Arataki School Gardens Term 1, 2025
In term 1, we have been working with the New Entrant gardeners as well as one of our senior classes. We began with an introduction to the gardens - the worm farms are always a hit and our young gardeners were keen to feed them every week. They quickly learn that the worms and their castings are not a stinky, dirty part of the garden, but the clever composters who recycle our food waste and help us build healthy, organic soil!
We started with the basics of seed sowing, sowing beans in pots for the young gardeners to tend to in their classrooms. They loved seeing the beans we planted in ziplocs too, so they could watch for the shoots and roots. After just a couple of weeks, we had bean seedlings which had grown large enough to plant out. We built tipis and planted beans at the base of each stake. The next task was to clear the summer garden bed and plant out some beetroot and silverbeet seedlings. The gardeners refreshed the beds with ‘black gold’ from our compost bays and watered them vigorously every week!
The dry summer has had its advantages though, allowing us to gather lots of dry seed heads for seed saving - the perfect chore for little hands. Our gardeners loved comparing the different seed sizes and shapes. Marshmallow flower seeds were the favourite - just like mini donuts!! We made origami envelopes to store our seed, so that we can plant our own seed again next year.
Our seniors did great work maintaining the fruit trees, by pulling kikuyu from around the bases of the trees and ensuring that the mulch was not harming the tree bark. They then shovelled worm castings from our worm farms and diluted them to make buckets of rich organic liquid feed for our trees. They also helped with chopping up our wonderful harvest of pumpkins to share with our school whanau from the pataka kai built in their classroom with Matua Mike. We learned a great trick from Diane, who lent us her bone-handled butter knife, which proved super efficient for cutting through the tough pumpkins!
Our seniors did great work maintaining the fruit trees, by pulling kikuyu from around the bases of the trees and ensuring that the mulch was not harming the tree bark. They then shovelled worm castings from our worm farms and diluted them to make buckets of rich organic liquid feed for our trees. They also helped with chopping up our wonderful harvest of pumpkins to share with our school whanau from the pataka kai built in their classroom with Matua Mike. We learned a great trick from Diane, who lent us her bone-handled butter knife, which proved super efficient for cutting through the tough pumpkins!
During this hot, dry term, there has been a constant need for watering, Our loyal lunchtime gardeners, led by Lukas, who manned the hose, dragged watering cans and pushed wheelbarrows over to the tap and back, ensuring that our gardens got a drink (not a swim!) at least once a week!
Our snail vine creeper has enjoyed the summer though and is flowering really well!
The highlight of the term for many of our young gardeners was harvesting the strawberry popping corn! They loved the ruby red cobs and were super excited to cook them up on the camping stove in the garden shed! We had songs to entertain us and once they smelled the popping corn, they told me “this is how they do it in the movies!”. They were delighted to sit together and share bags of the popcorn that they had harvested!
The flowers in our garden are attracting monarch butterflies too and we have been watching the caterpillars carefully, hunting out their hidden chrysalises. We look forward to seeing more butterflies next term.