What a start to the term – we had 63 students sign up for garden club! As we only have space for 30 kids at a time we have decided to have the Year 8’s for the first two terms, then the Year 7’s for the following two. If the Year 8’s would like to continue through the second half of the year then they can come and mentor the year 7’s.
When Whaea Clare went to see the gardens after Christmas she re-named them ‘The Jungle’. We had a mixture of weeds and food plants everywhere. She put out a SOS to see who would like to tidy up, and… well… everyone turned up. What was meant to be a cleanup exercise turned into a “how many bean seeds can we collect?” challenge. We looked at how different the various varieties of bean were, and were they dwarf beans or tall ones? Some of the brave kids ate them.
The bean collection
We started a bean count but we lost track. Let’s just say there were enough that 100 students at Arataki doing the bean in a pot experiment and 60 students at Tahatai doing the bean in the bag experiment all used these beans and there were still some left over for Whaea Clare to plant next spring!
All sorts of beans!
The other thing we found in ‘The Jungle’ was tomatoes. A lot were still green and the new students coming into the gardens didn’t want them, so Ms Barr took them and made green tomato relish. Well it was the best relish we have tasted. Whaea Clare took it home and it was gone by the end of the weekend.
We also looked around the school and talked about areas we can redesign and do some landscaping in. It’s looking like a busy and fun two terms.
Tomato harvest (and a couple more things).