Papatūānuku at Work

It’s been a tiring month in our new home. We have been hauling compost and lugging soil so that our new bins will thrive over winter. Once a bin is full we’ve been planting and mulching with straw. As the irrigation isn’t turned on yet are are relying on Tawhirimatea (god of the weather) to give us rain, and thank you Tahirimatea you have certainly been providing for us. We are getting rain every week which is keeping our crops watered.

We have been so surprised by what is growing in our soil mounds. There’s kale, nasturtium, broad beans, poppies, silver beet and spinach. Whaea Clare hasn’t had to use any of our seeds because we can grow what is popping up around us.

The only thing we have been sowing is peas, which we direct sowed in the hopes that very soon we will have lots to eat. We’re also planting a pea seed crop - this lot won’t be for eating, it is solely to provide us with seed for next year. We’re doing this because we noticed the shop bought pea seeds had been treated with a chemical covering. This is done to discourage the seeds from rotting in the ground when they get planted, but that’s not the way we like to garden, we prefer not to use chemicals and let Papatūānuku do the job her own way. So we decided to produce our own seed, so we know what’s gone into them. Not to mention it’s a lot cheaper too! We used our leftover seeds from last year’s crop – we didn’t want to plant the chemically treated ones at all.

Nga Kaitiaki a Papatuanuku

There have been a lot of changes since our last blog at the end of March. Our amazing Garden club was moved to make way for new classrooms. This is so exciting for our school but I felt a bit sad thinking of all the teachers, volunteers and students who over the 10+ years passed through this garden area, took kai home and learned how to grow their own food.

But at the same time this is a chance for new beginnings. We now have our new space down at the bottom of the field where the next generation of students, volunteers and teachers will earn how to grow their own food and enjoy the natural environment around them.

I asked Kopukairoa to give us a new name that would represent our new surroundings, and I’m proud to say we are now called Nga Kaitiaki a Papatuanuku. This is a special name which we will treasure.

Now the hard work begins. The tamariki have been busy layering up the garden beds with compost and soil, ready to plant. It’s hard work and the tamariki have been going back to class very tired but we are all happy to be planting some kai so that we can make a yummy soup or roast vegetables this winter.

A Time of Plenty

It's been one busy March for us here at Arataki School.

We have been harvesting our potatoes, carrots, kale, silverbeet, kumara, corn as well as the last of our basil.

The seedlings we direct sowed are now ready for thinning out so Whaea Clare has been showing us what to do.

We have been doing some mulching around the school and things are looking very tidy.

Our kura is so lucky as we are getting four new classrooms. These will be placed where our garden club is so we will be moving down to the right hand side of the field. In preparation for this we started to move a couple of the planter boxes and have filled them up with twigs, compost, mulch and soil. The beds have been sown with lupins and phacelia as cover crops to help the soil structure and to fix nitrogen into the soil until we know when we will be moving.

A Great Start to 2021

Welcome back to Arataki School Garden club. We have started the year with 120 tamariki and we are so excited that so many tamariki are coming out into the gardens each fortnight.

We started the year talking about how a little seed can grow into big vegetables and looking at how a seed turns into a plant.

We made a big batch of seed raising mix so we can sow our winter seeds and for some of us to take home and grow some vegetables there.

We had a whole heap of basil so one of the tamariki took it home and made pesto for the whole club. We all agreed it was the best pesto ever made.

Masterchef Challenge Alert!

In the gardens we have been growing spinach and kale so that we could either make kale chips OR smoothies later in the term.

One of our garden beds was dedicated to spinach and kale for this sole purpose. Even though the kids have been nibbling them at lunch time and Whaea Clare’s junior class have been taking them home to make kale chips, there was enough left for: 

MASTERCHEF Arataki 2020

Mystery Box Challenge 

The challenge was to invent a delicious smoothie. Each group had spinach, kale, water and herbs from the garden. To get more ingredients they had to come to see Whaea Clare and answer VERY HARD gardening questions, like “How do you plant a seed?”, “Do you soak seedlings in nutrients before planting?”, “ Are tomatoes fruits or vegetables?”, “Is soil a living thing?”. 

They could choose from peaches, Weetbix, rolled oats, coconut water and berries (to name a few) as extras in the smoothie. 

Then Whaea Shia, Whaea Charlotte, Whaea Clare and Matua Jamie came to judge the smoothies. They were all so good but we picked Olivia’s group as the best one. 

We all had so much fun and will definitely do this again either next year, or next term if it’s raining. 

Bees get us Buzzing in October

We had the privilege of having Sylvana from Seaside Bees come and talk to Kopukairoa and garden club today about bees.

Kopukairoa had been learning about bees and pollination as part of their inquiry and were amazed at seeing a working hive up close. They asked a lot of questions about the roles of different bees in the hive, how Sylvana looks after them, did she get stung a lot, is the queen bee nice, why is the hive hot and a lot of other great questions. 

The kids loved watching the bees and seeing the dances. They couldn’t believe how busy they were and how big the queen bee is in real life.

Ruma 9/10 gave a haka to Sylvana to say thank you for coming and spending time with them. There were a few tears shed and the bees loved it too.

Garden club talked to Sylvana about what bees need to eat and what we could do as gardeners to bring them into the garden. We found this very useful and have plans over summer to sow wildflowers that bees like. We also learnt that bees need water to so we are going to keep out a shallow dish for them to drink from.

The kids also got to try on the bee suit and see some of the equipment that Sylvana uses.

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.

Our Own Seed Raising Mix

Whaea Clare found a recipe to make our own seed raising mix. When she read the recipe she found that we have most of the ingredients at school! 

The recipe is:

– 1 part sand (we used the sand from the school sand pit as the salt from beach sand could damage or kill young seedlings)

–  2 parts rehydrated coir fibre (Whaea Clare bought this from Bunnings for less than $4)

 – 3 parts screened compost, or 2 parts compost, 1 part vermicast from your worm farm (we used the compost that we made from our gardens and sifted it to get the big bits out)

There we have it, our own seed raising mix that we used to start growing our seeds from and it only cost us $4. And we used what we had around the school, which is part of our Reduce, Reuse, Recycle inquiry at school.

June’s Blog: The End of a Short but Busy Term

During the lockdown over April and May the seasons changed from autumn to winter, so it was time for us to get some winter veges into our new garden beds. We have been planting seedlings as well as direct sowing seeds, so we’ll have a succession of new small plants coming in behind the bigger ones. Watch this space for broccoli, cauliflower, kale, silverbeet, spinach, carrots and beetroot. 

The kids were looking at recipes and we got to talking about an edible flower salad, so we planted different types of lettuce and some edible flowers to make a salad when everything has grown. We also have peas planted by the fence so in time families can help themselves on the way out of school, and have planted broad beans to help with fixing nitrogen into the soil.

As if that wasn’t enough, weʻve also been working on different areas of the school:

The citrus grove by the pool was removed but before this happened the wonderful Room 18 spent a block removing all the citrus trees and with the help of Lance and Dianne (A HUGE THANK YOU TO YOU BOTH). We replanted them in the orchard and around the scooter track. 

We’ve planted a camellia hedge by the bike bay at Kaimanawai Street (to help attract the bees in winter), and added more swan plants into the butterfly garden. Swan plant seedlings are popping up all over Whaea Clare’s garden at home, so it’s great to have a place to plant them. We’ve planted winter friendly plants to keep the butterflies happy as well.

The stage area has some new plants along with the Grenda Street entrance.

We did have a couple of wet days so we made mosaics that will go around the gardens and we are putting together labels and signs for the garden club.

Thank you to Paper 4 Trees for our 25 plants that we have earned through recycling our school’s paper waste.  We’re busy planning where they will be planted.

 Wow it was a busy term, wasn’t it!?

May in the Garden After Lockdown

Due to the COVID restrictions we have had to come up with another way to run garden club (as we have high numbers of kids in the club). We have had to spilt the kids into groups of 10, with groups running on odd or even weeks depending on their class numbers.

Despite these adjustments it has been so lovely seeing the children back working in the gardens. Their happy voices around the school have been so lovely to hear.

On our return to the school we didn’t expect to see any plants in the garden since they had been left to themselves during the seven weeks of Level 3 and 4 lockdown, but look what we returned to! Beds full of vegetables and plants! Mother Nature definitely knows what she is doing :)

We got busy weeding and planting out more vegetables, checking on the worms and spreading the worm juice around the school. The citrus grove is being removed so we started moving the plants and soil around the school. The butterfly garden group realised that some of the plants being removed from the citrus grove are perfect for butterflies, so they re-planted them in their gardens. The wicking bed group started the “smoothie” garden, planting out spinach, kale and strawberries.