Blog posted by Dominic Murphy

The summer fair

Here’s a picture of our stall at the school’s summer fair. We decided to show off what we’ve been growing this year, and sell a few things while we
were at it.

The older children, Year 6s who are going to secondary school next term, put up the display and took it in turns to run the ‘shop’. They saw it as a kind of reward for supporting the gardening club, and have been looking forward to it for weeks.

When some of the younger students found out about this, they complained that they weren’t involved. But their grumbles on the day did not come to much, with too many distractions at the tombola and bric-a-brac stall. Nothing like a dog-eared teddy to take your mind off things.

For sale, we had basil in pots (£1.10 each and a snip compared to the garden centre and supermarket, which unlike our stuff is not organically grown). There were geraniums that we had  raised from plug plants bought in the spring. And  garlic, too, sold as three bulbs plaited together.

At first, I had wondered what we would do if there were no takers. Would we drop our prices as the afternoon wore on? Wander around the playground trying to give the stuff away, as punters preferred a flutter at the tombola to any of our bargains?

I needn’t have worried though. In the event, we sold out in no time. Which just left the vegetables we had picked for showing off, among them potatoes, spinach,  carrots, chard and salad. These we put into two wooden crates scavenged from the greengrocer’s and got the headmaster to auction hem at the end of the day. As the smell of hot dogs and beefburgers drifted across the playground, the two gorgeous looking veg boxes sold for £5 each. A huge bargain for the lucky takers. A big thrill for gardening club too.

Blog posted by Dominic Murphy

Maybe the recent heat has gone to the children’s heads. How else to explain all the students at gardening club claiming to like spinach? And chard. Green stuff that would not normally be allowed on their plates, let alone get anywhere near their mouths.

We have been doing a lot of harvesting recently. Last week, it was garlic, which is now in the polytunnel drying, and the strawberry crop has provided some nice grazing for the past few sessions. But this week it was the turn of the potatoes, ruby chard that was threatening to bolt, and our perpetual spinach — and the children were going to take their veg home. We divided up the potatoes into 11 equal piles, one for each child that had turned up, and threw in a couple of onions for good measure  — always useful to the cook of the house.

But although there was a good pile of greens, it would not stretch to 11 decent portions.  But not to worry, I thought. I was sure some of the children would not want it anyway.

So I asked who liked spinach, expecting only a few takers and many more grimaces. Instead, everyone put up their hands shouting me, me, me. What about chard, I said? Again, the same enthusiastic reply.

Now I like to think that growing stuff might mean you are more likely to try eating it. But no way was I convinced that every single student had come around to the idea of eating their greens. And I also knew that two sisters had recently fed some gardening club courgettes to their pet giant snails. But what to do? I had to be fair. So 11 sorry looking helpings of chard or spinach it had to be.

The children were delighted and went off back to class with their spoils. What would their parents think, I wondered. I mean, would they bother with a few leaves that would cook down to nothing when they were trying to cater for a whole family? Or would that organically grown spinach and chard end up in the pet guinea pigs? And, in one case at least, some giant snails.