MMI School Gardens Term 3, 2024

This term started with harvesting amazing black gold from our compost heap, to top up our gardens. A cross section of the compost looked like a layer cake, with amazing rich compost at the bottom. It didn’t take long for our hardworking gardeners to fill barrow loads of the good stuff and top up the beds.

The strawberry patch should benefit, having new compost added. We divided runners and replanted strawberries. This year our students are experimenting, planting some of the strawberries in raised ridges topped with wool mulch and others just straight into the garden bed, to see which ones grew better and faster. The ridges are winning out so far, with bigger plants by far in comparison to the ones planted on the flat without mulch.

We brought in a Sodastream one day to make the most of our heavily fruiting lemon tree and enjoyed glasses of yummy lemonade, full of vitamin C to ward off the winter bugs! Another day we harvested a beautiful pink cauliflower, which was promptly devoured with a pot of hummus. The students at MMI are constantly harvesting from their gardens, taking home newspaper bundles to share herbs and veg with their families. Miss Barr also receives little parcels of veg for the school kitchen every now and again.

PiPS facilitators had a professional development day at Ngapeke Permaculture one Wednesday this term where we were gifted a Granadilla Passion Fruit to plant at Mount Intermediate Gardens. We are excited to see how it grows and to taste the unusual yellow fruit we have been promised.

We are looking forward to a bumper harvest from our ‘broad bean forest’ in the garden and the students are keen to make a broad bean dip to share. Our worm bins are cranking along nicely, providing us with some great organic fertiliser for our gardens which added to the compost, should mean continued productivity.

We have a project planned next term for our year 8 gardeners. In previous years we have found that our gardeners have struggled to stay motivated to work on planting what they won’t be here to harvest in Term 1, so we are looking to create take-home gardens. The gardeners have had some great ideas, and will hunt for some planter options over the holidays. We had lots of suggestions about gardens we could create from upcycled containers such as baskets, wooden drawers or even old fish bowls. Watch this space!

MMI School Gardens Term 2, 2024

The gardeners at MMI have put in some great work this term.  

And they are already reaping the harvest of their hard work last term.  Their gardens are abundant and nearly every week, they are taking food home, from healthy heads of chinese cabbage to bunches of herbs and silverbeet.  The girls did some good work gathering leaf mulch, helping Brendan out, by keeping the place tidy while also providing for the compost!

The gardeners’ whānau and teachers benefit too, when they bring posies of fresh flowers back to class.  Some even decorated upcycled pots of flowers to take home as Mothers’ Day gifts!

The wet days were also put to use.  We spent time in room 30, where we did some seed saving, using the dried seed heads we had collected from the gardens in the summer.  The gardeners made clever paper envelopes from old exercise books and labelled the seeds for storage, so that we can use them in the gardens next term.

We spent time making banana tea fertiliser too, to feed our seedlings.

We have some great artists in the garden too, who enjoyed making signage for their garden beds.  On one wet Wednesday, we learned about the wonders of leaves, and their jobs as solar panels for the plants, harnessing energy from the sun, to convert into food for the plants and ultimately feeding us too.  The gardeners then used leaves from the garden to make some watercolour art prints to take home.  

A very healthy basil plant in our herb garden prompted a food prep session.  We gathered basil, parsley, miners’ lettuce and lemons from the garden to make a delicious garden herb pesto, which didn’t last long!

In the last week of term, our year 8 gardeners had a wonderful opportunity to visit the school gardens at Mount Maunganui College where some of them will study next year.  John Devery, who looks after the horticulture department, shared his passion for gardening with us and it was amazing to see him in action.  He told us that since he started the programme, they have been responsible for planting over 40,000 native trees in Tauranga and the surrounding areas.  And it’s not for profit!  They are working for the planet, one tree at a time!  John also prepares the students for careers in the horticulture industry. We were very grateful to him for the warm welcome we received.

Gardening in Term 1, 2024

We started off the term working from the ground up, re-jigging the garden bed layout to work around the new stage.  We moved garden beds and our gardeners put in a lot of hard mahi refilling them.  With Brendon’s clever “number eight wire” approach, we managed to push through the irrigation under the footpath to the new bed using just a garden hose and water power! Good skills Brendon! 

We have had some great harvest this term - Austin and Jack’s zucchini is still going, allowing them to take home veg every couple of weeks!  It sounds like Austin’s mum has some great ways of adding zucchini to dinners! 

Our gardeners are continuing to take home bunches of herbs from our lush herb garden, and even posies of flowers for their teachers. Our corn grew taller than Harper and we popped it in a pot on our camping stove in the garden and feasted!

Alby, Amelia, Clara and Ava filled a new bed at the beginning of term.  It was lined and laid with cardboard in the base, then filled with garden clippings and soil.  They’ve been gardening every Wednesday, sowing, planting and weeding and are already reaping the benefits, harvesting giant healthy pak choi. 

The sweet treat for Easter was Butternut Squash Chocolate Mousse. It was surprisingly delicious. Even the leadership team got some sweet treats from our thoughtful gardeners!!

Meanwhile the gardens are buzzing with bees and butterflies.  The red flowers of the pineapple sage, and the zinnias and Mexican sunflowers are irresistible, it seems. We have been learning about the benefits of attracting pollinators and increasing biodiversity in the gardens. 

What’s Been Happening in the Garden?

This term we have taken on some new gardeners and allocated the beds so that everyone shares an area.  The broad beans we planted in the communal gardens last term took off and we had a huge harvest.  Firstly we podded the beans, boiled them briefly and skinned them, then whizzed them together with lemons and mint from our gardens, and some garlic and olive oil from the pantry to make a delicious broad bean dip which was demolished within minutes on crackers!

 The following week the uptake in those wanting to harvest broad beans to take home was significant.  The students had already learned how to prepare the veg, and were keen to cook them at home!  They left the gardens with newspaper parcels of what looked like fish and chips, but were really bundles of greens!

 The flowers are in bloom too, and have the dual purpose of attracting more biodiversity to our gardens and keeping our teachers happy, with posies being taken back to class after gardening.

 The herb garden that we put together last term is now bursting with an amazing variety of herbs, which are growing faster than we can harvest them - sage, coriander, mint, chamomile, oregano and more!  A good complaint!  We have some chamomile flowers hanging in the shed, to dry them and later make tea and we have harvested coriander seed too. 

There will be plenty of sage for the Christmas stuffing for our school families to pick up before the end of term.

 We have been working on seed saving in the last few weeks.  Although, to the untrained eye, the garden may have looked a little out of hand at times, it has been intentional as we allowed vegetable plants to go to seed. 

 This allowed us to then gather them for drying and later take some down time in the gardens, rubbing the seeds from their pods/twigs into trays and sifting away the chaff. 

 Then we popped them into paper pockets (some beautifully decorated by our gardeners!) to save them for next season or take some home to family.

We have planted tomatoes too, with a special system for watering them below the ground, through pipes filled with pebbles.  It will be interesting to see how they go, boosted with top ups from our compost bay of black gold!!

We will have some changes next term, with our year 8 gardeners moving on.  We will be sorry to see them go, but they tell me they will pop by for lemons and herbs, and to say hi.  We look forward to seeing the next group of enthusiastic gardeners become kaitiaki of the garden beds and can’t wait to see how the gardens develop! 

Mount Maunganui Intermediate - Term 3

Term 3 has been a busy one at MMI, and the gardens have not been the exception. We kicked off the chilly weather with nature’s timely lemon harvest, and made lemonade to ward off the winter bugs. We’ve had a few visitors to the garden too as next year’s students popped by on their tour around the school. We have continued with our regular seed sowing to keep up a supply of seedlings for the shade house, and it seems that broad beans have been the winner hands down this term! They are looking so healthy and growing so vigorously that they have inspired the building of some tall support structures in our garden beds.

Thanks to Miss Barr’s initiative and Brendan’s enthusiasm and speedy construction skills, we have a new garden bed next to the shed. We filled it using the layering process, with branches, clippings, co􀀁ee grinds and six barrow loads of black gold from our own compost bay! The students have decided that they would like to delegate the space to a herb garden, so that they can bring bunches of herbs home regularly and we can get creative with pesto.

The highlight of the term for us was a trip to Mauao with Miss Barr and Whaea Clare, where we met Josh, the park ranger. Josh shared his passion for the area and directed us as to how best to plant the trees, treading softly and surrounding each one with a cardboard shield, to keep hungry bunnies away. We returned over 100 native seedlings to the PiPs ngahere from where gardeners had collected seeds two years ago.

It was a full morning of good mahi and in years to come, the gardeners will be able to point out the forest they have planted (to their whānau and tamariki) , on their walks up Mauao. What a legacy to leave!

A Busy Winter: Term 2

Although the weather hasn’t always been on our side this term, we have made the most of it, getting some garden focused jobs done.  It has been a good time to focus on composting, pest control and attracting beneficial insects to our gardens by building bug hotels.

This term too, our gardeners enjoyed digging for ‘treasure’ and wrapped up bundles of kūmara to take home to share with their families.  We have planted butternut squash and lots of cauliflower and broccoli, and are hoping to win ‘the war on slugs’ by setting slug traps every week and coming up with new ways of keeping the pests at bay.  Some keen gardeners have experimented with using foil, copper and salt, to see which was most effective, copper tape on offcuts of PVC pipe was the clear winner.  Wool mulch mats upcycled from old wool blankets seem to be working well too!

The soil and plants are being fed regularly with organic fertiliser from our now super-productive worm farm.  Our compost bin is busily doing its magic, with regular top-ups of sawdust from the hard materials room and biodegradables from classroom bins.

Josh, the park ranger from Mauao, has popped in to visit and check on our seedlings to see when they will be ready to return to the maunga.  We are looking at organising a trip to plant them out next term. 

We took advantage of one rainy Wednesday to make carrot seed tape with strips of newspaper, to direct plant carrots which won’t need thinning later on.

The strips have since been planted in the garden beds and are beginning to sprout.  We also tested out our strawberry popping corn - a tasty snack on a grey day!

 Our shadehouse is very productive at MMI and we are continuing the mission to keep a supply of seedlings going, by sowing seeds every fortnight, to ensure that what we harvest can be replaced with more seedlings for the next round.

 Meanwhile we are busy collecting seed from our own garden; cosmos, calendula, fennel and coriander.  Our gardeners are learning how to save the seed in paper envelopes and store them in a polystyrene tub in the garden shed, to keep them viable for the planting season ahead. 

 Thanks to Ms Barr, we have also planted some spring bulbs outside the school kitchen, so we should have some great colour there in spring! 

Term 1 at MMI, 2023

Our gardeners at MMI have hit the ground running this term - in just a short time, they have achieved so much!

Having cleared the old beds groups of students chose gardens to tend to and have created colourful signage to mark their spots.  The gardens were then topped up with compost and soil and some seedlings sown.  The shade house too is now full of seedlings, which will soon be ready for planting out, and our gardeners are working on keeping a regular supply going by sowing seeds  fortnightly.  We have made wool mulch mats for our seedlings and placed decoy white butterflies in the gardens to frighten off pests.

This term, a big focus has been on feeding the soil, in preparation for planting winter veg.  We have started a giant worm bin in an upcycled bathtub bin and the compost bays are working nicely, so we can ensure a constant supply of our own organic compost and worm castings/worm wee to fertilise the gardens.  With Brendan’s help we have got the irrigation up and running again, so that we don’t lose any of our hard work during the dry spells.

The native seedlings, which were planted by students last year after a seed collecting mission to Mauao, are still being cared for.   Later this year we are planning another visit to return them to the spots where the seeds were collected.

The sentinel garden bed has been filled using a layering method ; branches, garden clippings, coffee grinds, compost and soil were used.  Over time this organic matter will break down and feed the plants, which have been chosen to attract invasive pests which may be in this area.  Although it sounds like a bad idea, it then allows our students to keep watch for them and alert biosecurity NZ if they find any unwanted pests.  This is a great way for us to help out in the community, by being kaitaki for our local environment.

But our welcome, beneficial insects are being looked after - the monarch chrysalis rescue team jumped into action to save some fallen ones on Thursday.

Last week we decided it was time to do some food prep and, having gathered some garden herbs; basil, parsley and rocket, and a few added ingredients from Miss Barr’s pantry,  the students made a delicious pesto which was swiftly demolished on crackers in the garden!

PiPS 2023 Autumn Fundraiser with SPRING BULBS

Help PIPS get more equipment for your school gardens by beautifying your garden and the community.

Here is a great opportunity to purchase spring flowering bulbs and seeds to show your support for your in-school garden programme. Bulbs are easy to plant, fun to grow and will reward you with gorgeous flowers year after year.

We have some great choices here - why not try them all!  Bulbs are supplied by GardenPost who source bulbs from New Zealand’s and Holland’s best growers. PiPS will make a least 30% profit on all sales.  A planting guide will be enclosed with each order.

To order: Click here to fill in the order form, then make payment via internet banking

- by 30th March 2023.

Payment to: 01 0475 0158776 00 PIPS Incorporated 

                   - Reference your name and school.

Delivery: Will be around 10th April 2023. We can deliver nationwide, postal cost will be around $ .

Thank you for supporting PiPS – your in-school garden programme.  

Enquiries to:     Clare Rodgers – pipstauranga@gmail.com

Seed Saving and Other News in Term 3

MMI is now saving seeds from the garden. We harvested seeds from a giant pumpkin that was gifted to the gardens. We will grow it again this summer and hope to make lanterns next autumn. The students are also part of the NZ Seed Savers annual Bean Grow Down. The students selected 5 different varieties of beans to grow this summer. If we have a successful crop, we will return the seeds back to the group and be contributing to keeping heritage seeds available for generations to come. 

The irrigation is up and running again, the students worked hard to connect the new shade house and repair some of the lines to their own garden beds. 

The new junior students have been enthusiastic about having their own garden, weeding the bed and sowing seeds to plant out after the break. 

The school wide enquiry in underway, with planting happening in lots of different areas of the school. Adding more natives to the Mindfulness Garden, planting edible crops in the new tree planter boxes and adding to the gardens along the fence line. 

– Whaea Sarah

Mauao Seed Saving - Collection Day

What a stunner of a day it was to go up Mauao for our annual seed saving day.

We had a great turn out of kids from our local schools including their parents who also came along to this special project. 

Josh the environmental manager of Mauao met us all in the morning and while our group was walking up the Mount he gave us a bit of history about some parts of Mauao. He showed the kids how to find the seeds from native plants.

The seeds we have collected will be planted by the tamariki in our schools and once the seedlings have reached a certain size they will be planted on another special day back at Mauao in an area which has been saved for us.

The kids had so much fun collecting the seeds and Josh was great at sharing his knowledge. 

We are very grateful that Josh took his time to give us this tour and it was all in all a very special day and a great experience for everyone !

End of Year Report for 2021

What a busy term we’ve had in our gardens. With only a seven week term due to the second COVID lockdown, we did our very best to make the most of our limited time.

Two new garden beds were put up at the start of term and we began filling them with soil. The first bin was divided into three sections; one for a wildflower garden, one a butterfly garden and the third will be my teaching garden. In the last week I showed the kids how to make a living mulch and we will see how that turns out next year. The butterfly garden is filled with swan plants which already have monarch caterpillars on them, so we hope there will soon be butterflies all around the school.

The other exciting news is that our shade house was built and has been put to good use. The kids sowed seeds for the PiPS seedling sale and raised them in there. The tamariki also grew native seedlings in the shade house, they have loved nurturing them and checking on their progress.

Making mud pies and growing potatoes, carrots, lettuce, beans, corn and tomatoes has been fun. We also planted some GIANT pumpkins, there will be prize for the biggest one. The last day of Garden Club this year meant pizza and slip-and-slide, which was fun for everyone.

Thank you to Ms Barr for all her support, I couldn’t do this without you. Thank you to Jeremy and Roy for all the work you do for me when I am not there, to Jenny and Karen in the office, and Whaea Melissa, Mrs Harvey and Whaea Debbie for all their support. But the biggest thanks goes to all the tamariki who put their heart and souls into their gardens, coming into the gardens by choice during morning tea and lunchtime, and even some weekends. I appreciate you all, and love how much you enjoy being in the gardens.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. We are looking forward to 2022.

Whaea Clare

Returning After Lockdown II

We made it back into the gardens again, wahoo, but we only had a few weeks left before the holidays, so we made the most of it.

Whaea Clare showed us how we can make our own seed raising mix. The recipe is:

1 part sand

2 parts rehydrated coir fibre

3 parts screened compost (can substitute 1 part for vermicast from the worm farm)

We used this to sow some seeds from last term’s planting.

We also put up one of the new garden beds and the tamariki were so excited to fill in with soil and plant it up.

This month was both Bee Awareness Month (Ms Barr’s favourite) AND Te Wiki o te Reo Māori. So we talked about what we could do in the garden to encourage bees in, and why flowers are so important in the vegetable garden. During Te Wiki o te Reo Māori we used te reo phases in the garden and discussed how the Maramataka (the Māori lunar calendar) works. In Term 1 next year we’re going to try and garden by the Maramataka.

A Very Exciting Gift

Every August the year 8’s leave us to allow the year 7’s their chance in the gardens. This means the year 8’s give up their gardens and pass them on to the year 7’s, which is always little bit hard for them. However usually they give them up to tamariki in their own classes, so this has become almost a rite of passage in some classes which is quite lovely. For Whaea Clare this time of the year means saying goodbye to some tamariki that she has taught since they were at primary school, so there are often a few tears shed. We’re so lucky Ms Barr is there for a cuddle as we all need it.

But back to the gardens. This August was very exciting as Good Neighbour donated three more wicking beds to us – over $1,200 worth of bins! We were so happy as we’d been running out of room. These bins will have many uses, one will be Ms Barr’s kitchen garden and another will be a combined butterfly, wildflower and teaching garden. Thanks so much, Good Neighbour, we really appreciate it!

The new soil was so beautiful that the year 7’s wanted some of it in the existing gardens, so we got busy topping them up with what we had left over. Unfortunately just as we were getting into the swing of things we went back into lockdown and we unable to finish off our work. During lockdown Whaea Clare set everyone weekly activities to do at home, which we did our best to fit in around our other school work.

July at MMI

What a month we have had in the gardens here at MMI.

The results of our pea experiment are in, and we named worm juice as the winner for growing the best pea seedlings. Second came the seaweed juice, and finally the plain water, which started off as the frontrunner but fell behind.

Have a look at our photos below. In the photo on the left you can see the three bags of peas. The bag at the front is the worm juice one – see how the roots are stronger and the leaves are greener than the seedlings in the other bags? In conclusion our recommendation would be to soak seeds in worm juice before planting.

The photo on the right shows a close up of the germinated pea seedling. You can see the whole germination process with the roots coming out of the bottom of the seed, and the stem and the seedling leaves from the top. Isn’t nature amazing! Whaea Clare loves showing the kids this process. They’re always so excited to see the magic happening before their eyes.

We also did some sheet mulching (aka making a new garden bed) this month. We wanted a new strawberry patch so we decided to make a new area of gardens to grow them. We wanted to dig out an old bed but Whaea Clare explained the sheet mulching method was easier and quicker. All you need is cardboard, soil and mulch.

So we laid out the cardboard onto the space we measured, making sure we overlapped it so no weeds could poke through. Then we put soil on top of the cardboard, making sure it was a good thick layer, then covered the soil with mulch. That was it, the new bed was ready for planting. In a space of 20 minutes we had a new strawberry patch!

Mid-Winter in the Garden

It is getting cold in the garden now.

Broccoli, kale, cauliflower and spinach are growing in the gardens at the moment. And peas, which are being eaten and enjoyed by all the passers-by. We’ve loved nurturing the kai and taking some home to share with whānau.

Today we decided to do an experiment. Whaea Clare was talking to us about soaking some types of seeds in water before we plant them. The theory is that this helps break down the outer coating and rehydrates the inside of the seed, meaning you get faster germination and stronger seedlings.

To test this theory we decided to do the ‘pea in the bag’ trick - we soaked some seeds in worm juice, another in seaweed fertiliser and one in water to see whether any of the resulting seedlings grow stronger and bigger than the others.

After a week the water one is working the best, which we found surprising. What will July bring, and how will the experiment go?

A Day in the Garden

At the Intermediate we have around 30 students split between two sessions every Friday. Some weeks there is so much learning going on that Ms Barr and I look at each other at the end of a session and go, “Wow!’. Each student has their own interest and we encourage this. Yes, it’s crazy at times, but each student comes away learning something different, and in a way that resonates with them as an individual.

No experiment is silly. For example:

Kids: “Let‘s plant sunflowers!’

Whaea Clare: “This is a summer flower and we’re coming into winter, it probably won’t grow.”

Well, you can see the result below. We have three of these beauties in our garden right now. Sometimes I am the student.

So for this blog post, I thought I would give you a snapshot of one day’s learning. There is so much that goes on:

Look at all the ladybugs eating the powdery mildew - our milk spray didn’t work but the ladybugs are doing the job.

This is Lucy’s last courgette. It should have finished growing in February/March BUT it’s still going strong!

The Block 1 boys, with help from Jeremy the caretaker, started making compost bins. This led onto both blocks working together to tidy up our three compost piles, and turning them into one big pile. We are going to make a three bay compost bin system.

Also in Block 1 we had cooking to do, some made a salad from bits and pieces from everyone’s gardens. I hadn’t had time for breakfast that morning so a fresh salad was a lovely treat.

Other students brewed up some fertiliser. Everything in the fertiliser is from the garden area. Mulch, leaves, weeds, food scraps, seaweed fertiliser, grass clippings.

In Block 2 we harvested potatoes and baby carrots which was so exciting.You could hear the screams in the next block.

Some seeds were also planted. Look at them now, just a couple of weeks later.

I can’t wait to see what we can achieve in the next month before the term ends.

Whaea Clare.

Planting for the Future

The last Friday of the term saw us plant a new feijoa hedge at school. During the previous week two of our students dug the holes and filled them with worm pee, sheep pellets and compost so that the new plants already had good nutrients waiting in the soil for them.

We talked about how to plant a hedge - using a string line, then lining up the plants along it and making tweaks if they aren’t straight. Whaea Clare showed us how to plant the young trees properly, and how to dip their roots in some seaweed fertiliser before planting to reduce transplant shock. We gave them a big drink of water and then we mulched around them.

At the same time we planted three blueberry bushes.

It will be our responsibility to look after these plants. Over the holidays some of the kids checked on them and Room 9 made signs to hang on the fence to warn people to stay off them. When we got back from the holidays they were all still standing and looking healthy. Soon we’ll give them more seaweed fertiliser and do some companion planting around them.

We talked about how even though the students will have moved on from the Intermediate by the time these plants are ready to fruit, they can still stop in when they’re on their way home from college to snack on them. And maybe they can even bring their kids to harvest feijoas and blueberries one day!

Very Busy in March

We have had a busy month in the gardens. The tamariki have been coming in every day to water the gardens as we still haven’t been able to use the irrigation.

Our seedlings that we planted in February are popping up. We are so excited to see them appearing.

We had a mulch day - mulching the gardens and some of the school grounds. The tamariki were amazed how hot it was in the mulch pile so we tried to cook a potato in there. We had long discussions about WHY it was so hot and decided the heat was forming during the process of breaking down the materials.

We have been harvesting heaps of zucchini, melon, beans, corn and tomatoes and sharing recipes.

We found a lot of peach stones in the worm bins so we have been breaking theses with brick to get to the seed. We are hoping to grow our own peach trees.

We have HEAPS and HEAPS of monarch caterpillars hanging under the wicking beds and among the vegetable plants. We’re checking them every day to make sure they are safe and can’t wait to see them emerge.

Welcome to 2021

Welcome back to 2021. We are hoping for a year where we can get a lot achieved and hopefully COVID won’t get in our way.

We have started the year with our Year 8s. We have around 30 children participating. Our gardens got very messy over the holidays but we were pleased that the corn, sunflowers, zucchini, tomatoes, beans and melons did well.

We also did an experiment with our mulch. One was a living mulch another was pea straw and another was wood chip. The wood chip and living mulch patches survived better over summer (especially as we weren’t allowed the irrigation on).

We have spent time cleaning up our patches and re-planting our beds and getting our winter vegetables seedling started. We are also loving our flowers in the garden which bring in beneficial insects and pollinators.

The Gardens in May After Lockdown

At last we’re back into the gardens, after two months away! While we’ve been away our gardens have become overgrown and messy so there’s lots of tidying up to do. But…today as we were tidying up we found that Mother Nature has been busy making treasures.  Carrots, beetroot, silverbeet, spinach, broccoli and cauliflower to name a few. The most exciting thing was a gourd that Ella and Charlise had forgotten they had planted back in December.  We talked about how they were going to dry it out and what to do with it.  Would they make a bowl with it, or would they use it like Māori traditionally did and as a vessel to carry water and kai? They’re going to let us know how the drying out process goes and, after more research, what they are going to do with it.

We all talked about how soil is a living thing full of micorganisms that we need to feed. We really came to appreciate this after seeing all the work it did over lockdown to produce the wonderful kai we came back to.  The girls had been giving one of the plots a weekly dose of worm juice, and we observed that that particular plot produced a lot of food. Mrs Barr gave us some banana skins (which have potassium and phospherous in them) and egg shells (calcium).  We cut the banana skins up and the crushed the eggshells and put into our gardens. We are going to watch over the term to see if our soil improves.

Our Principal Ms Morrisey came over and grab some broccoli from us as she had forgotten her lunch. In the end she was able to take away carrots, lettuce and even a little tomato.

We also talked how the seasons are changing and that the plants will be growing slower due to less sun during the day. A very busy first day back.