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Wednesday 20 August 2014

There's lots going on in our School Gardens

I'm pretty busy so this will be a summary of the current project happening in the gardens at the moment.

  • We have created a partnership with Canterbury Horticultural Society, who will be coming into school to plan and plant a fruit tree orchard, in the area out the back of Room 12 and 13. This will be a Year 4 project. They will be planning and planting the orchard and it will be their job to maintain and care for the orchard in coming years.
  • I'm working with the Menz Shed, who will be coming into school to install a pathway around the back of, and over the top of, our 'hill' in the edible gardens. This area will be planted out with herbs, potatoes and  flowers when the weather gets a bit warmer. We were busy digging in the green crop last week. The Room 16 students had a blast 'chopping and dropping' the lupins, which we planted to improve the quality of the soil
 
  • The Menz Shed are also going to build a chook house and an enclosure for some chickens, so we'll have fresh eggs to cook with  later in the year. The chooks will be housed in the area around where the fruit tree orchard is going to be planted, in the area behind Room 12 and 13. The chooks will be able to roam in among the fruit trees, they will fertilise the soil around the trees and eat the pest that live on the trees. We will be using the food scraps left over from 'fruit break' to supplement the chooks food. 
  • Trees for Canterbury will be once again providing us with some native shrubs to be planted around the school. Having these natives will provide nesting places for plants and insects and create important biodiversity areas around the school
  • Mitre 10 MEGA Hornby are continuing to support our school and as well as the pallet of soil mix they sent us last week, today they gave us a selection of seed, plant labels, liquid fertilisers, balls of twine, peat pots, planting trays and plant tags. Thanks so much to Tui and Egmont for donating these items for us. 
  • Our fruit trees are in! We have three different types of apple tree, one double plum tree, one double pear tree and a lemon tree, so as well as the orchard that behind Room 12 and 13, will have fruit growing in the edible garden behind the junior classroom. We have also planted some blackcurrants courtesy of Mrs McInnes, and we have some raspberries that we will be planting soon, courtesy of Mr Rush. We'll have loads of fruit to make all sorts of yummy things, and they'll be fruit for us all to share. Thanks very much to Scott Wilson for installing the wiring system, that we are going to use to espelair our fruit trees on to.
  • Our composting system is up and running, and we have junior class compost monitors who are bringing their classes food scraps out to the be composted. 
  • We've been busy planting some seed ready for the warmer weather, and we have leeks spring onions, basil, mint, spearmint and peas already under way. It's all going well in the nice warm greenhouse.    
  • And this is all running alongside our garden sessions with Room 16 and Room 8, when we recently made appleslaw and apple pies! They were delicious. 
So it's all go here - and we haven't even got into spring yet!






 

Wednesday 13 August 2014

Mitre 10 MEGA Hornby are on board - Yahoo!

Mitre 10 MEGA Hornby have very kindly become a partner of our school gardens and last term Andrew Mears, the Garden Center Manager, and Shane Allen the Marketing Manager, came out to school to talk about ways they could support us, and our Garden to Table programme. Since then they have been donating all sorts of goodies to us, and last term we received a load of free gardening magazines and some microgreen seeds.
Last week Andrew visited Room 16 and during his visit he talked to the students about the vital role Bee's play in the garden. He also organised for a pallet load of container and seed raising mix to be delivered to school and he dropped in some seeds, seedlings and some peat pots to school. Way to go Andrew! We are very fortunate to have the support of Mitre 10 MEGA Hornby and we really appreciate all the help they are giving us.