Spring Projects in the School Garden

The children at Garden to Table school Cannon’s Creek School have been making the most of the warmer sunny days in the garden! They are busy making compost, planting more crops for continuous harvests as we head into summer, and enjoying tasty spring harvests in their kitchen creations.

Compost news

We were lucky enough to be sponsored for new compost bins this month! They were so needed. A special thanks to Paula from Porirua Pharmacy who has been our wonderful sponsor for these new bins. Also thanks to Porirua City Council who later generously donated two more bins through the Schools Garden Club programme.

Last Thursday Alicia from Porirua Schools Garden Club gave the students a refresher course about composting. Composting is like making lasagne - layers of green and brown materials.

Green can be raw fruit and veges, tea bags, coffee grounds, grass clippings, weeds, and seaweed. Brown can be fallen leaves from trees, sawdust, twigs, shredded paper and cardboard. Green + brown = yummy compost!

Sometimes we need to give the compost a kick start so that it breaks down more quickly. To do this we add other things like Tui Blood & Bone between the layers as an activator.

Sowing and Weeding

In spring everything grows so quickly! The veges and flowers grow fast and so do the weeds. Ms Pau’u helped the children with pulling out weeds. There was lots of chickweed growing which is a sign that our soil is really good! (Did you know you can eat chick weed?) Remember to ask before you eat anything from our garden and wash it first.

The Super Seed Sowers Team has been in action! Seeds need Warmth, Air and Moisture (W.A.M.) to germinate. Anna and her team sowed pumpkin and butternut squash in recycled paper and plastic cups; then they sowed capsicum seed in margarine trays. They used seed raising mix to fill the containers.

Potato Patch

We have been preparing the ground for planting potatoes. They are a hungry vegetable and like lots of good garden food. We have already added pine needles and compost. A few weeks ago we collected the pine needles from the park. There are lots of pine trees there.

Today we dug in lots of sheep pellets and finally got to plant our potatoes! We learnt the following new words: seed potatoes, shoots, sprouting, trenches, main crop and root crops. We planted two varieties called “Cristina” and “Jelly”.

First the potato team…

Dug the trenches (15cm deep). Glenn from Ngati Toa School was visiting and helped.
Lined the trenches with comfrey leaves to help the potatoes grow better.
Placed the potatoes (25cm apart) in the trench on top of the comfrey - with sprouts facing up.
Covered them with soil. Potatoes don’t like the light. It makes them green and poisonous. (Don’t eat green potatoes!)

Now we will watch and see how long it takes them to grow through the soil.

Feeding

Spring is feeding time and just as growing kids get hungry so do our vegetables, trees and flowers. In the last two weeks our apple and pear trees, vegetables, rhubarb and roses have all had a boost with sheep pellets, compost or blood and bone. There are always hungry plants out there!

Tui & Garden to Table

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

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