Growing Seeds in Bags?!

For the past three weeks we have been growing bean seeds in bags! We placed the seeds in a plastic sandwich bag with a damp paper towel and taped them to the windows in our classrooms. The damp paper towels are taking the place of soil, and the sealed plastic bag stops the paper towels from drying out. We have been watching them germinate – shedding their seed coat, watching the roots pushing out of the seed and then seeing the stem and leaves grow.  We noticed that we haven’t had to water them as the moisture is being kept inside the sealed bag.

Some of the kids choose to take their bags home, and some seeds did well but others died. We chatted about what might have happened – did they get enough sunlight, too much or not enough water? What other variables could have affected how they grew?

Now that the seedlings have leaves they need to be out of the plastic bags and into the sunlight and fresh air, so we transplanted them into jiffy pots, with the plan to grow them on until they’re ready to go into the garden after the school holidays.

We learnt that a plant’s roots hate to be touched or disrupted, so by potting them into these compostable pots we won’t have to pull them out again when it’s time to put them in the garden. We can just put the whole pot into a hole, and the pot will rot down and become part of the soil, allowing the roots to keep growing right through the pot.

Meanwhile our senior studentss have been working with Leo from Why Waste about how we can use worms to get rid of some of the waste in the school. This is still a work in progress so watch this space.

The Seedling Market Story

Here’s the story of our Seedling Market and how our community came together to help…

Our four member schools had been planning a combined seedling market to be held just after the school holidays. We wanted to share our produce, and even more importantly our ideas, with our local community, and show them what we’d been learning and growing. We invited our neighbour school, St Thomas More, to have a stall too.

We had all been growing different plants from seed for a few weeks and Whaea Heidi from PiPS had organised for us to hold the sale at Arataki Park on Saturday. She did a lot of work to arrange it all, and other stalls like a coffee cart, bike repair stall, sausage sizzle and live music too.

But then a few things happened. Whaea Clare had to take some time off work for family reasons and there was a drought over the holidays. The result of these combined factors was that for most of our schools, our carefully nurtured seedlings died over the school holidays.

After all the work Heidi did organising and publicising the market she wasn’t going to give in! She put the word out and all sorts of people and organisations including the Mt College horticulture class and Good Neighbour came to the rescue, donating plants and produce to replace what we’d lost. In the end the market was able to go ahead, and despite some very cold and showery ‘spring’ weather it was a real success. In some ways it was even more of a success than if our plants hadn’t died because the generosity and help we got from others helped to form some great relationships.

Thank you to everyone who donated time or produce to help make it such a success against the odds, to the kids who helped out with selling, to Mrs Robertson and Mrs Taylor for all their mahi, and of course a very big pakipaki to Heidi and Clare.

PS: We were so busy selling and chatting that we forgot to take many photos! So you will just have to trust us that it was a great morning :)

Seedling Sale Emergency!

When we came back from the holidays we found that all our seedlings had died because there had been no rain. With only a week to go till our seedling sale it looked like we’d have nothing to sell! But hearing of our troubles, Good Neighbour came to our school with trays of seedlings to prick out. And the Mt College horticulture students gave us 150 swan plants! We are really back in action, thanks to these very generous people.

Kia Ora Arataki Gardeners!

Look at these beautiful thank you letters the Arataki School gardeners have written to PiPS and their helpers! Thank you, tamariki, for your lovely words and for all the effort you have put into these letters – and into your gardening mahi this term, too :)

Tulips and Corn

Look at how our tulips are growing – we planted them back in June. Can you see the ‘A’?

Meanwhile we were preparing the soil to plant corn – the corn won’t be for us, it’s for our feathered friends, our chickens!

And Ruma 11 were getting their pots ready for planting their tomatoes.

Spring Jobs

Here are the Sunflower group sowing flowers for the Birds & Bees garden for summer:

…and the Frangipani group cooking scones using vegetables from our garden:

We also pricked out some seedlings. ‘Pricking out’ is when you separate little seedlings into bigger pots so they can keep growing without crowding each other out. This tray wasn’t labelled so it’s going to be exciting to see what the plants turn out to be:

Chicken Time

After months and months of work and preparation, the big day finally arrived with the delivery of our four chickens. Leading up to this day we have done so much mahi and learning so we are able to provide our chickens with the best possible environment, nutrition and care.

One of them came with a fertilised egg, so who knows, we might even have a fifth member of the flock in future.

Our chickens will get their new names at the end of term hui. Thank you so much to Jane from Teacher in the Paddock for helping us get to the stage where we are confident in having our beautiful chooks at the school.

A Busy Week

There are lots of us in the garden club here at Arataki, so we are divided up into groups of 10 or so. We named our groups after different plants we love to grow. We thought it might be interesting to show a snapshot of the kinds of thing our different groups get up to in a garden club session. We couldn’t do it without the help of our amazing volunteers and teachers!

Cosmos Group:

Whaea Clare was given some tulip bulbs so this week she asked the Cosmos group to come up with a design and then plant them into the bulb garden. The group decided to form the letters ‘ATK’ to represent the school’s initials. It’s hard to imagine these little brown bulbs could produce beautiful tulip flowers, but we’re crossing our fingers that that nature will work its magic.

Dahlia Group:

The Dahilas planted some sprouted potatoes that had been given to us. Whaea Clare talked about crop rotation and why we don’t plant the same crop in the same place twice in a row – doing this can mean pests and diseases specific to that crop can get established. Another reason is that each different crop needs to take its own particular blend of nutrients from the soil. Planting the same crop over and over means the soil can’t get itself back into balance between crops so there won’t be enough of the right kind of nutrients to grow strong plants.

Hebe Group:

The Hebes celebrated the shortest day by planting garlic. They learnt about companion planting and how broad beans and garlic work together and share nutition and fend off pests. 

Frangipani Group:

The Frangapanis are working hard to revamp the butterfly garden. They have been looking after their seeds and are so proud that they are coming up. The birds and bees garden is also being redesigned. 

Chicken News

Today Jane and Yu from Teacher in the Paddock came and talked to Ruma 11, 18,  17 and 21 about how to take care of our chickens (who will be arriving in the second week of Term 3!).

We learnt a lot – here are just a few of the things:

That comfrey is good for our chickens

Which weeds from our garden they will eat

What sort of food scraps to give them

That adding crushed up eggshells to their food will give them calcium, which they need to produce strong new eggshells (how’s that for recycling!)

We also learnt about the different parts of a chicken’s body.

Thank you so much Teacher in the Paddock, for such an informative session. We can’t wait to start taking care of our own chickens. 

Matariki Plantings

This week is Matariki, traditionally a time for remembrance, celebration and fertility for Maori people. Among other things the appearance of the Matariki stars helped them decide when to plant their spring crops:

“The coming season’s crops were planted according to the portents read in the Matariki star cluster. If the stars were clear and bright, it was a sign that a favourable and productive season lay ahead, and planting would begin in September. If the stars appeared hazy and closely bunched together, a cold winter was in store and planting was put off until October.”

We celebrated Matariki here at Arataki School, too. Each gardening group planted a shrub:

The Sunflowers planted two pink manuka into the birds and bees garden, as the pink flower attracts bees.

The Cosmos group planted Larry the lime in the citrus garden.

The Dahiias planted a kawakawa.

The Frangapanis planted a dwarf grevillia that the butterflies will love.

The Zinnias continued planting the manuka hedge.

And the Hebe group planted three hebes (of course!) by the front office.

After the planting we all came to the community room. Our whaea explained how the garden club was started many years ago by Mrs Heath, with nine students after school, and over time has evolved to where we now have between 90 to 100 gardeners every Thursday after lunch. You can see it’s not just the plants that have been growing here at Arataki!

Then we shared kai that the volunteers bought. It was a great celebration.