Term 4 Harvest Season in the Gardens
We started the term with a huge broad bean harvest. We gathered beans, cooked them up and whizzed them with lemon juice (from our tree) garlic, parmesan, avocado and olive oil. Then we feasted on dip with crackers. For the second harvest, the gardeners brought some home, gave some to Miss Barr for the foods room and took some to the staff room for the teachers to take home.
They were definitely an abundant crop this year!
After an irrigation timer malfunction over the school holidays we’d lost lots of our seedlings in the shadehouse, but replaced the timer and decided we would start again. We sowed lots of sunflowers, popping corn, chillies, pumpkins and companion flowers - snapdragons, poppies and marigolds and later in the term these were planted out.
On a very wet Wednesday I had a lone gardener who helped me to plant 3 citrus trees at the far side of the school field, backing onto the golf course. We dug in barrow loads of compost and fish guts before we planted them and then we let the rain do the rest. Hopefully we will have an abundance of tahitian limes, satsumas and navel oranges in a few years! A great legacy for our gardeners to leave.
The strawberry experiment has been enlightening. The mounded rows topped with wool mulch produced far bigger plants, with bigger, healthier strawberries than the ones simply planted in the garden beds. I know how I’m going to plant my strawberries next year! Seems they enjoy a little worm wee as a fertiliser too, just not right before harvesting!
Our simple compost bay has astounded us all again. With very little attention, it magically transforms all of our green waste and weeds into black gold, ready to top up our gardens again and again without the need to buy more.
Our rainbow carrots proved too tempting for passers by and so, we lost a few. But later in the term, we managed a small harvest. Always a competition to see who pulls the biggest one and can guess what colour it’s going to be!
We now have a leafcutter bee hive in the fenced in garden. There hasn’t been a huge amount of activity yet, but we are hoping they will all hatch and increase the productivity of the garden through their pollination. The swan plants are proving a great attraction too and we are hoping to see more monarchs through the summer.
Overall it’s been a great year in the garden for these guys and I will be sorry to see my super keen year 8 gardeners leave! Here’s hoping they can carry it on in their college years and tag in with Mr Devery at Mount Maunganui College, now that they have all met him.
