Getting Ready for Summer

Term four flew by so quickly; we've had a busy time in the garden preparing, planting, and harvesting! It's incredible what we can find each week to harvest—always fresh herbs bundled up for the tamariki to take home, greens like kale and silverbeet, our first rhubarb stalks, and, of course, our end-of-term garden gold potatoes!

We planted seed potatoes last term in three different garden beds, so we were lucky enough to harvest potatoes every week. As we focus on the environment and aim to be plastic-free, we creatively folded old newspapers into paper bags for storing, giving away, and taking home the potatoes. This simple and easy recycling method brought joy to the kids as they had fun mastering the folding technique.

We've also been busy preparing the garden beds by mixing in compost, weeding, and planting lots of summer vegetables like cucumber, pumpkin, tomatoes, courgettes, and the kids' favourite, "watermelon." Fingers crossed we will grow some!

Another highlight was planting kumara tipu, which we grew by letting a kumara sit in water until it grew shoots. We carefully took them off with their roots and planted them in a prepared garden bed.

An end-of-year fun activity was to recycle old paper by ripping it up into little bits and soaking it in water overnight. We rolled it out between two towels, sprinkled on seeds, and the tamariki cut the dried seed paper into shapes. We turned them into gift tags they can tie onto a present. This tag can be planted in the garden, and it will grow flowers.

It's great to see the fruit trees we planted a year ago carrying their first fruits. Lots of beautiful flowers are in bloom for bees and butterflies, and our rainwater tanks are full of "free" water for our young gardeners to fill up their watering cans and care for their seedlings. Our garden is always full of surprises from all the hard work we've put in over the two years I've been working at St. Thomas More Catholic School. I'm looking forward to continuing in 2024 with new ideas and projects the children will enjoy !

Term 3, Full of Fun and Creativity

We began Term 3 by giving Franky the scarecrow a makeover, he looked a bit sad and weathered after all the wind and rain we’ve had in winter, the tamariki gave him a fresh face, some woollen hair and a new hat. We relocated him closer to the berry patch, as the birds will soon be eyeing the strawberries and blueberries.

We’ve started planting our first spring seeds, including corn, tomatoes, and pumpkins. I was impressed by the children’s precision as they sowed the seeds in the seedling trays. Following our successful potato harvest last year, we’ve increased our potato planting this year, with hopes of another outstanding harvest. Additionally, we’ve begun the growth of our own Kumara tipu by halving a kumara and placing it in a container with water. It’s unbelievable to see how much they’ve grown by the end of Term 3 !

With the year one Pipi class, we constructed an insect hotel from tin cans. The tamariki had to collect twigs, leaves, and rocks, filling each can with their discoveries. After discussing insects, we used magnifying glasses to explore the garden for various insect species.

We had a great supply of winter vegetables in the school garden like kohlrabi, Kale, Silverbeet and carrots. It was great to see that the youngest enjoyed having their baby carrots at lunch time.

During New Zealand Conservation Week, we learned about the monarch butterfly through a Google Slideshow. We studied its life cycle and discussed how we can support butterflies in our school garden. Unfortunately, the monarch butterfly is now classified as endangered, so it's vital for the tamariki to understand the importance of caring for what we love. We took action by weeding the butterfly shade houses, planting small swan plants, and sowing plenty of flower seeds to provide nectar-rich blooms. A pop of colour in the flower bed is our newly designed garden sign, it is adding a bit of fun !

August and September are ideal months for starting planting sunflowers. A new idea turned into a two-week fun project: we dug out a circle in a flat grassy area. It was quite challenging, and the tamariki worked really hard. We then installed stakes around our circular plot and planted numerous sunflower seeds. Now, we need to let nature take its course, and hopefully, we will soon see the first seedlings emerging in our sunflower hideaway.

A fun and busy term three has come  to an end and  we can’t wait to welcome everyone back in Term 4, to discover the progress of our spring seedlings, seeing the first fruit trees in flower and enjoying the first sunflowers in our “sunflower room”.

We’re excited to see you return in Term 4.

Winter Gardening Adventures in Term 2, 2023

The weather has been quite unpredictable lately, with ups and downs like a roller coaster ride. However, we’ve been making the most of the sunny days by venturing outside and working in our winter garden. There’s always a lot to do! Recently, we’ve been busy planting various winter seeds, including cabbage, broad beans, broccoli, and, of course, carrots, which remain the kids’ favourite!

To ensure the best conditions for our plants, we prepared the garden beds by weeding them thoroughly and covering them with a layer of pea straw. Now, we’re letting nature take its course during these winter weeks. Surprisingly, despite the colder season, we still have a good supply of garden produce. Every week, there’s something new to harvest, with the little Year One class we’ve been exploring various garden greens to take home.

We also decided to put our fresh vegetables to good use by cooking with them. We organised a fun outdoor activity where we made Mini Pizzas using a Pizza maker. Each child had the opportunity to create their own pizza and choose their fresh garden toppings. It was amusing when one of the boys asked, “Why isn’t there any salami growing in the garden?” He ended up trying rocket as a substitute topping and was surprised by how good it tasted. The children had a blast watching their pizzas sizzle away, especially on a cold winter’s day.

One of our crafty activities was for Mother’s Day in May, we created something truly special. The tamariki gathered fresh herbs from our herb garden. We carefully dried them for approximately a week and then proceeded to chop and mix them with coarse sea salt. The final touch was filling a small glass jar with this aromatic blend, complete with a label that was lovingly created by the kids. It turned out to be the perfect gift.

To help our feathered friends, who are facing difficulties in finding food in winter we decided to give them a delightful surprise: homemade pine cone feeders. The kids had a lot of fun creating these feeders. As part of the process, we first learned about pine cones, their fascinating opening and shutting mechanism, and even planted some pine cone seeds in an exciting experiment to see if we could grow our very own Christmas tree.

Next we coated the dried pine cones with peanut butter and dipped them into a mixture of bird seeds. The children enthusiastically hung these feeders all around the garden, on fences and on trees. And you won’t believe it, but just one week later, almost all of the feeders had been devoured by our feathered friends!

Our winter gardening adventures have been both productive and enjoyable. It’s been a great opportunity for the kids to  experiment with different vegetables, and appreciate the flavours of homegrown produce. We look forward to seeing what else our winter garden has in store for us in the coming weeks.

What a Bumper Term 1 We’ve Had in the School Garden!

We’ve had an incredible Term 1 filled with exciting activities! After a very wet and humid summer, our garden was well-watered, and we had a fantastic crop of fruits and vegetables.

The star of the show was our home-grown baby watermelon. The Year One Pipi class had the joy of nourishing it, and it was so sweet and juicy!

A real treasure hunt was exploring gem corn. It was so much fun to see the kids’ surprised faces when they found out that corn isn't always yellow and to see the variety of different colors. After drying it for a few weeks, we made popcorn on our last day before the holidays.

On Pipi’s teacher’s birthday, the class picked pretty garden flowers and were proud to hand them over to their teacher, Whaea Stephanie, who was truly delighted, there is something special about when children pick flowers, it comes from the heart ❤️ 

The highlight of Term 1 was our new garden addition - “Franky the Scarecrow”. We noticed that all the tomatoes were being picked by birds, so we decided to build a scarecrow to scare them away. The tamariki had so much fun designing, creating, and naming him Franky.

We also had a big celebration at the school assembly, PiPS won the TECT Sustainable Future Award! The entry video was filmed here at St. Thomas More Catholic School and we had the honor of holding the trophy first before it will be handed over to all our other PiPS schools. It was an amazing achievement, and everyone took part in it to win such a special award.

From Nina 

PiPS Autumn Fundraiser with SPRING BULBS

Help PIPS get more equipment for your school gardens by beautifying your garden and the community.

Here is a great opportunity to purchase spring flowering bulbs and seeds to show your support for your in-school garden programme. Bulbs are easy to plant, fun to grow and will reward you with gorgeous flowers year after year.

We have some great choices here - why not try them all!  Bulbs are supplied by GardenPost who source bulbs from New Zealand’s and Holland’s best growers. PiPS will make a least 30% profit on all sales.  A planting guide will be enclosed with each order.

To order: Click here to fill in the order form, then make payment via internet banking

- by 30th March 2023.

Payment to: 01 0475 0158776 00 PIPS Incorporated 

                   - Reference your name and school.

Delivery: Will be around 10th April 2023. We can deliver nationwide, postal cost will be around $6.

Thank you for supporting PiPS – your in-school garden programme.  

Enquiries to: Clare Rodgers – pipstauranga@gmail.com

Our Happy Place

Wow, what we’ve achieved this year at St. Thomas More Catholic School, the planted fruit trees have settled in well, the garden looks healthy and lush and the newly built shade house is well in use.

In term four we pimped up an old garden bench, the kids painted it in bright colours and wrote little quotes on it, it is placed under a tree and we named it our garden mindfulness bench.

We had several great crops of winter vegetables, it seemed like our supply would never stop.

After all these rainy days the garden has been like a jungle, it needed a good tidy and all the year 5/6 class came out and we gave it a good make over.

The freshly cleaned out garden boxes have been  planted with seedlings which we have grown from seeds in our new shade house all ready to go for a good summer crop.

The highlight and a nice treat towards the end of term four was making “ summer chocolate” the girls have collected eatable flowers, we’ve melted the chocolate, sprinkled flower petals over it and let it cool off in the fridge, it was a lovely treat to share with the whole class.

On our very last gardening day the kids went for a potato hunt, yes, this is just as exiting as finding Easter eggs, what an excitement once they found so many potatoes, exactly 111 !

it was a great way to finish our very last day in 2022.

This Is How We Do It

Our last winterish days we used wisely to get ready for spring. When the weather was still a bit up and down we’ve been busy making the garden look pretty. The kids made out of recycled timber borders for around the fruit trees, it will keep the grass away and the mulch in place, some of the fruit trees we planted in June are showing their first blossoms, it’s so good to see that the trees have settled in well.

The absolute highlight is the new shade house which is only just finished.

There is plenty of shelving and an amazing sprinkler system installed by Mr. Webster, the sprinklers let off fine mist to keep our freshly planted spring/summer seeds moist all the time. It’s incredible to see that within a week the first seeds are starting to pop up already!

On a rainy day we did some learning via a google slide about landfill, focusing on the environment and what we can do better to reduce rubbish.

With Mr. Webster the kids built a planter box which we named  the ’landfill box’.

We collected rubbish over a few weeks with non-recyclable items like soft plastic, polystyrene and face masks. This went into the bottom of the box in a sealed plastic bag. The kids painted it in bright colours as a garden feature but really it is to remind us to look after our environment.

A Fruity Winter

We were very lucky to have had some sunny and cold winter days, so finally on nearly the shortest winter day of the year we’ve planted a plum, a peach and a gala apple tree!

It was a big project as we first did some learning about the characteristics of the fruit trees, then we had to prepare the holes and top them up with quality soil.

We have to say a big thank you to Farmer Autovillage who have generously supported PiPS to make this orchard project happen. We can’t wait for spring to see the trees in flower.

But of course we also had some rainy days, so we had a ‘crafty day’ and painted some old grey river stones and changed them into delicious looking strawberries, we spread them out in the garden by the strawberries plants, this is to trick the birds in summer as it hopefully will put them off picking hard strawberries that the real ones are left for all the tamariki !

Hard workers do deserve a special treat, so on our last day of the term I’ve baked a big Brezel as a treat and we enjoyed it together with a hot lemon and honey.

From Nina

Colourful Vegetables and Homemade Basil Ice Cream

A successful and busy month at St. Thomas More Catholic School!

We have harvested so many colourful vegetables which had been planted in term one, the children couldn’t believe that carrots can come in different colours but they found out really quick that they all taste just as delicious as the ordinary orange ones. It is a real art to grow straight carrots as they also can turn out too skinny or too crooked but most of them were picture perfect, great job kids!

As we are going into winter the basil had its last days…and before it goes into the compost we picked the last remaining leaves and made, you won’t believe it, basil ice cream!

Sceptical faces - “How would this taste ?”

We made a whole batch and froze it for the next day for the annual cross country event and after that it was the perfect refreshment….was it yum ? The answer was, “Nina, it wasn’t good…it was delicious !”

Mauao Seed Saving - Collection Day

What a stunner of a day it was to go up Mauao for our annual seed saving day.

We had a great turn out of kids from our local schools including their parents who also came along to this special project. 

Josh the environmental manager of Mauao met us all in the morning and while our group was walking up the Mount he gave us a bit of history about some parts of Mauao. He showed the kids how to find the seeds from native plants.

The seeds we have collected will be planted by the tamariki in our schools and once the seedlings have reached a certain size they will be planted on another special day back at Mauao in an area which has been saved for us.

The kids had so much fun collecting the seeds and Josh was great at sharing his knowledge. 

We are very grateful that Josh took his time to give us this tour and it was all in all a very special day and a great experience for everyone !

A Productive Month

What a productive month we had!

We’ve been planting a feijoa hedge with five different varieties along a fence.

The year five & six boys worked really hard digging the holes for those as the soil was very dry and sandy, they helped to prepare the soil with compost and worm cast.

A week later the year six girls planted one feijoa plant each and we named them after them as it will be their last year at St. Thomas More School.

The girls took on the responsibility and looked after their plant when we had the hot and dry weather.

The year two & three kids have been busy planting our winter veggies in seedling trays.

We harvested some beans, beetroot & radishes.

Kathryn, the teacher, cut the radishes in slices and the kids were brave trying them for the first time to see how they might taste…it was really funny seeing their faces once they found out that they are quite spicy !

As a fun ending we made some cress heads out of egg shells, the kids drew some funny faces on them and once the hair grew they took them home.

2022 – What's happening at St. Thomas More

Hi it’s Nina here, I’m the new PiPS facilitator at Omanu School and I’m looking forward to an exciting and creative year with our young gardeners!

We are right into things already with a great start to the Term. The irrigation system is nearly running. Mr Webster worked pretty hard with his year 5 and 6 kids, lots of digging for the trenches, measuring, drilling. It’s starting to look great. 

We've been busy starting seedlings and adding a bit of colour to the garden. The year 2 and 3 kids created lovely garden signs for our beds. 

Homemade pesto with school grown basil was a hit! Especially with food prices going up, it was fun to teach the kids how to make their own pesto, and I was absolutely surprised that all of them liked it!

And last but definitely not least, Bunnings Mt Maunganui made a great donation of goods to our schools, so the St Thomas More students made this awesome thank you card for them. Thank you, Bunnings Mt Maunganui!

End of Year Wrap Up

This year at St Thomas More the garden space has truly grown and been well utilised, through design of the students and enthusiasm of the whole school community. The Year 5/6 students have taken responsibility for their garden and it's thanks to their hard work and Mr Webster’s that the gardens have expanded and flourished!

The children learnt how to do permaculture style garden design; assessing conditions of garden area, designing garden beds and companion planting and have now put these designs into reality. Six new garden beds were built this year and filled with good soil and mulch (now full of crops too). A three bay compost system was also built by the students and is regularly turned and used, there is some soil now in our compost bins we can use in our garden!

As a group we talked about what we wanted in our gardens over spring/summer, ordered or collected the seeds and then sowed them. Most of these seeds absolutely rocketed and are now planted in the garden and some were sold at the PiPS stall at the Papamoa Farmers Market. 

We have planted citrus and feijoas, filling the holes with rich soil and heavily mulching around the base. Every week at STM there is huge change in the garden, plants are always bigger, more bugs are buzzing around and more kids are spending time in the garden area.

Midway through 2021 I began to facilitate a lunch time garden club with the Year 3/4 students to get more of the kids involved in the garden and it has been an  absolute hit! Every lunchtime more and more kids come (of all ages) and they love exploring our garden space. For some, it's the first time they have seen where their food comes from.

The work put in by students and staff this year has definitely paid off; creating a self sustaining, diverse garden space enjoyed by all. 

This is Tess signing off – next year Nina will be the PiPS facilitator at St Thomas More’s garden.

Our New Garden Beds and a Bumper Harvest

The garden club and Mr Webster started building five new raised veggie beds – they had to measure the area and design the beds to best utilise the space. And now our growing space has doubled in size!

The wood was all cut to size and put together by the students. We worked as a team to relocate soil from an old garden bed into a new one, and we also had two tonnes of rich garden soil delivered! After lots of hard work and enthusiasm the new beds now just need mulch, and will then be ready for planting – just in time for spring!

We harvested so much kumara! Orange ones, purple ones, big ones and small ones. We just kept digging and finding more and more. There was enough to take home and share with families.

Busy Autumn Days

St Thomas More and I made some changes to the program this month so that more kids are able to join in. I teach the Year 5/6 students from 10:30 - 12:30 and then have a lunchtime club of 15 Year 3/4 students. The Year 3/4 are incredibly excited to be out in the garden, loving exploring and have lots of questions. We have been looking at what life is in our garden, soil health and direct sowing.

The Year 5/6 students have been doing garden design and each made me a powerpoint presentation which they continue working on even throughout the week and email me updates. They first learnt how to draw up and observe the existing space, then think about any changes they would like to make to the area (new beds, shadehouse, trees) and then we talked about what we really love to eat. Next step- research. Companion planting and adding diversity to our gardens were the main focus. The kids have now all given me a list of what they would like to grow next spring/summer and a finished garden design. I'm really impressed.

Whaea Tess

Composting Month

The Year 5/6 boys built a bay compost system and the garden club learnt how to compost, step by step. We first started small in plastic milk bottles and materials brought in from home by the kids. This was then applied on a big scale and we worked together to then do these small steps on a big scale, in our new compost bins. We harvested heaps of spinach to take home to our gardens too!

Goodbye Summer

After the summer our gardens needed a good tidy up and some TLC. The boys got in there and worked really hard clearing old crops, collecting seeds and making the whole area beautiful. After morning tea the girls directly sowed seed into the beds and wrote Tess a letter all about their gardens at home and their favourite fruits and vegetables. As a group we harvested what crops were ready and chopped them up together to smell, look and taste. We collected the seed from our pumpkin ready to sow next summer. 

Beetroot seeds for direct sowing.

Finishing off the Year

Wow! As the weather has gotten warmer, our vegetables have flourished! We have been harvesting a great amount of food to share with our community, including delicious pak choi, radishes, beans and cornflowers. The kids love to harvest - the best part of gardening as all of your hard work has paid off! We were very lucky this term as we had Tess join us to share all her wonderful organic gardening knowledge. Tess will be taking over as the garden facilitator next year while Laura is on maternity leave.

We have been growing Kumara tipu (shoots) and it was time to harvest and plant them out! Did you know that you plant Kumara shoots from East to West? Also, planting them like a J and making sure you have a hard pan (hard ground) underneath will help you to get the biggest kumara. 

We love this time of year as lots of monarch butterflies come out. Clever Mr Webster has built a butterfly enclosure to help protect the caterpillars from wasps. The children love watching the caterpillars emerge from the chrysalis and even get the chance to hold them to gently set them free.

We have also been hard at work building another garden bed. We lined it with an old billboard and then filled it up with compost and mulch.

The seniors went on camp for the week which meant that the juniors got to join Tess and Laura for gardening! Tess taught us all about the parts of a seed and what they need to flourish. Together, we made seed bombs, tea with herbs and flowers from the garden, explored the garden space and learnt how to harvest without hurting the plants and also explored nature through our senses! We loved smelling the pineapple sage and some kids even turned it into perfume! We really enjoyed getting mucky by making seed bombs. All you need is clay, compost, water and seeds and get mixing! Once the seed bombs dry out you can plant them in your garden or anywhere with soil and voilà, a sunflower will grow! 

The seniors finished up the year with a bang. We did a final tidy up in the garden, pulling weeds and sweeping, and harvested everything that was ready. Some of our garlic was ready so we harvested that and set up a chain to prepare to make some delicious garlic bread! We also had some gigantic turnips that were definitely ready and zucchinis so we decided to make some turnip chips with herbs from the garden. 

Thank you so very much St Thomas More kids, I have absolutely loved working with each one of you and can’t wait to see all the amazing things you are going to do in the gardening world in the future!

BEE-UTIFUL October

What a buzzing month it has been. We have learnt all about pollination, bees and flowers. Pollinators are very important to our world and they are the reason we have food! Did you know, in some countries, people have to hand pollinate because they don’t have many insects left? They walk around with little paint brushes and pollinate all the flowers! We are very lucky to have so many pollinators in New Zealand.

We also learnt about the different parts of a flower and how they can be male, female or both!

We were very lucky to have Sylvana from Seaside Bees come and visit us. She brought in bees, showed us what a hive looks like on the inside and also brought lots of bee suits for us to try on and pretend to be bee keepers! She also taught us lots of facts about bees and answered all of our interesting questions. Here are some interesting facts we learnt about honey bees:

-          Bees are attracted to flowers more for the smell they produce than the look of them

-          Bees only sting when they are stressed. If one lands on you, stay still until it flies away

-          Only female bees have stingers

-          When bees are 12 days old, they are in charge of building honey comb – they only do this for about one week and then they are sent out of the hive to become a worker bee

-          Queen bees lay 2000 eggs per day!

Thank you very much Sylvana. We loved every minute of your visit and many of us are definitely bee lovers now if we weren’t before! 

We loved learning about flowers so much, that we decided to do some flower pressing to be ready for our Christmas cards in a few months. We collected flowers from around the school gardens and also Laura brought some in from her home. First, we dissected some of the flowers to see if we could identify the different parts, then we got to flower pressing. We cut the harder parts off, layered the flowers between baking paper and then stacked them in a heavy book. Fingers crossed they are ready for our Christmas Crafts.

Some kids were very creative and decided to use the natural dye from the flowers to make a rainbow of art"

This month we have also been working on building more beds with the wood we received from the old board walk at the Mount. Working with the fantastic Mr Webster, some kids learnt to saw and use a drill. We made a new sunflower bed and also one for kumara which we will plant out later. We then layered these beds with seaweed and left-over soil, and planted the sunflowers.

We have had an ABUNDANCE of radishes, peas and broad beans this month! We love the warm weather and how it is helping our plants to grow faster – it means we get to eat more – YUM! 

Spring into September!

We have had a very productive September and feel like we have sprung into Spring! We started off with Paua Tahi learning about propagation. Keep an eye out on our future blogs to see how our cuttings turn out. 

Each week we carefully care for our garlic by giving them a good water with either some worm juice or seaweed, weeding any small weeds that pop up and checking for garlic rust. No sign of rust yet and our garlic is still going strong! We can’t wait to make some delicious garlic bread at the end of the year!

Our spring seedlings were ready to be planted out so we soaked them with seaweed fertiliser and gently popped them into the ground. We also did some more direct sowing of seeds that prefer to be directly sowed like radish and rocket. We look forward to seeing what grows!

We then moved into collecting our own seed and the processes involved. We collected seed from sunflowers, chilli, spinach, basil and pumpkin and learnt about how different plants have seeds in different places.

Did you know that chilli’s and pumpkins are technically fruit as they have seeds on the inside! We learnt a new technique for collecting pumpkin seeds by scooping out the seeds, filling the jar with water and then giving it a shake each day. Over a week, the seeds will be ready to collect as they would have separated from the slimy orange film that normally protects a pumpkin seed. Just drain into a sieve and voila, your seeds are ready!

We marked out where we want to put our new garden beds for kumara, sunflowers and grapes and started digging to loosen up the ground.

We also noticed that our radishes started to get very big so we picked those and shared them around with the other classes and teachers. Some kids loved them and would eat them like a carrot, other kids found them too spicy but I was still impressed they gave them a try!

As the holidays were approaching, we decided to try different methods to grow kumara tipu or kumara shoots. The first method was cutting off the “eyes” (which look like bumps in the kumara) and putting them into water. The second method was poking toothpicks in the side of the whole kumara and putting it over a jar of water. The third method was burying the whole kumara in sand and keeping it moist. We also thought we would experiment with organic kumara and non-organic. Stay tuned to see which way worked best!