MMI School Gardens - Term 2 2025
Despite a run of wet Wednesdays, we have managed to have a fairly productive term two at Mount Maunganui Intermediate gardens.'
Our big project this term has been our involvement in the NZ Monarch Butterfly Tagging Programme. Our gardeners showed great focus and care, following the growth of caterpillars, making sure they didn’t run out of leaves. Once they had formed
chrysalises, the students relocated them on their twigs, to a butterfly house, made from an old crate covered with a net curtain from the op. shop. This was to protect the chrysalises from becoming lunch for the birds and it also made it easier to carefully catch them and tag them with tiny stickers, before setting them free.
The numbers on the tags were uploaded to the online register and we are still waiting to find out whether any of them have been relocated later in their journeys. The idea of collecting this data is to learn more about our declining numbers of NZ monarch butterflies and their flight paths and to locate some of their overwintering sites.
Another project we have started is growing a supply of organic lettuce for our equity school lunches. We started with an experiment ; would the seeds grow faster in plastic 6 cell pots, or in rolls of wool, rescued from used frozen food packaging. Through our experimenting we have made a great discovery! The wool seed rolls produced bigger, healthier seedlings in a much shorter time frame. The wool keeps the roots warm and damp providing great growing conditions, and all of this without the plastic waste! It’s a win-win!
We then decided that planting them in the garden beds might slow them down, so Brendon, our MMI caretaker, came to the
rescue and whipped up a simple design for a cold frame which he built, to sit on top of the garden bed. The idea is that it will act as a mini greenhouse, and hopefully produce heads of lettuce faster. Thanks Brendon!!
We have also been busy growing seedlings for the Omanu Community Gardens, who will plant them out and, when they are ready to harvest, donate them to Tauranga Foodbank. This term we have already donated cauliflower, broccoli and lots of strawberry plants. It’s a great way for our gardeners to see how their work can extend beyond the garden gates to benefit the wider community.
Our soil sifter was put to use to sift some of our amazing organic compost. It was so fine, we just mixed in some coconut coir and fine pumice to make our own seed raising mix. Although it’s not as weed free as we might like, it seems to be doing the trick.
We harvested lots of our basil and made pesto on a rainy day in the school hall. We got so busy, we didn’t even get any photos. But it was obviously a success, as the pesto (on crackers) disappeared at lightning speed. In the last week of term, we planted two cherry guavas, one yellow, one red! These trees were donated to the school by Tauranga City Council. I’m sure there will be lots of grateful students once the trees are large enough to fruit and provide delicious snacks for our students on the field!
Just before Matariki, we harvested our kumara and the gardeners were delighted to take home bags of kumara for dinner! They came in all shapes and sizes!
In the last week of term, we have had interest from lots of students who are going to join the gardening crew in Term 3. We are all looking forward to seeing how they transform some of the garden beds that are waiting for them!
