Maungawhau Primary's School Garden

School garden update

• School name: Maungawhau Primary School
• Region: Auckland

Over the last month we have been doing lots of planting because we needed food to cook with for our Garden To Table programme. We have planted lots of seeds but also planted little plants that will grow bigger. The little tomatoes we planted have grown fast and quite big, we are excited to eat them!

We also planted coriander seeds that will grow into herbs that are yummy to eat. We have already eaten lots of herbs and made yummy salads using our imagination.

Planning

A landscape gardener came in and helped us with our garden layout for free. She really liked our garden and said we had done a great job.

We came up with ideas to create seating in the garden so we can go there and do quiet drawing or writing. We can't wait to build more seats so everyone can enjoy our garden.

Planting

We have planted pumpkins, cucumber, capsicums, corn and eggplant which are good summer crops, and also lots of beans which are growing up a big pole.

Potatoes are our favourite vegetable to grow and eat because you can make chips and wedges. We made wedges and dip made out of yoghurt, mint and lemons from the garden and it was really yummy. Apples are our favourite fruit but they take ages to grow and sometimes the bugs eat them. We also like lemons because you can make lemonade and lemon muffins.

Harvesting

We have harvested lots of lettuce to make a salad of our imagination, and have also picked a lot of flowers which we have added to our salads. They have been orange, purple and yellow. They make the salad look really colourful and yummy. Some flowers are spicy.

We used broccoli and cauliflower to make flat bread, which was delicious. There were lots of lemons on our lemon tree so we made lemonade which tasted quite sour.

Carrots are yummy to eat raw. We used carrots to make spicy carrot muffins, we even put seeds in them – they were tasty and easy to make.

Maintenance

We have been working hard to get the compost organised and working. It is a new thing we have done this year and we have made our system using three big different containers.

We have been also tidying up our worm farms and making sure we take the worm tea out to use on the garden.

A new garden shed was built to keep all our equipment in that has been donated to use. We love the shed it is cool.

Sustainability

We reused the garden edges that were there to make our gardens. Next year we are hoping to get funding to collect rain water from the roof to give to our garden.

We have a worm farm which we fill with waste from the kitchen and other weeds.

Top garden tips for this season:

1. Keep your new seeds watered well.
2. Make sure you keep up with the weeding.
3. Watch out bugs don’t eat the lettuces!

Products used in the garden this month:

• Tui Organic Seed Raising Mix
• Romberg biopots for our seedlings
• Tumbleweed Worm Café

Click here for Maungawhau's Salad of the Imagination

Tui & Garden to Table

We are excited to be supporting Garden To Table as our school programme this year. 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.

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