Term time wrap up and harvesting the garden

Recent weeks have been about wrapping up the school gardens for the school holidays.  Planning who will look after the various gardens and enjoying some of the amazing produce.
Pembroke School today had a harvest session.  Pulling out massive lettuces and cauliflowers and finding some delicious red strawberries.

Some weeding of plants that have gone to seed

Jade has been an amazing support in the Pembroke School Garden.  Her great ideas and commitment to come and participate in activities in the garden with the children is so valuable!

Here Jade helps harvest giant cauliflowers for children to take home

Fenwick School garden has also been abundant, providing a lot of produce for children to take home.

Some spring plants have boldly bolted and dwarf the children!!

 This week lots of weeding was completed

 Potatoes planted

 And the lovely big patch a potatoes for the Year 8 dinner was watered and they will be harvest later this week.  What a great treat.  Lucianne Brown who set up the Fenwick School Garden many years ago said that potatoes for the Year 8 dinner was what the Fenwick School Garden first grew.  And what a lovely tradition that has continued and the Year 8's get to eat delicious produce from their School Garden.

St Joseph's School last Garden club was spent creating gratitude cards.  St Joseph's School Garden co-ordinator Suzie has done an amazing job this year facilitating various speakers to come to the garden club and talk to the students, teaching them various skills.  They have had grandparents, orchardists, garlic experts, potato experts and great inspiring parent helpers like Louise McDougall who made awesome willow fencing.  So many cards were made.  Students also got to enjoy some Elderflower cordial as a refreshment afterwards

Duntroon school enjoyed a salad from their garden this week with a french dressing

 Duntroon School Garden Club has an amazing team of super moms, Janet, Mischa, Paige and Megan.  Their awesome ideas and great approach to gardening makes their garden so good.  Years of tending the soil has produced a rich fertile ground.  Doses of silage from local farmers has been appreciated at times as well as some Pukeuri Compost.  In the last week of Garden Club this year Mischa made a delicious rhubarb cordial that was enjoyed by all.

 Visiting gardener Hugh Coles helped weed the garden and had a talk about compost

 Paige did a floristry session with the children last week.

 Here is a an awesome student gardener.  Grace.  She is at every garden club, she shows great leadership skills with the younger students.  She is a pleasure to have in the garden as she is so keen to garden and helpful. Her favourite aspect of gardening is getting to eat the yummy produce.

Oamaru North School has been growing strong with each week.  We have made up a cool rap song about worms after we studied them up.  This week we harvested the lettuces, silver beet and chives from the garden and made salad wraps.

 When asked to show her surprise at the amazing vege platter, that parent help Natasha set up, Sky did a very good job!

 The array of vege and harvest from the school garden

 Students enjoyed layering up the produce in the wraps with some french dressing

 YUM

Waitaki Valley School got harvesting this week.  Students got given bags of fresh garden produce. Giant silver beet

 A salad was made for the group that was gobbled up within minutes

 A lot of watering this week.  Here Joshua fills the can.

 Students have grown seedlings in their new plastic hothouse.

Well it has been a wonderful year of 'Kids Growing'.  A massive thank you to all the people that have been so helpful and assisted in various ways.  Many thanks to the Department of Internal Affairs grants that will enable 8 of our active School garden clubs to get a $400 boost to their gardens next year.  A thank you to Tui for a large supply of compost, blood and bone and potting mix that the school gratefully received. A huge that you to all the parent helpers, the teachers that keep the gardens watered and weeded.  On behalf of the Waitaki Community Gardens it has been a pleasure and we look forward to another wonderful Kids Growing venture next year.  Seasons Greetings to you all.

Bianca

If you have a story to share or feedback please email me: biancamacneill@yahoo.com

A New Garden for Totara School!

Totara School has a dream--to build a bigger and better school garden right next to their new kitchen facilities... thanks to fundraising by the PTA, they were able to buy all the new and recycled materials needed. We started with laying carpet over the designated area to isolate grass and weeds from coming through: 

 Then we built raised garden beds using posts & boards:

 Here's the building crew:

 Two days later, the school children helped us layer mulch on the paths. We will fill the raised beds with compost at the start of the 2016 school year and grow all sorts of goodies!

Maheno School Weed-a-thon & Worm Hunt

On Tuesday, November 16th at Maheno School, the weather was cloudy. There were worms in the ground and birds in the trees. We started off garden club with a weed-a-thon. Green waste was chopped into the compost:

The lettuce was ready to pick and eat and the strawberries and veggies are growing well.

 Now that we have a worm farm in a re-purposed bathtub...

 ...we went hunting for worms....

and we found heaps-- more than 40 or 50! 

 We carefully moved the worms to their new home in the worm farm.

Finding all the worms was definitely the highlight of garden club today. 

Here's what we learned:

"Worms don't like the sun." --Case

"Water your compost." --Pip

Kids Growing

Lots of activities in the School Gardens over the last week.

St Joseph's School got to unpack and label and use their new gardening tools.  A big thank you to Lotteries grant for their generous grant to fund 6 of our active garden club schools  $400 worth of gardening supplies.

 The Students got stuck in and loved using the new tools and gloves.

 Suzie shows Fergus how deeply to plant the pumpkin seeds

Our new Oamaru North School did some more planting out.  Learning how to get seedlings out of pots.

 They got to try a few different green juices too.

Fenwick School got to make omelettes this week.  Picking fresh greens from the garden, even a little stinging nettle went into the mix.

They really enjoyed the omelette and helping to make it.

Pembroke School had some money gifted to them from Subway and they bought some fruiting goosberrys and bluberry plants.  They planted them out this week .

 Kids got to help make another green juice too.  The recipe tastes better with some banana.

Waitaki Valley School got to try making green juices too.  Their brew got a bit of stinging nettle in it.  Pineapple and coconut water.  Some students loved it, other students had to hold their nose in order to try it.  Lots of fun,

 Waitaki Valley Schools vegie patch is looking great. The potatoes have come away nicely too.

Maheno School Garden Club

Last week on Wednesday, November 11th at Maheno School Garden Club, we sorted out the compost by layering brown sticks for aeration and nutrients, as well as green waste like grass clippings and old plants. We also prepared the worm farm by layering shredded newspaper, sticks and green waste into an old bath tub. We made sure to water both to maintain moisture levels and an ideal environment for worms--our compost-helping friends. We worked in teams and used the dump trucks to help move sticks, grass clippings and green waste.

 

 We also netted the strawberries

 And we planted radish seeds

What We Learned

"You have to let compost rest." -Case

"Mix green and brown in compost." -Hayley