Term 4 2025 in the garden

As we head towards warmer months we get very busy sowing seeds for our summer crops  (tomatoes, basil, beans, cucumber, zucchini, gourds and chilli) in the school greenhouse. This involves sowing the seeds then once they have sprouted moving them into slightly bigger pots. These summer crops love the warmth in our greenhouse and quickly outgrow their pots (we can tell they are ready to be potted up once their roots are poking out the bottom of the pots). Most of our seedlings were potted up 2-3 times before the outside soil temperature had warmed and the seedlings were big enough to transplant them out into the garden. Because we had so many seedlings we were able to give plenty away to TMOP staff, the pataka kai and to other PiPS member schools.

Digging up our early potatoes is always a highlight in term 4, nothing beats digging up treasure! These potatoes were planted in September and were ready for harvest in early December. We learnt how to make bags out of newspaper and each kaimanawa got to use scales to weigh 500gms of potatoes to take home with them. Some chose to pick herbs such as mint and parsley which go beautifully with cooked new potatoes. Feedback the following day was that they tasted amazing!

When manawa hou (new entrants) come out to the gardens for the first time we love to explore the gardens to learn what we can touch and smell, taste a few interesting flowers and plants and learn about looking after our fruit trees by not pulling off any flowers or baby fruit as we want these to grow into big yummy fruit. Our tours at this time of year were extra exciting because many of the fruit trees had baby fruit growing hiding amongst the foliage - it was fun trying to spot them!