Garden Report.....Jane

This year I have learnt a lot about gardening, especially about the way plants grow up differently in hot houses - they shoot up! Also plants get very dry in hot houses so they need watering lots. I have learnt all about compost, worm juice, and everything it takes to grow strong, healthy plants - sunshine, water, good soil, care and protection from diseases and insects.

I learnt so much about gardening I started a garden at home.

EDIBLES

We have over 40 different edible plants at our school:
Sugar Cane - Bananas - Raspberries - Black Berries - Apples - Peaches - Feijoas - Mandarines - Oranges - Strawberries - Paw Paws - Beet Root - Silverbeet - Beans - Peas - Corn - Lettuce - Courgettes - Tomatoes - Carrots - Potatoes - 10 different herbs - Salad Sprouts - Watermelon - Rock melon - Egg plant - cucumber - Sunflowers - Lavender - pansey - calendula - Snap Dragons - Spinach - Spring Onions  Cabbage - Nasturtium - Broccolli

aaaaand I think that's all - I may have missed one or two... Here are some pics of our edibles-

 BANANAS and SUGAR CANE

 TOMATOES - They weren't on the list!

 peas, beans, sunflowers, Liam, lettuces, mandarins, feijoas....

Raspberries, Oranges, Sprout Man

WAter savinG

We have 3 compost bins for our garden. We use our lunch scraps, chook poo, paper, grass clippings and tree prunings to make our compost. Mr Ututaonga also has a chipper and we use the 'chippings' for mulch. Putting mulch amount the plants is beneficial in many ways. it traps the heat, keeping the roots warm and toasty. It stops the water evaporating saving the gardeners from watering too often and saving on the water bill but most importantly it keeps the roots moist.

We also have worm farms - the worms digest the scraps and other organic matter and they produce worm juice which makes our plants grow like magic and we use the worm castings as well of course.

community involvement

Our school sells egg sandwiches with paresly and lettuce from our garden and chooks. Our local commercial garden have donated herbs to plant in/on our herb wall. We trade parsely and lettuces with a local restaurant in exchange for food scraps. 13 of our pupils learnt so much that they went home and planted their own gardens from seeds. We also sell our free range eggs to our community and we have sold many vegetable plants also.

We have planted the roadside verge with sunflowers, pohutokawas and beans. These are to attract the bees and native birds.

We also have many visitors who come to look at our wonderful gardens and fantastic school. We often give them guided tours and because we are so proud of our achievements the visitors walk away very impressed!

INNOVATIONS

Chantelle Routley Diepeveen - Room 4

Lately we have been working on our Sprout Man. He is made of recycled onion bags with our compost in it and a pot plant. We have put salad sprouts in the compost so that the Sprout Man will grow little herbs that we can use in our salads and sandwiches. We have made a cape out of some old material and we mixed flour and compost together. We put the goop on the material and sprinkled seeds all over it. We will water the cape until the sprouts pop through then we will put it in out Sprout Man!

Room 4 have made a herb wall and I am going to tell you how. First some boys cut the tops off some plastic drink bottles (which we have been saving in the recycling) then we filled them with dirt. Then we tied about 8 bottles to the chicken coop fence on top of each other. After that we got a bottle with a lid and filled it with sand first then water. The lid had a hole in it, the reason we put the sand in first is because it will stop the water going straight through and drowning the plants below. Last we cut a square in each bottle and planted a herb or salad plant in them.

All of Room 4 were put into 4 groups to make sea sculptures out of rubbish we found on the beach such as plastic bags, plastic bottles, tin cans and fishing nets. We made a jelly fish out of plastic bags and a broken chair, a whale skeleton out of a net, wire and the top of a chair. We also made a diver out of a buoy for a head, bottles for arms and legs, 2 plastic gloves, bottle caps - ALL stuff we found on our beach clean-ups! My group made a fabulous starfish from old nets and fizzy bottles.

I love it that Opua School has the garden and we also have bees and chickens. Each creature produces something. Bees - Honey, Chickens - Eggs. We make egg sandwiches once a week to sell to help pay for chook feed and when we get honey we make honey sandwiches for free for the kids here at school.