Room 4 last week of term 1

Room 13

Leeks , marigolds , silverbeet and beans are almost ready to harvest ! 

Autumn 2015

ROOM 4 Gardeners clearing around the leeks, so that our leeks grow strong!

We learnt that plants compete for space and nutrients, so we clear away the weeds we don't need.

 Measuring our 1st rock melon ! Still growing !

 A different type of cucumber! This one is called Apple Cucumber and it is round in shape!

 Identifying bad weeds and self seeded plants we may want to keep, here India points to a "baby poppy" as she called it, and she wants to keep it in the garden, so we all have a look at it and decided we shall not pull it out.

 Our beans were an experiment- we took the beans out of a pod that dried out from another patch in our garden and we planted in garden bed number 1 to see if they would grow.

And yes the bean plants are grown even though the weather is cooling down.

 COMPOSTING 

Adding compost to our garden improves soil fertility and stimulates healthy root development in plants.

But first we need to help the microorganisms and earth worms to help us turn our food scraps and our garden waste into nutrients for the garden soil.

We have a new compost bin, it came flat packed in a cardboard box

We assembled it and found a spot for it next to our existing bins

The bin contains holes so that air can get in and all the living organism in there can have a happy healthy life while munching on the materials we add to the bin

 The cardboard box the bin came in was not wasted, we torn it into pieces and added to our compost as a layer of carbon material to help make our scraps turn into compost for our garden

 WATERING

 Here we demonstrate how we should water our plants, by applying water to the soil by the root system

as we know that the plants will drink the water using their roots and stem as "straw".

 Adding the CARBON layer

the brown dry scraps

 Adding a layer of "green" stuff or fruit peelings and leftovers from our lunch boxes

so this is our NITROGEN layer

Bellow is a chart showing us what we should add to our compost bins so that microorganisms can turn it into compost for our garden

2015 Term 1 Summer

Room 4 working at The Garden this term 

Room 4 has been working hard getting the garden beds ready for our next crops, we have planted onions, silverbeet and rocket in garden bed 1. 

 Raising seeds and keeping them watered - We have sown broccoli and beetroot

 Keeping our pumpkin plant watered as this part of our garden is very dry

The mystery of the garden fairy : A few weeks ago a fairy appeared under our tomato plant
The children loved it and they say the fairy is looking after the vegetables when we are not there. We have no idea who may have put it there so we just would like to say " Thank you".

 This zucchini grew and grew and grew....it looks more like a marrow! 

 Our Zucchinis are almost ready to harvest 

Term 4 Spring /Summer

Using the calendula petals and the CTS olive oil, we have made Calendula Balm

The pots of balm were sold by the children at The Growables Event held at Founders Park in November

Our fundraiser to expand the veggie garden ! 

Label for the pots were designed by the children and the chosen label was Bella's from Room 15! 

TERM 4 Spring / Summer

Room 6 and Room 7 worked together in the vegetable garden this term:

Transplanting the tomatoes seedlings into bigger pots

Mixing the couch grass in the water container where we will leave it for 6 months before using it to feed the garden soil!  " Yuck! The old mixture is very stinky " 

Planting seeds in our potting shed 

We have found some cardboard and some silver paper in the recycling bin, so we have made some decorations for our Cherry Blossom Tree! 

We wrote a few quotes from the children and glued them to the decorations. Garden related quotes, of course ! Just to make sure they were all listening ! And... they were !! Great work Rooms 6 and 7 !!

TERM 3 WEEK 8

ROOM 15 in the garden

This week we gave a go at making our own Seed Raising Mix

We opened our compost bin and removed so of the compost.

We mixed some sand into the compost and then sieved it all into a fine mix.

We then sew some seeds into pots using our new mix! 

ROOM 2 in the garden
" We harvested the calendula flowers to start making some calendula balm" Grace
We talked about CALENDULAS, HOVER FLIES, APHIDS
" We tasted the green onion and it was delicious. Belissimo ! " Micah 
" The Hover-fly eats the aphids." Mella
" The green onion tastes good with the calendula petals" Uma