Term 1 News
It was a true surprise coming back to the start of Term One after the long summer break. Suzanne Aubert School garden is truly blessed, as it was flourishing with fruit & vegetables even without having a drop of rain for such a long period of time.
On our first day back of Term One, we were mainly just exploring what we could find and what happened over the school holidays. There were ample pumpkins creeping along the ground, lots of tomatoes, a real highlight being the heritage tomatoes which are a dark purple colour, beans, our favourite rainbow carrots, and the star of the show- an outstanding-sized watermelon hiding under all the greenery around it. In Term Four of the previous year, we planted corn and basil, beans as companion plants beside the watermelon, and it seemed to work as they looked after each other.
The tamariki have been picking tomatoes continuously every week, eating them straight off the plant for morning tea, and we also saved lots and put them in the freezer for future cooking, which we did one morning when it was “finally” pouring down with rain. We made spaghetti with homemade pasta sauce the Italian way by chopping up the tomatoes, including the skin, and letting them simmer for quite a while to reduce the acidity. It was great for the tamariki to learn that we whipped up a sauce with just garden produce as the garlic—yes, we have been growing our own garlic—and fresh herbs like basil and thyme also came from our school garden. It was funny, as the teachers passing the kitchen could smell it from the corridor and were wondering what we were cooking!
Soil health is important, and without our garden buddies – worms – our fruit and vegetables wouldn’t work so well. We had a learning session about earth and tiger worms, their anatomy, and preferences for eating. Our worm farm got a top-up with some coffee grounds, newspaper, and vegetable off-cuts, and the worms rewarded us with rich worm tea for our plants.
I’m really impressed with the junior kids, who continuously put in their food waste like apple cores and watermelon skins into the worm farm. The tamariki created a new sign for the worm farm and the staff room, indicating what worms are keen on eating, to reduce food waste unnecessarily going into landfill.
We continued with our creativity and made a few more garden signs for our beds, as sometimes we forget where we planted seeds until they sprout, so the signs are a good reminder. The tamariki had great fun painting some river stones and naming all our herbs individually.
Exploring seeds in the garden was another task, with lots to harvest! Dill, beans, sunflowers, parsley... it’s great for the tamariki to learn where to find the seeds, and it’s impressive that one plant creates so many seeds to plant more plants! There's no need to buy them when we can dry and pack up our own. The kids loved packing them into little envelopes and writing the variety and date on them. We'll keep them for more planting, fundraisers, or giving them away as presents.
LJ from Te Puke Landscape Supplies delivered a generous cubic metre of fresh soil. As we lay our garden beds the organic way, like a “hugelkultur,” over time the organic matter decomposes and drops, so the beds would need a “top-up.” It’s hard work shovelling, filling wheelbarrows over and over, and cleaning up afterward. The tamariki did so well, and I’m proud of their determination to get the job done!
A well-deserved treat and end-of-term fun was baking a feijoa cake. We planted feijoa plants a year ago, and they are still growing, so Nina brought some from her garden. Feijoas are full of vitamin C, and the plants are very low maintenance and, once established, so rewarding! The tamariki have been busy scooping, measuring, stirring (and secretly licking), and we made two outstanding feijoa cakes. Not a crumb was left!
I’m looking forward to our gardening adventures in term two. Happy holidays, tamariki!