Welcome Whaea Maeve

In Term 4 Whaea Maeve started working with Tahatai Kai Growers.  Maeve has a background in teaching, is a keen gardener and loves working on creative projects.  She is excited to be joining the PiPs crew and working with the young gardeners at Tahatai Coast.

This term our new entrant groups are discovering the blossoms in the orchard and learning that they will all turn to fruit.  They enjoy rubbing herbs in their hands and smelling them, and tasting the edible flowers.  They have planted sunflowers in pots to take home and transplant in their own gardens.

The year 6s started the term by creating a worm farm in Mr Greg’s shed.  They have taken on the responsibility for feeding the worms weekly and  hope to get lots of organic fertiliser from them, which will feed our veggie gardens.

In week 3 they also harvested food for their kai growers’ feast.  The menu was garden herb pesto with crackers, rhubarb muffins and kawakawa tea!  These young chefs prepared it all in the hall kitchen, then set the table to sit and eat together.  The tamariki were also very happy to share their tasty treats with their teachers in the staff room.

During lunchtimes the year 4s have built a hugelkultur garden bed, by layering cardboard, branches, coffee grinds, dried leaves, grass clippings and compost, to make the perfect growing spot for kumara.  Another bed was topped up with compost and planted with pumpkins.  Some gardeners harvested spinach to take home and pop in the freezer for their morning smoothies and borage flowers for pretty ice cubes. They each chose and named a passion fruit on our very healthy vine and …and now we just have to wait and see whose passion fruit is the first to ripen!!  

Our year 5s have been testing out some wool mulch mats, to keep those pesky slugs and snails away from our seedlings.  This week they gathered leaves and made kawakawa tea -  some liked it so much that they took leaves home to make more for their families!