when they had grown. We made sure all the bulbs were planted the correct way round in the soil.

 

 





The other groups did two different things.

 

Group 1; Group one cultivated, weeded and evened the soil out in the flower beds around the courtyard. They also got a lot of topsoil out of it.

 

Group 2; Group two planted tulips in the bed I was weeding last week. Firstly they dug a wide, shallow hole in the middle of the flower bed.

 

 

 

They then put compost down in a layer all around the hole. They placed the tulips into the flower bed, making sure they were the right way up, before sprinkling a little more compost into the hole. They then shovelled all the topsoil back on top of the bulbs.This is when I came and began helping too. We had to go into the flowerbed and begin breaking up the soil with our hands.

 

 



 Then Ciara and Zoe began watering them with the watering can.

           We had to water all our plants, both inside and out, before finishing up.

 

 

 

We brought all our equipment back to the storage containers and classrooms, after washing them in the sinks, before heading to our next class.