Term 4 in the Arataki School gardens

We welcomed our Hikurangi classes to the gardens in Term 4 and they were super enthusiastic!  With the Garden and Art Festival in week 4 of the term, there was lots to be done so that we could share what we do with our visitors.  

In preparation for the festival, we had a very successful working bee one Sunday, organised by the Friends of the School.  The surrounding fences were all magically transformed with a coat of black paint.  The fruit trees with their new wooden surrounds and hand painted signage were mulched, and there was some huge progress made with weeding and watering.  ‘Mā tini mā mano, ka rapa te whai’.

We decided to try an experimental pea straw bale garden, next to a regular garden bed, planting each with the same veg, so that we could see which garden turned out the best produce…  time will tell!

We have also planted some heritage seeds again, with hue and kamokamo acting as ground cover below our sunflowers.  We are also looking forward to the ‘treasure hunt’ for kumara in term one next year, and the kumara patch is looking promising.

The visitors we guided through the gardens over the four days of the Garden and Art festival were super impressed with what the young gardeners have achieved.  They left with ideas about how to make slug traps, paint strawberry decoys, practice companion planting, seed saving and more!  It was awesome to have such positive feedback.

This term we cleared beds to plant sunflowers and strawberry popping corn with beans and squash and they have really taken off!  We have plans to bring in a camping stove and make popcorn as soon as the cobs have grown and dried! 

Our tree stump flower gardens are flourishing too, with sweet peas and lavender and calendula and the butterflies and bees love them.  We are fortunate in having plenty of visiting bees from the neighbour’s hive over the fence, busy pollinating our gardens for more productive fruit and veg!

We harvested the last of the cauliflower and romanesco broccoli and the gardeners happily munched on them in the gardens as well as piling the kai basket with produce to share with our school community.

The carrot harvest was an exciting one too, lots of excited faces as they guessed what colour and size the next rainbow carrot might be!  And although they were small, we decided it best to dig up some spuds to take home before the holidays!

All the work we put into setting up our strawberry beds has really paid off and we have had some bumper harvests already this summer.  The mounded rows, topped with wool mulch matting seem to be the way to go!  Some of my hungry lunchtime gardeners did some taste testing and left happily with strawberry juice beards and full tummies!

To finish up for Christmas, our young gardeners got creative and made some beautiful air dried clay decorations, with a botanical theme.  Hopefully they all made it home in one piece!