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The Real Bread Campaign, part of Sustain: the alliance for better food and farming,
is funded by the Big Lottery's Local Food programme and the Sheepdrove Trust. |
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Wheat diaries
We ask everyone running a Bake Your Lawn project to keep a diary and take pictures during the year.
If you've been growing wheat as part of a school or community youth group project, we'd love to receive your stories and pictures that we can share. Please email any that you'd be happy for us to publish to realbread [at] sustainweb.org
Berkswich School's Bake Your Lawn loaf 2011
See also:
- Bake Your Lawn photos (on flickr)
- Wheat Diaries 2011
May
We planted our wheat at the end of February, and germination was pretty good – by early May we have half dozen rows of good strong wheat! The wheat is a central feature of our developing garden area. We were lucky to be given a number of timber planters by a local garden centre and these have been put around the wheat, these will be planted with peas, beans and salad greens. We now have rhubarb and strawberries growing alongside.
Adrian Clarke, Bedlington Day Centre, Northumberland
Our wheat is about 10cm high now. In June we (all 18 of us - v. small school) are going to visit a local mill (Caudwell's Mill, Rowsley) to see how flour used to be ground. We'll buy a bag of flour and bake it on our return. I'm not certain our wheat will ripen, but if it does, we've to find a way to grind it.
T. Hodgson, Biggin CE Primary, Derbyshire
Here are some photos of us preparing the plot for our wheat, we raked it, picked out the stones and made drills to drop the seeds in. The first signs of our wheat appeared during the Easter holidays but it is now growing well. We have not had to water it due to the abundance of rain...Our school caters for students with a wide range of special educational needs, the students who planted the wheat were in an environment lesson but a range of students throughout the school will be involved in the project, working in the gardens during gardening lessons, and hopefully making the bread in a science lesson.
Lucy, Ravenscliffe High School and Sports College, Halifax
We planted our wheat on April 2nd. When I returned from holiday on the 22nd it was about 4 inches high. It is looking OK.
11th Wallington Beaver colony
Kit likes to water things, but our wheat seems to be doing fine without the help!
Sarah Dickinson, Bake Your Lawn NI
April
We have planted! As a Flagship school for Food for Life we have a really good relationship with our local farm, which is also organic. Our Year 5 children buddied with reception pupils and they went together to plant the wheat on the farm. The farm manager who is also a governor of our school chose an area visible from the road to school and where our children will walk past to get to the woods for Forest School Activities. The wheat is covered with green fleece to accelerate growth so it makes the area even more obvious for our children to see. Our aim is for Year 5 to harvest, make flour and then make bread with reception children.
Mrs. E. Ditton, Nacton CEVC Primary School, Suffolk
We are growing the wheat as part of our year 3 (ages 7-8) gardening club. There are 14 girls in gardening club, which is run by two teachers, Mrs Cameron and Mrs Collins. We planted it about five weeks ago and it’s doing really well. We prepared the soil by removing the weeds and digging it over. The first photo is of us planting the seeds, then the gardening club standing around the planted patch and the third photo is the wheat growing about three weeks ago.
Mrs Collins, Burgess Hill School for Girls, West Sussex
We have planted our wheat and it is growing well Thanks for the resources they look great.
Emily Meunier, Oxford Road Community School, Reading, Berkshire,
Here is our first photo of our wheat-growing project. Our Year 3 classes were keen to grow wheat as part of their Vikings topic so here they are with their efforts so far.
Juliet Birch-Machin, Stocksfield Avenue Primary School, Newcastle, Tyne and Wear,
We planted our wheat last week - hopefully just in the nick of time. See our community blog
Alex Basham-Collings, Somerford and Shacklewell Tenants and Residents Association, London
The gardening club planted the wheat in a plot outside the food room just before the Easter holidays. Last week the first green shoots started appearing.
Rosemarie Parker, Gilbert Inglefield Middle School, Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire
Our wheat is about 20cm tall. Pictures: 1 2
Alice Harlan, Phoenix High School, London
The Bude Friends of the Earth local growing schools will be part of the Bake Your Lawn Campaign again this year. So far seven of the twelve schools in the group have planted wheat I had kept back from last year. We have finished restoring our mill to working order, so will be grinding the children's wheat by water power in the autumn.
Rosie Beat, The Bridge Mill, Devon
Today we started our real bread experiment! We sowed wheat seeds in one of the raised planters on Shacklewell Road so by the end of the summer we should have a mini wheat field which we can harvest, mill into flour and bake into (a small loaf of) bread. Read the full story and see pictures here.
Somerford and Shacklewell Tenants and Residents Association, London
Jack, Charlie and Kit are very excited to see the first shoots of wheat appearing. We'll be taking some seed up to our home educators' meet up tomorrow and hopefully we'll get the others going...
Sarah Dickinson, Bake Your Lawn NI
We have sent out over 150 of our 'Growing wheat at home' members' experiment. We provided them with Paragon seed as we found it too difficult to get a sufficient quantity of an older variety. We have also set up a demonstration area in our gardens along the same lines as last year and will send some pictures in due course.
Francis Rayns, Garden Organic
March
The results of our germination experiment - about 60% we think.
Sarah Dickinson, Bake Your Lawn NI
