Reducing, Reusing and Recycling
Our schoolwide inquiry this term is ‘Reduce, Reuse Recycle’, so at garden club we stopped to think about how we support these principles.
One choice we make is when Whaea Clare buys in seedlings, which every so often she needs to do. She chooses the Awapuni Nurseries ones because they come wrapped in newspaper rather than in plastic punnets, so our plastic consumption is REDUCED. Once we’ve planted the seedlings the newspaper goes into our compost bin or worm farm to turn into nutrients for our garden – it gets RECYCLED.
The plastic pots we do have for seedlings and plants get used again and again so they are constantly REUSED.
All the weeds and vegetable scraps from cooking are composted or put into the worm farms – that’s more stuff being RECYCLED.
We are learning to make our own seed raising and potting mixes so we aren’t bringing more plastic packaging into our system. Plastic use once again REDUCED.
Whaea Fran and Whaea Clare talked to the kids about using what they have around the house to grow their seeds in. To show them how easy it was we asked them to bring used yoghurt pots, margarine containers, milk bottles, tea bag packets, meat trays and tin cans from home. We asked our caretaker to punch holes in the bottom of these containers then we filled them up with our home-made seed raising mix.
We wanted the tamariki to have quick growing vegetables to snack on in the cold winter weather, so they planted microgreens into the containers. Microgreens are thickly sown seedlings of edible plants and herbs that are often used to add colour and flavour to meals. They take only 7 – 14 days to grow and they are great on salads in sandwiches or as a snack. When you cut them they will grow back and that means you don’t have to keep sowing them.
The tamariki loved REUSING their old containers to grow their seeds.
We also made a tea bag garden RECYCLING the leftover tea bags from the staff morning tea and lunchtime –once again using what we have around the school to grow our vegetables.
Here are the instructions if you want to give it a go.
