Term 3 Begins

After two weeks break it was good to be back in the garden. There was lots of enthusiasm and excitement which made it a bit hard to focus but we will soon settle back into things. 

Our pea vines are still producing and it was interesting to see how often everyone kept drifting back to the pea garden to do a bit of foraging during the session. Lots of greens were consumed today that’s for sure.

The winter veggies we planted 10 weeks ago are coming along really well, and the broccoli are forming heads. 

And the bulbs and wildflowers are getting there too…

Clare checked on the hebe cuttings we had taken a few weeks ago. They looked the same on the surface but when we took them out of the potting mix there was a big difference – they’d gone from being stumpy little twigs to fully formed plants with their own strong root systems. So they can continue to grow each cutting needed to be transferred into its own pot. This took a bit of time as we’d been so successful with our cuttings that we had over 20 plants to repot. And to think these all came completely for free!

Finally, we had some work to do on Savage Paradise, our insect hotel. Mr Reiger needed some of his bricks back, so we needed to do a bit of disassembly and redesigning on the spot. This required us to employ not only brute strength and co-operation but some maths skills as well as we figured out how to replace the missing bricks with other objects that would retain the balance and height of each layer.

The most exciting, and for some traumatic, part was all the spiders we discovered along the way. We are gradually learning that these little guys are nothing to be afraid of and are in fact doing our garden ecosystem a lot of good.

Our End-of-Term Party

We had a little feast today to celebrate the end of term and because we “accomplished our achievements”. 

First we made chips from our very own kale, which we harvested then baked in the oven…

Harvesting, preparing and eating our kale chips.

The kale chips were very popular. We soon had lots of other students wanting to join in our party.

Last week Clare had asked our gardeners what else they’d like to eat for our feast. The requests were impressively healthy – popcorn, carrots and cucumber. So we had these to eat along with hummus, chocolate brownies, a honey and lemon cake and more of Lisa’s delicious mandarins.

While the others were cooking the kale chips one of our gardeners was busy harvesting peas and exploring. She noticed there were more peas  growing on the sunny side of the planter box than on the shady side, and that the pea pods were very well camouflaged and hard to find, both for us and probably for hungry birds too. She discovered little green caterpillars hiding in the leaves. And most interestingly of all, she found some pea flowers that were just starting to become pea pods, so we got the chance to observe exactly how they were being formed.

It’s very exciting to see this kind of spontaneous curiosity and exploration happening as our gardeners become more familiar and confident around the plants. Clare and the volunteers are really noticing this change. There is so much learning going on!

Thank you Clare, for all the work you’ve put in to making this such a fun and interesting term. 

Thank You Moviegoers!

A big THANK YOU to everyone who came and supported us at our movie fundraising night on Thursday. We hope you enjoyed yourself and the movie provided some food for thought.

As well as fundraising, the screening was a chance for us to thank many of our supporters, contributors and sponsors. We’ve had such support from people like Clare, our garden facilitator, our garden club volunteers, and the principals, teachers and BoTs of our member schools. We’ve learnt from, and shared knowledge with, contributors like Crafty Gatherer, Why Waste, Seaside Bees and Free As A Bird (check out their websites because there are some amazing things going on in our community). And of course sponsors like Tui, and Tauranga City Council, who have been a huge help to our cause. 

Special thanks to Jenna at Tui for donating most of the products for our gift basket spot prize, which had such lovely goodies in it that it was a wrench for us to give it away :)

Thank you again to all of you!

Bee-utiful Bees

We were very fortunate today to have Sylvana and Chris from Seaside Bees come to talk to us about bees and all the amazing things they do. We also got to see inside a hive, look at some real honeycomb and learn about beekeeping equipment. We were proud to realise that we already knew quite a lot about bees.

Sylvana and Chris even left us some honeycomb wax and we have some exciting projects lined up to use this next term. Thank you so much for sharing your time and your knowledge with us Chris and Sylvana :)

Trying out a bee suit.

Learning about what goes on inside the hive.

Checking out the honeycomb.

A candle made from honeycomb, and Sylvana showing us the smoker, which helps calms the bees down when she’s working in the hive.

Beeswax saved into ingots, and little hand made beeswax candles.

We had a good reason to thank the bees today, too, when we picked a harvest of pods from our pea plants. Without the bees the pea flowers could never have transformed into pods, and we wouldn’t have enjoyed this delicious snack. Thank you bees!

Who knew there would be so much competition to eat your greens? Somehow they taste so much better when you’ve grown them yourself.

A final little surprise today when we went to water the wildflower seeds we planted a couple of weeks ago (without even being reminded to… we are learning fast). They’ve sprouted! At this rate we should have a beautiful display of flowers in spring which will be great not only for us, but for the bees as well.

‘Savage Paradise’

Today many of our gardeners were raring to get back to work on the bug hotel – or ‘Savage Paradise’, as it’s been named. But first we needed to eat lunch (we were glad to have our cosy greenhouse to shelter in on this cold, windy day), and do a few garden jobs. We picked up the litter the wind had blown into our garden, earthed up the potatoes and sprinkled coffee grounds around our vege plants.

Then under the experienced eye of Alan, the sawing and construction began, resulting in some VERY happy gardeners. It was great to see the co-operation and learning going on amidst the excitement.

Meanwhile Lisa helped us plant some bee-friendly flower seeds in tyres near the bulbs we planted last week.

And she bought along a mystery plant that had self-seeded in her compost bin. There were quite a few guesses before we figured out what it was.

Earthing up the potatoes and planting flower seeds.

Cooperating and learning new skills.

‘Savage Paradise’ and Lisa’s mystery seedling.

Homes for Everyone

Although the weather has been amazing lately, winter is now officially here and this week seemed a good time to think about ways of keeping things warm in our garden environment. So…we got busy and built two different homes. Our student gardeners started construction on a bug hotel behind Mr Rieger’s shed, and at the same time some of the adult volunteers put our new greenhouse up. Now we have a critter palace full of all sorts of nooks and crannies for the bugs, and a warm, dry place to grow and nurture our plants.

Thank you to everyone who pitched in to help, and to Tauranga City Council’s Community Development Match Fund, whose grant allowed us to purchase the greenhouse. It’s going to make a huge difference to our garden and will allow so many more learning opportunities for our young gardeners.

Busy in Our Autumn Garden

We had lots of jobs to do on this nice, fine day, so we split up into groups. A couple of us potted up the wet seeds we’d been fermenting from last week. Lemons, capsicums and apples…will they grow?

We also planted up our herb garden, and Lisa bought along two choko plants that had started to sprout, so we popped them into the ground as well. Are you wondering what a choko is? Click here to find out!

Then we all worked together to plant some spring flower bulbs that have been kindly donated to us by Garden Post. We put them under the trees at the front of the school. They may not look like much now, but just wait a couple of months! The most exciting part of this job was finding worms, there were some massive ones, which is a good sign for the health of the soil.

Different Ways of Growing Plants

Today at Garden Club Clare had us thinking about the different ways we can make new plants. Planting seeds is an obvious one, and based on what we learned from Tess a few weeks ago we saved some ‘wet’ seeds of lemon, apple and capsicum, by taking the seeds from the fruit and putting them in jars of water to soak for a few days. We will check on these next week.

Another way of making new plants is by taking cuttings. Clare showed us how to take cuttings from a hebe which is going to be removed to make way for our school’s new front garden. We put the cuttings, which were just little branchlets we cut off from the main plant, into potting mix and watered them. We’ll keep them in a warm, sheltered place over winter (hopefully our new greenhouse) and with luck some of them will start to take root. By growing new plants from cuttings we’ll be able to replace the original hebe plus make a few more plants for free! Hebes are a great food source for our birds, bees and insects especially over winter when there aren’t many other flowers around, so they are a plant we really want to encourage in our school environment.

We also got our nectar feeders up into the trees, supervised by our local tui. Mr Rieger put one up right by our garden beds and the others went into the nearby trees. It will be interesting to see whether the tui start using them over the next few days – they were definitely very curious about them.

Not sure that’s an approved ladder there, Mr Rieger.

Tui Feeders

Once again it was raining, but once again that didn’t stop us. Today we had a visit from Jenna from Tui, who came to see our gardens full of the compost and garden mix they donated. Of course they were looking fantastic! Jenna had also given us some feeders for nectar-eating birds, so we had fun in Greg’s shed figuring out how they worked and filling them up. Because of the rain we couldn’t hang them in the trees, but Greg said he’d help us do it next week. Jenna suggested we keep a watch on which feeders are the most popular with our local tui, and whether having them here manages to attract even more birds to our school.

Our ingredients: sugar and water.

A filled feeder ready to be hung up.

Seed Saving

Today Tess from Crafty Gatherer came to talk to us about seed saving – why and how we do it. We learned that 75% of the world’s seed varieties have been lost, so it's really important to preserve what we have left, to keep lots of variety and vigour in our plants. Tess showed us several ways of gathering seeds – one was soaking ‘wet’ seeds (those that come from inside fruits and veggies like pumpkins and tomatoes, where they are damp inside the fruit) and letting them ferment in water for a few days before drying them. With seeds that have dried on the plant, like flower seeds, broccoli and beans, we need to release the seeds out of their pods. One way to do this is by rubbing the pods in between our fingers, another is stamping on the dried out plants (a good way to keep fit at the same time). We then took what we’d crushed and shook it in a special layered sieve so the smaller seeds fell through the grid leaving the chaff behind. It was a really fun and engaging talk and we’re looking forward to putting lots of these techniques into practice over the coming weeks.

Thank you so much for your time, Tess!

Soaking ‘wet’ seeds.

Stomping ‘dry’ seeds.

Sieving the seeds from the chaff.

The Sun Shines at Last!

Today was Tahatai’s first garden club day where it wasn’t pouring with rain, and we made the most of it by planting up our refreshed garden boxes, filled with lovely, rich compost and garden mix generously donated by Tui.

As well as the peas we sowed a few weeks ago which are now healthy young seedlings, we planted several kinds of broccoli, kale, beetroot, onions and potatoes, and transplanted the strawberries. We also planted some nasturtium and calendula plants around the sides of the boxes. These companion plants will help our seedlings grow strongly, deterring pests as well as encouraging pollinating insects to visit our gardens when they flower.

We mulched around the newly planted seedlings to protect them and keep them warm, and watered them in using the ‘liquid gold’ fertiliser tea we made in Term 1. This was a gross mixture of horse and sheep manure, comfrey, seaweed and water. Stirring the bubbling mixture up and transferring it to the watering cans was nobody’s favourite task but our students rolled up their sleeves, held their breaths and got the job done. It’s hard to imagine that this revolting mix is actually great for our plants.

We also checked the rain gauges we made the week before the holidays, and they were all full to overflowing after all the rain from the cyclone.

Planting out broccoli seedlings.

Mixing up our fertiliser tea before diluting it and feeding it to our seedlings.

Hard at work in the sun.

Seedlings planted, fed, watered and mulched.

We Make Stinky ‘Tea’.

Today it was very wet, so once again we were based under cover. We checked on the seeds and there has been lots of germination happening. Luckily Greg our caretaker kept the seedlings out of the rain, or they’d probably have all been washed away by now.

We also got to work making some delicious ‘tea’ for our plants. We put comfrey leaves, sheep and horse manure, and seaweed into buckets, added water, stirred them up and put the lids on. These ingredients will ferment together, creating rich liquid full of nutrients that will be a feast for our seedlings.

Back in Action!

This was Tahatai Kai Growers’ first session this year, and we began by planting seeds to grow a Matariki vegetable garden. Hopefully by Matariki these seeds will have grown into big healthy plants whose produce we can harvest to make a delicious winter soup.

We also had an exciting delivery of pallets and pallets of beautiful compost and garden mix, which have been very kindly donated to us by Tui. As soon as the rain stops we can fill our planter boxes!