Spring Is Almost Here

What beautiful weather we’ve been having this week. After all the rain and wind recently, being out in the garden today was such a pleasure. We were busy preparing our beds for all the new spring crops we will soon be putting in…

Sunflower group are making a bird bath using leaves and concrete. Here is the concrete drying in the moulds. You will have to wait until next week to find out more!

And here is the plan for Cosmos’ kumara patch which will be dug next week, two 5 metre rows. Cosmos calculated that we would have 200 kumara if we plant 20 plants – we were so interested in making our plan we barely realised we were doing maths!

Plant Based Food Banquet

On Friday we took 47 kids from the Arataki School Garden club to Arataki Community Centre where Frances and her team from ‘Plant Based Food’ were waiting for us.  

They made us a three course lunch with food from our own garden!

Kale Chips

Pumpkin and Kumera Balls

Carob Pie

The food was so yummy and the children learnt how to cook everything. We’ve heard some of the kids and parents had a fun weekend baking afterwards.

The kids enjoyed it so much that at the end the boys decided to do a haka to say thank you, which bought Whaea Clare to tears.

This is what it’s all about – growing and eating our own food, learning and appreciating as we go, and bringing our whanau and community closer together.

Thank you so much Frances and team, the time and energy you gave us was a great gift and one that has made a big difference.

Term 3 Update

We’re back in the swing of things for Term 3 and things are starting to pick up in the garden. It’s not spring yet but we have passed the longest day and everything will be taking off before we know it. In the meantime we’ve been our usual busy selves, here are some of the things we’ve been doing:

Last week Gemma and Jenna from Tui Garden came to see how we’ve used the soil they donated. We did a powhiri and sang a waiata for them.

Leo from Why Waste was here last week too. He talked to us about how to plant seeds and all about slugs and snails, and we checked the worm bins too. We love when Leo comes, he has so much knowledge and we learn so much. 

Whaea Heidi talked to us about kumara, how good it is for us and what vitamins are in it. We’re looking forward to getting our kumara into the garden this year. 

As the weather warms up so does Nennie’s garden. It’s looking beautiful, we are so lucky having her in our garden club.

And speaking of gardens, last year we sprinkled some seeds into the butterfly garden and they didn’t take. But look at it now — we have surprise winter flowers!

Our orchard is getting some love, too. Here’s the wonderful Hibiscus group mulching it to keep the weeds at bay.

Meanwhile the art group are making these signs for us. We’re just waiting on the vanish then we can hang them up to make our gardens brighter and more welcoming than ever.

Thank You Moviegoers!

A big THANK YOU to everyone who came and supported us at our movie fundraising night on Thursday. We hope you enjoyed yourself and the movie provided some food for thought and inspiration.

As well as fundraising, the screening was a chance for us to thank many of our supporters, contributors and sponsors. We’ve had such support from people like Clare, our garden facilitator, our garden club volunteers, and the principals, teachers and BoTs of our member schools. We’ve learnt from, and shared knowledge with, contributors like Crafty Gatherer, Why Waste, Seaside Bees and Free As A Bird (check out their websites because there are some amazing things going on in our community). And of course sponsors like Tui, and Tauranga City Council, who have been a huge help to our cause. 

Special thanks to Jenna at Tui for donating most of the products for our gift basket spot prize, which had such lovely goodies in it that it was a wrench for us to give it away :)

Thank you again to all of you!

Rongoa Garden

It was a special day today, because we planted out our Rongoa garden. We’ve been planning it for a while, and now was the right time to plant, so it was great to get stuck in.

If you don’t know what a Rongoa garden is, you can find out here.

Here we are planting the Kawakawa and saying a karakia.

It took a long time to get our azure hebe out of the pot, but when it finally came out we realised why. That brown stuff is all roots! It was a good opportunity for Whaea Clare to talk to us about roots, what they do and how they grow. The hebe finally made it into the ground, we’re sure it will be much happier in there than it was in the pot.

Some of these beautiful tiles were also laid out in the Rongoa garden.

The Mosaics Are In Place!

At last here are our mosaics in pride of place at the front of the school.

Cosmos group explored the school for insects today…

…then created an insect pathway.

And Whaea Mel showed us how to cull the strawberry plants.

A very proud and happy gardener.

Cosmos get Cooking

Today Cosmos group did cooking! We harvested some veges to make a salad, we had lettuce, coriander and parsley. Our carrots are too small yet so we had carrots and beetroot from Whaea Heidi’s garden. We also made cheese and herb scones with our parsley

Fantastic Flax

Today we dug up a flax bush and learned how to split up up so we could make heaps of plants. We replanted some of them to fill out our scooter track garden and potted the rest in recycled pots. We got to take some of the extra plants home, and kept some for other parts of the school gardens. Then we did the same with grasses.

Wriggling Worms and Beautiful Tiles

Today Leo, the compost guy from Why Waste, came to help us start up our worm farm and compost system. We loved playing with the worms and learning about the amazing work they do turning our waste into beautiful, rich earth.

Meanwhile these beautiful tiles were created by the Sunflower group. They’ll be displayed  by the garden club to brighten up the wildflower garden.

Seed Saving Talk and Mother’s Day Surprises

Today our Arataki gardeners got a visit from Tess, the seed saving lady from Crafty Gatherer. She had to run two sessions as there were so many of us keen to learn from her. Saving seeds makes a lot of sense, it gives us free plants for the next season and it can be a lot of fun too. It also means we know exactly where our seeds are coming from, and that they haven’t been treated with nasty chemicals.

You can learn more about what Tess does at the Crafty Gatherer website.

Meanwhile some of our other gardeners were learning about amazing air plants. These incredible plants don’t need soil, and happily exist with just the water they are able to extract from the atmosphere. They made a great display on the wall, as well as wonderful Mother’s Day presents to go with the cards we made.

Air plants on the fence.

Cards and gifts for Mother’s Day.

We’ve also been hard at work in the garden, and everything is looking great. All these plants need to survive through the winter. We have kumara seedlings and potato plants sprouting too. The mahi in the garden never ends but it’s all good fun and great learning.

Our gardens looking great.

Kumara sprouting on a windowsill.

It’s nice to know the wildlife are enjoying our gardens too!