Tui Teams up with Garden to Table

This year we are excited to be supporting Garden To Table as our school programme. Garden to Table is a trust, which runs a gardening and cooking programme in schools across New Zealand. As participants in the Garden to Table programme, seven to 10 year-old children spend time in a productive vege garden and home-style kitchen each week. There they learn skills that will last them a lifetime, and discover just how much fun it is to grow and cook their own seasonal vegetables and fruits. The schools have a dedicated kitchen specialist and garden specialist who take weekly classes teaching the students to garden, and to use the produce to make healthy meals.

Shopping list

Tui will be providing starter packs to each of the new schools, and seasonal packs during the year.

Each month we will feature an update from a participating school, providing you with ideas to use at home or school.

School garden update

School name: Kaurilands School
Region: Auckland

Planning

We upgraded six of our existing beds in front of Rooms 1-6. We raised them to .8 of a metre, lined them with polythene, filled with polystyrene, covered that with weed mat and filled with 20 cubic metre of garden bed mix.

Filling the beds with polystyrene takes up room so less garden mix is needed. It also reduces rubbish to the landfill. By putting polystyrene (brought in by the school community from their home waste streams) in to the garden beds, it is essentially finding a safe 'storage' place for it so doesn't have to go to a conventional landfill.

The children enjoyed helping fill the beds with the soil.

Planting

This month we have filled our six new beds with broccoli, curly kale, mini cabbages, cauliflower, rosemary, sage, parsley, chives, two blueberry bushes, a dwarf lemon, pansies, viola and red geum.

The children investigated what plants can be planted for winter and have done all the planting themselves.

Harvesting

This month we are harvesting the last of the eggplants and beetroot. We had not planted a summer garden this year but plan to next summer for autumn harvests.

Maintenance

As they are new beds they need little maintenance other than watering every second day.

At the moment the children are checking for the last of the cabbage white eggs or caterpillars!

Sustainability

We carry out a daily collection of all children and staff’s food scraps which are then put into one of the 11 worm farms or three compost tumblers we have on site. We have a designated team of Eco Warriors to do this job.

We are also currently investigating corrugated iron water tanks .

Tui products used in the garden this month:

Tui All Purpose Potting Mix
Tui Seed Raising Mix
Tui Super Sheep Pellets
Tui Organic Potting Mix

Top garden tips for winter:

Make sure all winter vegetables are planted by the end of April.
Look for a spot suitable for garlic and feed soil heavily.

;