Early Autumn Planting and Prep

There were jobs to do around the gardens today so we were very lucky the rain held off.

One group went with Clare and planted seedlings in the garden bed we cleared a couple of weeks ago. We planted winter greens – silverbeet and spinach. We made sure to cover around the seedlings with pea straw and water them in well.

We also checked on our watermelon that’s growing over in the strawberry bed. We wondered how to tell when it was ripe, we did some research and discovered two ways:

1. Look at its belly: Watermelons have an underside, or belly, which is in contact with the ground throughout its growth, called a ‘field spot’. This spot on a ripe watermelon will be yellowish (sometimes referred to as ‘buttery’), and not white, which indicates an unripe melon.

2. Thump it: Rap on the middle of the watermelon while holding it up to your ear . A ripe watermelon will have a hollow sound when knocked, which sounds more like a ‘plunk’ than a ‘thwack’. An unripe watermelon will have more of a higher pitched sound.

We don’t think our watermelon is ripe yet but we will keep checking. In the meantime we watered it.

Meanwhile another group of gardeners had a different kind of job to do. During the week Lisa had very kindly dug out a strip of the greenhouse floor for us to turn into a winter greenhouse garden. The only problem was that the soil was very sandy, and in that state it wouldn’t provide much food for the roots of our plants. We knew we needed to enrich the soil, but what could we use?

Well… fortunately we made some compost last year. We made it out of trimmings and weedings and leaves from the garden, and from food waste like banana skins and apple cores from our lunchboxes. We thought surely that old rubbish couldn’t be much use to us, but when we checked the compost bin all we found was beautiful rich, dark soil (and quite a few bugs and worms). How fantastic that our waste could have turned into something so useful! We couldn’t even work out how much it would have cost the school to have bought in all that compost. It was another of those gardening win-win situations we love to discover.

So our gardeners did a great job of ferrying barrowfuls of compost over to the greenhouse and then carefully transferring it into the garden bed – superb co-operation and communication – while another group went around the school to collect dead leaves to add to the mix. By the end of the session the garden bed was looking a whole lot better, and ready for planting next week.

A Sweet Surprise

This week we got a bit of a surprise because Mr Reiger had decided to harvest our kumara for us. Thanks Mr Reiger, you saved us a lot of digging! Even though it was a bit earlier than we’d planned, there was still a good crop with some real whoppers.

Clare had the great idea of making chips with some of the harvest. So while a few hard workers went with Lisa to collect dead leaves for our compost and take care of the worms…

…it was over to the kitchen for the rest of us. Everyone pitched in. The kumara needed washing and cutting up:

Then we drizzled them with oil and popped them into the oven. While they were cooking some of our team got to work cleaning up the kitchen and all the equipment without even being asked, while others went back to give Lisa a hand in the garden.

25 minutes later and out came the goodies:

And the consensus? 19 out of 20 of us thought they were delicious! We even had enough to take a little sample back to our classrooms. Sorry we were so late back to class today teachers, we hope our koha of kumara chips will help you forgive us :)

There’s one more thing that Ali and Lisa want to mention about today. In the kitchen we were working together in a confined space using potentially hazardous kitchen equipment. We had to co-operate, share, communicate, listen, be patient and use our initiative. Our Kai Growers did all these things politely, enthusiastically and responsibly– we are very impressed with you all.

Welcome Back

Tahatai Kai Growers is back on board, bigger and better than ever. This year we have officially become a lunchtime elective option, and we had lots of keen gardeners lining up to join. We’re looking forward to an exciting year.

We started the term by doing a tour of our garden, to see what was going on. We went to check out the orchard and noticed that some of our trees had new branches sprouting out of the ground by the main trunk. The branches looked really strong and healthy - surely that was a good sign for our trees? It turns out not to be the case! To find the reason we had to take a step back and learn about rootstock.

What on earth is ‘rootstock’ you may ask? Luckily we had Lisa to explain to us. Imagine you have a tree with really strong, pest resistant roots but maybe not-so-tasty fruit. Meanwhile there is also a tree with really delicious fruit, but its roots are weak and susceptible to disease. How could you get the best of both worlds - a strong, healthy tree with delicious, succulent fruit? It turns out the answer is to use the roots of the strong tree, cut it off at the bottom of the trunk, and join the trunk of the fantastic fruiting tree onto it. It sounds crazy but it’s what is done to almost all our fruit trees, and it’s called ‘grafting onto rootstock’.

This all works great but what tends to happen is that the rootstock - because it’s so strong and healthy - likes to try and put out its own branches (called suckers) at the base of the tree. We don’t want the tree to put all its energy into growing these suckers because the fruit they produce won’t be tasty (we’d rather it concentrated on growing delicious fruit onto the grafted branches) so we need to prune the suckers off. Lisa showed us how. Now we know what to look for we can report to Clare and Lisa if we see suckers sprouting from any of our orchard plants.

We also noticed how the kikuyu grass is creeping in and taking nutrients from the soil that we want our trees to have. Kikuyu grass is very tough, it puts runners down very deeply and can regrow from just a broken little piece of root. We’re going to think this week about what we could do to try and control it.

We checked on the worm farms too. One was going well but the other was in a bit of a sorry state. What happened? Did it dry out? Did the worms starve? We’re doing our best to follow Leo’s advice from last year and get it pumping again.

As we continued our garden tour Lisa decided to check the kumara. Look what she found! Clare’s done some research and harvest time is end of March - beginning of April. We need to wait until all the leaves die back…can we hold off for another month?! We want to dig those kumara up and roast them for lunch this very minute!

When we first planted out the kumara, we also put some sunflower and swan plant seedlings around them to help them stay healthy. Well, they have certainly done a good job of that if the state of our sample kumara is any indication. But they’ve provided more than that - the swan plants have been attracting monarch butterflies all summer, and the sunflowers have made the most magnificent, beautiful display for everyone who goes past the school. Who’d have thought those tiny little seedlings that the boys planted out a the end of last term would get so big they’d be more than double our height? Even better, as their flowers die back their seeds will provide a huge feast for our local manu. It’s a win-win-win situation. Special thanks to Jacob for the sunflowers :)

SOLD OUT and Happy Holidays!

Garden Club at TCS was supposed to have finished last week, but someone forgot to tell these guys. They’ve been busy for the last two mornings before school selling off all the remaining produce from our Christmas in the Field stall. And sell it they did – we don’t have a single plant left!

What great dedication from our Kai Growers, and fantastic support from all the parents, staff and pupils who bought plants from us (with an extra big thank you to Tasha :) We will be really well set up for a great start to next year.

In the meantime, happy growing and happy holidays!

The End of 2017

Today was our last garden club session for 2017. The year has flown by, and just as our gardens have flourished and grown over the last four terms, so has our club.

There was no messing around on our last day though. Leo from Why Waste came back to see us and this time we talked compost. In order to grow healthy plants, our garden soil is always needing to be fed and enriched, and compost is a great way of doing this. It seems crazy that we need to buy compost to put in our garden at school while at the same time we throw away buckets and buckets of food waste from our lunch boxes every day, food waste that could be turned into beautiful, rich compost. So Leo came along to talk to us about how that might be possible.

We learned that compost needs four ingredients:

- Nitrogen: the ‘green stuff’ - food waste, fresh green leaves and grass, and basically things that rot down. This is where our lunch box leftovers come in.

- Carbon: the ‘brown stuff’ such as dried leaves and sticks, shredded cardboard and newspaper.

– Water: enough to help things break down without making a big rotten mess.

- Oxygen: to help the organic matter decompose.

With the proper mixture of water, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen, micro-organisms are able to break down organic matter to produce compost.

In order to run a productive compost system, every bucket of food waste that goes into it needs around to 15 buckets of dry, brown carbon matter mixed in. So if each of the 30 classrooms in our school produced a bucket of food waste a day, we’d need… well, you can do the maths but it comes to a whole lot of buckets of carbon. 

Our minds started to boggle! So we decided to start small, by building a tumbling composter, in order to get a handle on how the process works before we go any further. Leo had drawn us a plan:

…and brought along the big plastic drum. Mr Rieger gave us the posts, pole and tools and we got to work.

We didn’t quite get to finish though, because Clare had made a delicious lemon and coconut cake for an end of year celebration, and once she revealed that, all work came to a sudden halt. It must have smelled amazing because Mr Skilton and Mr Scott both turned up to have a slice. It was great to have them along to show them what we’ve been up to.

Clare and the volunteers are so proud of all our gardeners and what they’ve achieved this year. We have definitely been “learning, growing and gardening together”. It’s not just the growing that’s exciting to see, but the attitude of our gardeners. The respect everyone shows each other, the co-operation, support and good humour, the problem solving, creative thinking and ingenuity, all these things are what make it a pleasure to be part of the garden club. Tahatai Kai Growers, give yourselves a pat on the back. Have a great holiday and keep your home gardens growing!

“Ki te mea ka taka te kākano ki te wāhi e tika ana ka tinaku, ā, ka pihi ake he tipu hou.”                     If a seed falls in the right place it will germinate and a new seedling will sprout.

Thank you Clare and the volunteers for all your hard work this year.

Christmas on the Field

What a great day for a School Gala. We had so much produce to sell but the first step was to set the tables up (then move them around :). Our gardeners were there to lend a hand right from the start…

Then it was time to make some sales. Our team were absolute stars and did a great job of tagging in and out with each other so there was always help on hand. They drummed up sales, restocked produce, kept the tables tidy and handled the money all with beautiful manners and a smile for every customer.

We are so proud of all our Kai Growers! Thank you to the PTA for all their work running the gala, and to all the parents and customers who came and supported our stall.

Signing In

With only one day to go before we set up our stall at Christmas on the Field we were busy, busy, busy painting signs for all the things we are planning to sell and bottling up worm wee. It was such a hot day we had to move under the trees to stay in the shade – thanks, trees!

Mr Rieger’s Roses

We all know how lucky we are to have a caretaker like Mr Rieger (or ‘Mr Greg’ as he is often known) at our school. Not only does he take great care of the school grounds and buildings but he supports us gardeners with all the projects we do around the school, even though they sometimes make more work for him in his already busy days.

For example our fantastic school orchard used to be an empty grass lawn. Not so exciting for us or for the environment, but very easy to mow and keep tidy if you are Mr Rieger. But fill it up with rows of beautiful fruit trees and companion plants, and it means that to cut the grass Mr Rieger now needs to get the weed eater out and go around each and every tree by hand. Imagine how much more work that is for him! It would be so easy for him to be negative about these kind of projects but in fact he has been one of our biggest supporters. 

And it’s not just the gardeners of the school he supports. If a person ever needs help he’s there in a moment. He knows every student – and we are a school of over 700 pupils – and is there at the bike gate every day with an encouraging word or (more likely) a cheeky joke to see us safely on our way home.

Aa a way of showing Mr Rieger how much we appreciate him, Clare and some of the staff and school families decided to get together and make a rose garden for him. Last week Clare prepared the beds and planted the roses. The garden is by Mr Rieger’s shed, and faces out onto the road. So next time you are on your way to school and see the beautiful blooms lighting up your summers day, remember why they are there, and take the time to say a big thank you to our very own Mr Greg for all that he does for our school.

Crafting Action

The countdown to Christmas in the Field is on, so today we got busy making crafts to sell at our stall. You are not going to want to miss it! Today it was making grass seed heads, seed bombs, and potting up even more plants to sell. Here’s a sneak preview…

Our kumara are looking healthy, and now the patch is looking better than ever thanks to Jacob, who brought along some sunflower seedlings he grew at home. Jacob says that because the garden club has given him lots of plants, he decided it would be a nice idea to return the favour. Thank you for that lovely gesture Jacob, what awesome people our Tahatai Kai Growers are! Can’t wait to see how big they grow.

Going Potty

We had an extra, completely optional garden club session today, where the job was to pot up seedlings to sell at Christmas in the Field. Ali wasn’t expecting many people to turn up but she was completely wrong, everyone came and we even welcomed some new members.

So we got loads and loads of little seedlings transplanted and ready to sell. Some of us made plans for a mint-and-lemon water stand and a special passionfruit selling stall, too.

It is super exciting to see all the enthusiasm and effort being put in by our gardeners :))

“Worms Are Friendly Gardeners”

We were very lucky today to have Leo from Why Waste come to visit. What was he going to talk about, we wondered?

Leo started off by discussing the carbon cycle while we ate our lunch. He talked about the things plants need to grow, where their food comes from (yes, plants need to eat too), and how that food is produced; and how we need to look after the soil and put nutrients back into it once we’ve grown and harvested from it. Then Leo started talking about WORMS. Some of us were disgusted. Some of us were excited. Some of us were just puzzled as to what could be so interesting about these slimy little creatures!

We soon found out. It turns out that worms are some of the best gardeners nature has ever produced. They can turn old leaves and food scraps into amazing, natural fertiliser, and they do it all for free!

Leo took a look at our school worm farms. They were in a bit of a sorry state, there was not much food and not many worms. He helped us figure out what the problems might be and how we could fix them. We started off by feeding the worms a whole lot of brown stuff – straw, dry leaves, torn up paper and cardboard, which provide carbon. Then a few of our lunch leftovers went in - banana skins and apple cores - for some nitrogen foods. And finally we gave them a drink (not too much though). By this time our bins were looking very different to when we first opened them up.

Now that we’ve learned how and why to look after our worms, we will be keeping a very close eye on them. Hopefully they’ll be feeling much happier and will start reproducing. The more worms we have, the more waste they’ll turn into worm poos. That might sound pretty gross but in fact worm castings are just about the best thing we could put on our gardens to replenish the soil and help our plants grow.

Thank you so much Leo, for sharing your time and your expertise. We really hope you’ll come back again soon.

Some facts we learned about worms today:

– If we put our food scraps into the worm farm instead of throwing them into the rubbish bin, we can get free fertiliser for our gardens AND make less waste to go to the tip.

– There are some food worms don’t like. Citrus and citrus peel, because it’s too acidic for them, and worms do not like acidic conditions. Bread, because it goes mouldy, and just like us, worms don’t like eating mouldy food. 

– We found some pumpkin seeds that had sprouted and started to grow inside the worm farm. We wondered why the worms hadn’t eaten them, and Leo told us it was because worms don’t like eating live things, and seeds and sprouts are alive.

– It’s not just worms who eat the food scraps we put into the worm farm. Microbes, tiny microscopic creatures we can’t even see, help break down the scraps, and the worms eat the microbes as well as the scraps.

– Worms need food, water and oxygen, just like us. But unlike us they prefer to live in the dark.

– Worm poos are called ‘castings’.

– Worms are hermaphrodites - every worm is both male and female.

– The worms in a worm farm are called tiger worms.

– New Zealand has 171 species of native earthworms, and the longest grows up to 1.3 metres long!

- We now look at worms in a completely different light. We’ve learned that far from being scary and disgusting, they are actually friendly, hard working little gardeners, and we owe them a very big thank you.

Busy Bees

It was great to have everyone back on board this week and we got lots done. An amazing bamboo bean frame was constructed with the help of architect Lisa…

We also got the whole kumara patch dug over, mounded up, fertilised and ready for the kumara to go in. In the process we found a worm that had literally tied itself in a knot!

As well as all that we managed to plant a whole lot of beans and peas in pots and lots of other summer seedlings into the garden beds. Doing that meant we had to clear space – because we never have enough space – which meant there was produce for our gardeners to take home.

It was so impressive how well everyone worked together today, and really stuck to the tasks they were doing. We have such a great group of dedicated gardeners, it is a real pleasure to be out in the garden with them.

Welcome to Term 4

We were lucky to have a sunny, wind-free day for our first session of the new term. We had lots to do including:

— clearing some of the garden beds to make room for summer crops

— planting some of the tomato plants we raised from seed

— replacing one of the fruit trees in the orchard, which had unfortunately had its trunk snapped. We planted a ‘Winter Banana’ apple tree in its place. The apples are supposed to have a slight banana-like flavour, we can’t wait to find out if this is true!

— planting potatoes in tyres

— planting sunflower seeds

— fertilising and watering all our baby tomato plants. We are planning to run a stall in a couple of weeks to share them with our school community.

Because all the year 5 & 6s were at school camp, there were only a few of us but we got to work and got everything done. 

Last Day of Term

It was the last meet up of Term 3 so our gardeners were allowed to choose three types of seed to sow into pots and take home. There was a lot of excitement and discussion as the choices were made, the seeds were planted and the pots were labelled, and it brought home to us how much we’ve all learned over the year – things we are taking for granted now about what seeds need to grow and how we need to look after them were all new to many of us at the start of the year.

The remaining veggies in the garden are mostly going to seed now, and we’re going to let them flower over the holidays to give the bees some food. While the bees collect nectar to eat they will also pollinate the flowers. And pollination will make the flowers set seed, meaning we can collect free seed to grow new plants next term… so everybody wins :)

In the greenhouse the sunflower seeds we planted last week are already germinating, and we were amazed to see how powerful a little seed can be and how much dirt it can lift up! Our tomato plants are getting really big – we are each going to take one home and plant it in our own gardens. We’re going to have to repot the rest of them again after the holidays if they keep growing so well.

Happy holidays everyone and thank you to all our volunteers and teachers who have helped with the garden club this term :)

Leaf Cutter Bees

We were very lucky today to have Allan from Mt Maunganui New World come and deliver an amazing leaf cutter bee hive and a little bottle of leaf cutter bee cocoons to put inside it.

Leaf cutter bees are a solitary bee species, meaning they don’t live co-operatively in a hive, instead they each go about their business independently. They don’t make honey, so they don’t have anything to protect, which means they are very unlikely to sting. AND they are far more efficient pollinators than honey bees – apparently one leaf cutter bee can do the pollination work of 30 honey bees! All this is great news for our gardens (and our neighbour’s gardens).

Leaf cutter bees also have a fascinating way of reproducing. The female bees cut circles out of leaves or flowers and carry them back to their nest. Then they roll the leaf circle up into a tube, put some pollen inside, lay an egg beside it, then seal up the ends with more little circles of leaves. When the egg hatches the larvae will feed on the pollen. When the larva is big enough it will pupate (transform from a grub into a bee), and the new bee will eat its way out of the leaf cocoon and emerge into the world to pollinate more flowers and make more bees.

Clare has set the hive up in a sunny spot beside the greenhouse. We really hope our leaf cutters hatch safely in summer and we get the chance to observe these amazing little guys going about their work.

Here is more information about leaf cutter bees in New Zealand, and a cool video of a leaf cutter bee in action. And this website has more info and a clip at the bottom of the page of a bee making a cocoon. 

Thank you very much Mt Maunganui New World, for such a generous and environmentally positive gift to our school!

A row of leaf cutter bee cocoons made of rolled up leaves. We put these into the holes in the hive, and they will stay in there to pupate and hopefully emerge in summer.

Visit to The Rock Community Garden

Today we went on an outing to The Rock Community Garden. Lisa met us there and showed us around – there was so much to see, and we got lots of ideas for our own garden at school. Thank you Mr Scott for joining us.

Back at school everything is starting to wake up. Our tomato seedlings are going great guns in the greenhouse, and our hebe cuttings are also growing well outside.

We have let one of our broccoli heads flower so we can collect the seeds (and feed the bees). 

And there are blossoms in the orchard! Here’s Mr Reiger checking out one of the nectarine trees.

Soup Day!

At last the long awaited soup-making day arrived. Every week our gardeners have been asking if it was time to make the soup, they were so keen not only to taste the fruits of their labours but also to share them with their teachers and friends.

We started by having a look around the garden to see what was ready to harvest. 

The answer was – lots. Broccoli, kale, silverbeet, cauliflower, celery, beetroot leaves… we filled several bowls and still had more left over. And a bonus is that most of these plants will keep growing more leaves and sprouts for us to harvest again in a couple of weeks.

The first thing was to wash all our produce, then cut or break it into small pieces ready for cooking. Clare had bought along an onion but the novelty of cutting that up soon wore off. Then everything went into the pot, along with the vege stock Clare had made and the frozen tomato pulp Alan donated from his last year’s tomato crop.

Phew, it was a tight squeeze in the kitchen and pretty intense work. But an hour and a half later the soup was ready and not only did we get to enjoy it, but our teachers did too. We took a tray of soup cups into the staff room and they were snapped up in moments (Mr Jay even took two cups). It was a real moment of pride for our gardeners.

The Sun Comes Out

At last we have some warm, sunny weather that really makes us feel that spring is on its way. Technically it’s still winter but because we have our greenhouse we have been able to get some tomatoes sprouting already. They’ve done so well that it took Lisa and one of our dedicated gardeners the entire session to transplant the seedlings into individual pots. Don’t they look great sitting in the greenhouse on the shelves Mr Reiger made us from a pallet and an old school bench!

We really need them to grow as Mr Reiger is expecting a good supply of tomatoes for his sandwiches throughout the summer as payment ;)

We found several passionfruit vines growing around the school, they must have sprouted from someone’s school lunch passionfruit last summer! We rescued them and Alan helped us build a trellis for them to climb up against the bin shed. We’ve planted two of them here and are keeping one other in a pot in the greenhouse as insurance.

Today it was time to say goodbye to our pea plants. It was a tiny bit sad as we grew those plants from seeds, and they have supplied us with delicious peas, pods and sprouts for weeks. But even though they are finished, they’re still going to keep working for us. The roots of the pea plants contain some special nodes that help fix nitrogen into the soil – nitrogen is really important for plants to grow strong, healthy leaves – so digging these back into the earth will be great for the next crop we grow in there. And the chopped up stems and leaves make a great mulch – mulch stops weeds from growing and keeps the moisture in the soil from evaporating in the sun. So in these ways the peas continue to help us out.

Luckily Matt came to help us today so with his assistance we had the pea plants all chopped up and a new crop of lettuces planted out.

We Have An Orchard!

The rain last week caused a delay in our orchard planting, but we got it sorted this week. Thanks to Mr Reiger, Clare, Brooke, Alan, Lisa and all the teachers, almost every student was involved in the planting. 

Now we all know how special the trees are, let’s take care of them, respect them, and see what happens in spring.

Tui whanau all getting involved.

Exciting Happenings!

Something very exciting is going on at the school right now, and our Kai Growers are right in the middle of it all. Here’s a hint:

And here are some more hints:

(Your eyes aren’t deceiving you, that really is Mr Scott with the spade and Mr Skilton on one end of the post hole borer. They did a great job of mucking in, we even saw sweat pouring from their brows!)

Thanks to a morning’s hard work by all these people, 20 holes have been dug and back filled with a delicious mixture of soil, water and aged horse manure. Big thank yous to Clare, Mr Reiger, Lisa A, Brooke, Matt, Scott, Lisa R, Mr Scott and Mr Skilton – it couldn’t have happened without you all.

It was great to see both our principals lending a hand, it is fantastic to have their support but more importantly they are setting an example to all our students about valuing and respecting our school environment. 

Next week will be a very exciting time when the whole school will be involved in planting the trees and helping to create our very own Tahatai Coast School Orchard!