This month at the Mount Intermediate gardens it’s all been about the almighty CARROT.

It all started in Term 2 when two boys decided to plant half their patch in carrots. The following week our gardeners went to visit Matua John who runs the gardens at Mount College. He’d just been showing his students how to transplant carrots using two lollipop sticks. Our gardeners were able to learn this technique from Matua John, and also had the chance to taste some carrots that he’d sown a few weeks ago. Everyone was immediately hooked – they said store bought carrots weren’t nearly as sweet and crunchy as these ‘real’ ones.

After this experience it was all on in the Mount Intermediate gardens. Who could grow the best carrot?

The two boys shared some of their carrot seedlings with the other Year 8 gardeners, and Whaea Clare also gave everyone some seeds. It was a flurry of planting using Matua John’s method.

Week by week our gardeners kept an eagle eye on their seedlings, checking to see how they were doing and feeding them with worm wee. Half decided to thin out their carrot seedlings while the others left them as they were.

It’s now five weeks on. Since the first carrots appeared our gardeners have been eating them from the garden every day. Those that had been thinned out grew a lot bigger than the ones that hadn’t, and the ones that hadn’t grew into some funny shapes (we guess this is because there was some overcrowding going on underground). Many of the poor carrots were eaten way too early but nobody minded. Everybody has loved coming into the garden club and having ‘morning tea’ of carrots every day, taking them home and sharing them with their families, and measuring them to see whose were the biggest (the winner will be announced in the middle of Term 4 when all of the carrots have finished growing).

Who knew that carrots could be exciting?! Watch out Mount College, these year 8s will be taking over your plots very soon!