Term 1 – Lots to Do in the Garden!

We had a big tidy up on the first day back after the holidays. Lots to do! Our tomatoes were going really well and needed some attention as did the rest of the summer crops. Lots of the produce was used through the summer break by whanau and the school holiday programme. Teresa and I also had a planning session for future projects such as an outdoor kitchen and gathering space.

At the start of week two we talked about our garden rules with each group of students. These are a guide to help us remember to respect our maara kai and each other. A garden tour was also done with each group as a catch up and for things to expect. We looked at the fruit trees and compost and tasted fresh tomatoes (and encouraged those that said they didn't like them to try, an almost 100% success rate!) and we also picked our cucumbers and sunflowers for seed.

In this session we carried on the seed saving theme. There are lots of shapes and sizes of seeds and the students made seed envelopes to take some of them home to plant and store. Two junior classes were also given a garden tour with tomato and apple tasting at the end, a great hit with the kids!

Next up on this session was seed sowing. We have some of our own saved seed and some brought seed that we planted in the tunnel house. The students learnt about some of the good bugs and not so good bugs in a great video before we filled our wasp traps that our in the orchard and also found time to plant some leeks and perpetual spinach for winter harvesting. 

Week 5 was spent explaining about our outdoor kitchen concept and the students are involved in the ideas phase and concept drawings so they are included in the process. Some great ideas came up. Our bumble bee hive specialist came today and delivered a bumble bee hive and gave a talk to the students about how to look after them and why we need bumble bees in the garden. We love bubble bees!

This was a wet day session that was used to make apple turnovers, each student made their own turnovers made from our very own apples. Was really well received (as anything sweet is!) and lots of students took the recipe home and made them for their whanau, pretty cool!. Teresa of course catered for our gluten and dairy free student with her excellent nutritional knowledge.

The change in seasons is a big part of our whakapapa of learning to work with our space, not against it. We spoke about the change in seasons and why it's important to plant and sow certain things at certain times, we took some soil temperatures with our compost probe, some great learning about how to read a thermometer and what different temperatures mean. We also harvested tomatoes (such a great crop!) rockmelon, which most of the students tried and also checked on our pumpkins and also harvested some of them. Because it's the time to plant winter crops, we put in some broccoli and cabbage plants after composting with our compost and mulching. 

Pataka kai was our theme for today, the storage of our crops. Early Maori were used as an example of how we can store our produce and there is a plan to build a traditional Pataka kai at the kura in the near future (another project!) We did however build a rack to hang our pumpkins on to store and to keep away from vermin. We used measuring and building skills and then our group pitched in to help hang it in the shed. 

Another wet day session but well utilised for cooking our butternut squash pumpkins into yummy soup! Also we made pumpkin patties and apple fritters from our apples grown at kura. Apart from the rain, everyone enjoyed themselves and got to try the product of our hard mahi. A great example of the circular nature of our learning.

A very busy last day of term, lots to do to prepare for the holidays and the coming colder months. We planted more broccoli and cabbage, and some celery, cauliflower and lettuce plants. Firstly we had to clear some summer garden beds and put all of the material in our compost bins and then use some of the mature compost on the beds. After mixing in and planting our crops, the student gave everything a good water. A whole bed of pea seed was sown for a cover crop, and hopefully some peas as a bonus, and also some carrot seed that had been saved, was sown into another area. A great end to a fast moving term and we are looking well set up for our next term.