Presenting…Our New Garden Beds

A huge change has happened in the garden club this month. Thanks to Bunnings we have 14 new garden bins! As you might have read in our last blog post, the Bunnings crew came one Wednesday morning to help us and our 10 volunteers build our new garden beds.

It was so exciting seeing them grow from a pile of wood into rows of beautiful new bins. It was hard work but a lot of fun, and some of us even learnt new skills along the way too.

The following Saturday we had another working bee to fill up the garden bins with the soil from the old bins. We layered the bins up with tree branches and leaves from around the kura and then piled the soil on top of them. The branches and leaves will slowly decompose, turning into a valuable source of carbon for our soil. When we got tired we had some shared kai until we were full to bursting.

As our garden club was a construction site for many weeks, we spent the term learning about seeds and doing experiments. We learned how varied their appearances can be (we matched seeds to their parent plants); how they germinate (we took home bean seeds in a see-through cup so we could watch them germinate); what factors help with germination (we soaked some seeds in water before planting to see if they grew stronger than seeds that hadn’t been soaked). So although we weren’t out in the garden, we still did gardening of a different sort.

One week Leo from Why Waste came to visit and taught us all about worms. Whaea Clare read that if there are at least 20 worms in your garden it means it’s healthy, so we decided to do a worm count around the school. No one found any worms! But we found some kumara and potatoes…

We had planned to use these for our end-of-term/garden club re-opening party, but because the kura is closed we can’t do that now. So Whaea Clare is going to plant them in a bucket and let them grow. Maybe we’ll get even more potatoes and kumara that we can use to make a Matariki soup in winter.

We were still left with a big question: “how we are going to get more worms in our gardens?”. There were some great ideas: more compost, digging in worm pee and vermicast, adding seaweed, doing more mulching. We’ll try all these things, and in Term 4 we’ll do another worm count and see if our efforts have worked.

It’s sad we had to close down our garden club, and then our whole kura because of the Covid-19 lockdown, but we know it’s to keep everyone safe. Prior to the rahui Whaea Clare did one last check on the gardens and guess what? Nasturtium and poppy seeds had germinated and were growing, all by themselves. Whaea Clare also sprinkled some seeds into the gardens and put pea straw on top to mulch the bins, so who knows what we’re going to find when we get back. We might get some really exciting surprises!

In the meantime, take care and stay safe.

Garden Bed Update!

A HUGE thank you to Bunnings Warehouse – Mar, Peter, Wendy and Roger for supplying the materials and helping our team put together 14 garden bins for our tamariki at Arataki School.

We can’t wait to grow so many vegetables in these bins!

Exciting News for the start of 2020

Kia ora everyone and welcome to the 2020 year.

Whaea Clare is back this year and she’s looking forward to working with the volunteers, staff and wonderful tamariki at Arataki School and continuing the exciting mahi that happens at the garden club every Thursday.

We’ve been busy over the summer holidays emptying out all our old kiwifruit bins as these were very old and were becoming unsafe for the tamariki to grow food in. To replace them the generous staff at Bunnings are going to provide the materials for new garden work tables, and with the help of the school community, make up 16 new garden beds!

The cleared out garden space, ready for the new beds.

Meanwhile, Garden Club started back this week with a focus on seeds. We began by matching various seeds to their plants, and looking at wildflower seeds and their differences. (Then we secretly spread the seeds all around the school :))

Seeds matched to their vegetables.

This term we have lots more planned too. We’re looking forward to seeing Leo from Why Waste, learning about seed dispersal and making green smoothies.

Term 4, 2019: The Roundup

Term Four was a busy one for Arataki Garden Club. Here are some of the highlights.

We harvested carrots, lettuces and beetroot to name a few vegetables. Then when we turned over a garden bed ready for our tomato seedlings we found a kiwifruit bin FULL of potatoes. The kids took them home for their dinner. That night there was mashed potato, roast potato, potato salad being made all over the Arataki School community.

We held our seedling sale as well but due to the cold spring our seedlings didn’t take as well as we’d hoped. We still made $100 which will go towards some new gloves or spades.

We also turned over the old garden rows by the wicking beds ready for our pumpkin crop.  We are hoping to have pumpkins for pumpkin soup in the autumn, we have our fingers crossed.

Continuing the tradition, Ruma 11 sprouted our kumara slips and then we went down to the wicking beds and planted them out. The sprouted kumara looked amazing – we can’t wait to see the results in autumn.

We are looking forward to 2020.  Thank you Arataki School community for all your support this year.  

Welcome to September’s blog post

In the last few weeks we have been very busy in garden club. Have a look below to see a snapshot of what we have been doing.

Last week the bilingual unit at our kura had an Eco Warrior fundraiser on garden club day, so we carried the theme through. Whaea Clare showed the kids how to make a tea bag garden from used tea bags, paper towel and an old meat tray from home. The children took these home to grow and with great excitement reported that their seeds were growing after a week. Here are the instructions if you want to try at home:

And here’s a picture of Whaea Clare’s tea bag garden – can you see the tiny seeds sprouting?

This week we were back in our groups, doing some amazing work around the kura. Here’s a brief description from each group.

Group 1 – Neta’s Group

Two weeks ago we were digging up a patch ready for planting when we found some kumara. As it was our turn for cooking we cooked kumara chips with oil and salt. It was so yummy and everyone wanted to try some. While the kumara was cooking we started to sprout some for our summer garden.

Group 2 – Delwyn’s Group

Our job at the kura for the next three weeks will be to plant out the area around the stage with native shrubs. There is weed mat underneath the soil, so we learned that we needed to cut a hole in the weed mat first, then dig the hole for the shrub. As we were planting we noticed lots of rubbish in the garden. Our group wants to speak at hui about being more responsible for our rubbish.

Group 3 – Olivia’s Group

We were on seedling duty today. PiPS is holding a seedling sale on 19th October so we are sowing up a storm to sell to the community. We also sowed some for our school garden as we learnt that buying seed is WAY cheaper than buying seedlings.

Group 4 – Art Group

Our garden club beds are in need of colour, so in our art group we made signs to put in the beds. Our club is going to look amazing with these new signs in them.

Group. 5 – Dianne’s Group

We were in charge of the garden club area today, and there was so much weeding to be done. We’re lucky that our chickens love it when we weed, as they get a fantastic feed. Our worms and compost bins loved it too. The most exciting part was when we harvested beetroot and potatoes – we’re going to make a beetroot dip when it’s our cooking day.

Group 6

Whaea Clare didn’t manage to get a photo of us working VERY hard today, but we did get the chance to tell her our exciting news. We planted beans in the wicker beds today so that they can form a tunnel. In summer the tamariki can come down and get shelter from the sun, and eat some fresh beans as well. We also did some mulching of pathways.

Thank you from Arataki.

Rainbow Celery

Whaea Clare has been working with Room 22 this term, to help them with their Science Enquiry. Each student has a gardening question that they need to answer, and one of them was this: If you put dye into the water of a cut plant, will the plant change colour?

Today we tried it with celery and as time went by we saw the dye travel up the celery stalk. After about an hour the leaves had changed colour. Not only was this pretty entertaining, but it also showed us how plants uptake and distribute water. And how quickly they drink! Next week we want to try the same experiment using cauliflower.

Reflections on Kumara Growing

We were a bit disappointed that our kumara didn’t do well this year – we talked about it and thought it might have been the lack of water during the summer holidays. Next year we’ll have our new irrigation system in place which will keep our gardens watered even when we’re not here, so hopefully we’ll have better luck then. There is always something to learn, as gardeners, and always the next season to look forward to.

We have a plan for using the kumara we do have… stay tuned until next week to find out! 

Helpful Bugs and Beasties in the Garden

While we were digging up the kumara today we saw this ladybird, and noticed it was eating the little white bugs on the leaves of the kale. Whaea Clare explained that the ladybird – which is obviously not a bird at all, and in some other countries is more accurately known as the ‘ladybug’ – is an amazing friend for gardeners. It eats aphids and the eggs of the cabbage white butterfly, both of which can do a lot of damage to our vege plants. Having ladybirds in the garden means we don’t have to use chemicals to control these pests.

We also found these worms – once upon a time we might have been grossed out to see a wriggly, slimy worm, but we are far too experienced as gardeners to react like that these days. Today we were so happy to find them, as they tell us our soil is healthy. The worms create air and water tunnels in the ground for us, which aerates the soil, and also feed the soil and plants with their poo.

Growing Seeds in Bags?!

For the past three weeks we have been growing bean seeds in bags! We placed the seeds in a plastic sandwich bag with a damp paper towel and taped them to the windows in our classrooms. The damp paper towels are taking the place of soil, and the sealed plastic bag stops the paper towels from drying out. We have been watching them germinate – shedding their seed coat, watching the roots pushing out of the seed and then seeing the stem and leaves grow.  We noticed that we haven’t had to water them as the moisture is being kept inside the sealed bag.

Some of the kids choose to take their bags home, and some seeds did well but others died. We chatted about what might have happened – did they get enough sunlight, too much or not enough water? What other variables could have affected how they grew?

Now that the seedlings have leaves they need to be out of the plastic bags and into the sunlight and fresh air, so we transplanted them into jiffy pots, with the plan to grow them on until they’re ready to go into the garden after the school holidays.

We learnt that a plant’s roots hate to be touched or disrupted, so by potting them into these compostable pots we won’t have to pull them out again when it’s time to put them in the garden. We can just put the whole pot into a hole, and the pot will rot down and become part of the soil, allowing the roots to keep growing right through the pot.

Meanwhile our senior studentss have been working with Leo from Why Waste about how we can use worms to get rid of some of the waste in the school. This is still a work in progress so watch this space.

The Seedling Market Story

Here’s the story of our Seedling Market and how our community came together to help…

Our four member schools had been planning a combined seedling market to be held just after the school holidays. We wanted to share our produce, and even more importantly our ideas, with our local community, and show them what we’d been learning and growing. We invited our neighbour school, St Thomas More, to have a stall too.

We had all been growing different plants from seed for a few weeks and Whaea Heidi from PiPS had organised for us to hold the sale at Arataki Park on Saturday. She did a lot of work to arrange it all, and other stalls like a coffee cart, bike repair stall, sausage sizzle and live music too.

But then a few things happened. Whaea Clare had to take some time off work for family reasons and there was a drought over the holidays. The result of these combined factors was that for most of our schools, our carefully nurtured seedlings died over the school holidays.

After all the work Heidi did organising and publicising the market she wasn’t going to give in! She put the word out and all sorts of people and organisations including the Mt College horticulture class and Good Neighbour came to the rescue, donating plants and produce to replace what we’d lost. In the end the market was able to go ahead, and despite some very cold and showery ‘spring’ weather it was a real success. In some ways it was even more of a success than if our plants hadn’t died because the generosity and help we got from others helped to form some great relationships.

Thank you to everyone who donated time or produce to help make it such a success against the odds, to the kids who helped out with selling, to Mrs Robertson and Mrs Taylor for all their mahi, and of course a very big pakipaki to Heidi and Clare.

PS: We were so busy selling and chatting that we forgot to take many photos! So you will just have to trust us that it was a great morning :)