Sunflower Growing Challenge
We’re hoping for a ‘sunny’ autumn!
For the last few years we have been getting everyone at school growing, by holding a sunflower competition. Every child has planted a sunflower at school and taken it home or to relatives to grow.
Then we have asked them to send in pictures of how their sunflowers are doing and finally to measure them and send in a picture to enter our tallest sunflower competition. Every entry had a certificate with prizes for the tallest!
This year, we would like to do the same, reinforcing this month’s value of HOPE, even though we are not all in school at the moment. We would like to join in with the ‘Community Plant and Garden Equipment Recycling Group’ who are running a Sunflower Community Challenge aiming to make Woburn Sands and surrounding areas full of cheerful sunflowers this autumn.
Frosts Garden Centre and various individuals have donated seeds and the community group have been distributing seeds around families in Woburn Sands. Some of our lovely children have also been spreading their own grown seedlings around families too. Our Key Worker children have been busy planting seeds for school.
We would love to reach as many of our pupils as possible to be able to grow their own sunflowers. There have been various postings on the PTFA Facebook page to help connect to the Community Challenge and find details of how to get hold of seeds, pots etc. We are hoping that anyone else who has seeds or seedlings may be able to help to spread these around our families too.
We’ve had great success using seeds from our old sunflower heads in the past and some people have with bird seed and supermarket snack packs too! You don’t need plant pots either, any container will do, you could make paper pots, egg boxes, yogurt pots and food trays keep it very ‘eco’. Whilst potting compost speeds growth up, to start the seeds off, homemade compost, soil, sand and other mediums will be fine for a short while.
I’ve attached an updated guide to growing, which may help too. Do get in touch if you need more information.
Happy growing!
Mrs Thomas
