Barking

Despite the hot weather earlier this week I had 6 enthusiastic  young men from the Boys Class wheelbarrowing bark to put around the hill where the maize maze is. They did a great job and it looks awesome over there. Now we just need the maize to outstrip the weeds!!!

Thanks for your help...

Onions

In our cooking at Oaklands we use lots of onions so I thought we need to make sure we have lots of them for us to use. Some Year 4 students helped

• clear a garden bed, 
• dig it over
• fill it with compost
• plant onion seeds 
• water them.

Hopefully this means we will have lots of onions for us to cook. Thanks for your help.

Chickens Update

The latest update on our chickens is that they are having a Christmas holiday at Mrs McInnes farm out at Rolleston. While they are away some Year 4 students helped me to

• rake all the green waste out of the enclosure
• dig over the ground
• plant peas, silver beet and other green

When we have chickens again next year they will have lots of nice greens to eat.

Thanks for your help Room 12

Lions Environment Award

Congratulations to Oakland School for getting 3rd in the Lions Environment Award. We received a $50 prize which will be spent on our School Garden.

Also a big well done to Alex and Victor who escorted the judge around the school. She made special mention of how well they shared our school with her.

Gala

On Friday night the Garden to Table programme had a table selling compost from Living Earth, gardening gloves and some swan plants. I had some of the senior boys from the Gardening Club help me set up. We put up lots of information about how the programme works so that we were able to show what we do to gala visitors.

Thanks to all the people that came and spoke to me about how GTT operates at Oaklands. It was great talking to you all.

McGregors Poppies

The Year 3 students all received a packet of poppy seeds today as Christmas holiday homework for them. They will be doing a lot of the gardening next year so this is an incentive for them to get their hands in the dirt over the Christmas break. There are some students who are planning on planting their poppies in a tyre. Someone else has got space at Grandmas. Hopefully we will get some photos next year of these beautiful flower beds.

Thanks to McGregors for their support of our gardens!!

School Gardens Show

This is the date to save in your diary. 11-13 March next year when Oaklands School will have their garden on show at the Woolston Club. The gardening club has got a plan outlined of what we are going to do... Now we just need to get planting!!

Keep watching the blog to stay up to date.

There are some more signs going up around the school advertising the garden show. Keep an eye out around Christchurch to see which other schools are competing.

Chicken Spring Clean

I had some helpers from Year 4 join Tr'e and I to clean out the chicken house and yard. The chickens have been having lots of greens like silverbeet which they love but they cant eat the white stalks. There were also some broccoli and cabbage roots left behind too. We also changed the straw in the house to keep it nice and clean for the girls.

Thanks for your help.

Updates

Just a few photos from the garden so you can see how things are growing.

Our tomatoes are going great guns. The one in the glass house is a bit taller than the others although the ones with the basil next to them are growing better than my ones at home!!

Our maize maze is now starting to get some sweetcorn plants coming up so hopefully over the summer they should get taller and taller. With a bit of luck we may even get some sweet corn to eat!

The beans that the Boys class planted have started to come up... Will be a while before we are eating beans though.

Broadbean Hummus

Mrs Smith is hosting a morning tea meeting next week for the parents of some of her students so I got some Year 4 helpers to make some morning tea for them. The breakout group from the Year 1's had already podded the beans for us so all we had to do was make the hummus.

We added garlic, which Amber cut up really well, olive oil, water, salt, pepper and a bit of cummin. We did have to taste test it to make sure it was up to standard.!!

Good cooking Team!!

Year 3's

I had some students from Room 3 and 4 out helping me on Friday. They shoveled and wheelbarrowed some compost down to the bins where the broadbeans had been yesterday. We talked about how the garden works and what we do to make sure we don't waste things.

A bit of rain didn't stop these guys!! Not that it was raining quite this hard!

Compost Bins

We are attempting to improve our composting process. As these students from Room 19 are showing there is now a sign telling students emptying food scrap bins telling them where to put it AND to check for plastic bags.

Hopefully this reduce the amount of rubbish going into our bins.

Gardening Club

Today we had our first meeting of the Oaklands Gardening Club. We had nearly 70 enthusiastic students who signed up to help out around our school.

We have also entered into a Gardening Competition run by the Christchurch Horticultural Society. This is similar to the schools competition at the Ellerslie Flower Show. We are building a display garden which we set up at the Woolston Working Mens Club in March next year.

This is going to be an exciting event for our school and students. Watch this space for updates along the way.

Year 3 Helpers

As this years Year 3 students head into Year 4 next year they take on the responsibility for the orchard and chickens. I have been talking to the Year 3's about how the garden works and taking some students out to get a taste for the gardening work. Today we picked 3 buckets of broad beans.  Then the students pulled out the old broad bean plants ready for compost to be spread and new plants put in.

Environmental Award - Well Done Oaklands

Mrs Trotter and I attended a function this afternoon for the Keep Christchurch Beautiful campaign. Oaklands School won a Highly Commended and received a $50 Paper Plus voucher. The judging criteria included

• amount of rubbish on school grounds
• planting
• state of gardens 

I am also proud to say that Mr Rush received a Caretakers Award for all the work he puts in around our school.

Well Done to everyone who has helped by picking up rubbish or by keeping off our gardens. Keep up the great work.

Mulching

I had Yarek and Thorvin come and help me spread pea straw around our vege garden. This will help keep the weeds down and maintain moisture.  The wind made it a hard job but the boys persevered. Thanks for your help.

Year 3 Helpers

This morning I had some enthusiastic Year 3's out helping me tie up tomato plants and give them a good water. Its usually the Year 4 students that help as they are responsible for the chickens and the orchard so today I was giving some Year 3's a chance to see what they could be doing next year.

Thanks for your help boys.

Seniors Concert

While the kapa haka and choir were performing the Saturn planet group was busy making broad bean hummus for afternoon tea. We had Bradley and Shaeden to help which was much appreciated.

We also had beetroot hummus as well. It looked nice and bright and the plates... and the Saturn group got to eat some as well...

It looks likes Mrs Dengel enjoyed the afternoon tea. It was a great event which showcased Oaklands talented students. Thanks Mr McCullum for organising it.

Broad Beans Cont...

Well here it is.... All the broad beans that were podded last week were used today to make some yummy broad bean hummus... the Hummus was shared with the seniors who came to the concert, and there is still some left for the staff to have for morning tea tomorrow...

We also made some yummy beetroot hummus too... It looks great on the plate.

Tomato Update

We have got one of our tomato plants growing in the glass house and we are comparing how it is growing compared to the outside crop. The juniors have obviously been watering it really carefully!!

Food Forest - BEE's

I was down in the Food Forest this afternoon as the sun was shining on all the flowers and there were bees everywhere. This is the whole purpose of the garden so it was great to see it so successful. The bees in this garden will help pollinate our fruit trees and the vegetables down in our garden.

Pumpkin Patch cont...

This is what the patch now looks like with the compost being spread around pumpkin plants hopefully covering weeds and eventually putting nutrients into the ground. As you can see we still have some areas that we need to cover.

Jak helped me build a little wall to keep the compost away from the boiler walls. This means that there will still be air flow around the boiler and we can build up the garden.

Pumpkin Patch

I went and  had a look at our pumpkin patch and unfortunately some of them have been frosted a bit on some of the leaves after last weeks cold mornings.

In order to help the pumpkins grow I had 6 Year 4 helpers come and spread grass clippings around the pumpkin plants to help smother the weeds. It also makes it easier to see where they need to be watered!!

Thanks for the effort guys. 

Broad Beans...

Between the showers on Thursday Mia and Jak picked our Broad bean crop. They filled 1.5 flexi buckets. Thanks guys!!

Then the Junior Podders took over and filled 2 ice cream containers of podded beans... Great work team!!

You will have to come back to our blog next week to see what we are going to do with these beans... but its going to be yummy!!