Harvesting and Cooking

Term one has been an exciting one particularly for harvesting produce and cooking with it. In week six of term four last year, we planted out kumara tupu. They happily grew over summer and by the time we came back to school in February there was plenty of lush foliage. In week five the kumara was ready to be harvested, Mataatua had the privilege of digging them up and boy were they rewarded! We learnt that kumara need to be dug out carefully as they break easily and won’t store well if broken. Kaimanawa pretended they were archaeologists carefully digging out old fossils!

We weighed all our kumara, the biggest weighed in at a whooping 560 grams! All up we harvested 14.8 kgs. To store the kumara, we wrapped each one individually with newspaper. We will save a few of the biggest to grow tupu (the rooted shoots that grow off the parent kumara) for planting in the garden in term four, and so the cycle will begin again.

Some groups of Kaimanawa had the opportunity to cook with the kumara we grew. We learnt safe knife practices and did our best to cut the kumara into even pieces. All that was needed was a little oil and salt and into a hot oven… before long we got to enjoy kumara chips! So yum! Not a single chip was left uneaten!

This was our first summer with a functioning garden and the reward was cooking with school grown produce! During learning through play Takitimu harvested vegetables and the following day we made a delicious pasta sauce. The sauce was made up of onion, garlic, carrots, zucchini, beetroot and cherry tomatoes. Such a proud moment for Kaimanawa to experience growing and cooking their own food.

Kia mau tonu te mahi!