Living Legends

Wow, Sophia has become the poster girl for the Living Legends programme. Lots of hard work for her, but look at the results and check out the website. They are planting trees and trying to have apositive impact on the environment in conjunction with enviroschools.

http://www.livinglegends.co.nz/

Love this quote

Why try to explain miracles to your kids when you can just have them plant a garden. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com.

GAthering materials for making compost tea

Compost tea on PhotoPeach

Michael, Sophia, Claudia, Maree and Mrs C went to Riding for the Disabled at Silverstram to collect horse poo for our school compost. We also went to Petione Beach to collect seaweed to make compost tea. On the way back to school we bought two bog drums to put the manure and w=seaweed into to make the compost tea.

"When we plant trees, we plant the seeds of peace and seeds of hope." - (Prof. Wangari Maathai, 2004 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate)

Here is a unicef link that aims to promote food security.  http://thegreatnzedibleschoolgarden.wikispaces.com/Fruit+Bearing+Trees
  It has a section where schools can add their own garden stories to the wiki pages.  Lots of good content for learning about food security.

Look how our garden is growing

It is exciting to see our garden growing. The daffodils are looking great and the peas are starting to climb up the netting.

Sunflowers and Beans

Our seeds have sprouted and a re growing quickly. The sunflowers are growing about 1 cm per day. We are waiting for a visit from our buddy class, Room 9 so we can measure them together.

Here is one of the sunflower seeds which is just starting to sprout. The Niche seeds have sprouted more quickly than the Ecoseeds.

The bean seedlings are looking great as well. They will need to go out into the garden soon.

Sunflowers for summer

Today we joined our buddies, Room 9 and planted sunflower seeds. These are giant sunflowers and we will measure them as they grow.

We filled the containers with Tui seed raising mix and then put the seeds in. We watered them after they were planted. It will take between 5 and 10 days for them to sprout.

Planting around the dental clinic

Here are the palms which we are going to plant around the dental clinic.

We have to climb down the bank and then dig the holes. Mikaela removes a plant from its pot and then plants it.

We have planted 30 palms, a job well done. Time to head back to class.

On Friday we spent the morning with our buddies planting in the garden.

The amazing people at Tui Garden products sent us a carton full of wonderful Zealandia plants.  We have planted lots of them but Mrs. C said it was still too cold to plant the tomatoes so we will put them into bigger pots and plant them in October.

Check out our daffodils

Planting the strawberries

Today we dug over the strawberry bed and added compost.  Next we replanted the strawberries.

Loved this tomato image from Lisa L

Have just bought cherry tomato seeds for us to plant and saw this image.   It is called Love my tomatoes.

What a cool kid's gardening site for schools

Check out this great site for information.  Wouldn't it be cool to have Irene Van Dyk visit Koraunui School.
http://www.coolkidsgrow.com/index.php

Shopping at Mitre 10

On Friday, Mrs C, Sophia, Lee and Claudia went to Mitre 10 in Upper Hutt to collect the garden starter pack from Tui the Tui School Garden competition.

Mitre 10 loves rugby too.

While we were at Mitre 10 we noticed they had all the Rugby World Cup flags over their door. We have made the country flags in class and they are hanging in Room 12. They had the Big Guy, Levi Vaoga holding a rugby ball with lots of All Blacks flags. He could probably hold all three of us at once.

Shopping at Mitre 10

We have collected half of the Garden Starter pack.

The children look for the correct spade.

We  had some fun at Mitre 10.

Planting Seeds with our buddy class. room 9 and Room 12

Today we were lucky to have received a pack of garden goodies from Tui Gardens and Mitre 10.  We made use of the seed raising mix to plant out carrot, rocket and marigold seeds.  The staff at the Mitre 10 garden centre told us that if we plant the marigolds with our veges, they will keep the bugs away from the veges for us.  We hope so!

Planting the Apples and Plums.

Mrs C went through the garden catalogues with us last term.  We decided it would be great to be able to pick apples and plums at school.  We then had to make sure that the trees we chose would pollinate each other.  Mrs C joked that she should bring her bees to school.  Some of us thought that would be a good idea but other children were scared of being stung.  We have made a collage of us planting the trees.

The new fruit trees arrive

As a school community we have decided to plant fruit and nut trees in the school grounds to provide fruit for our tamariki in the future.  Our caretaker, Mr Curtis sprayed the grass areas at the end of Term 2 to allow the new trees a good start in life when they arrived in Term 3.  We are thrilled with the plants we have received from Edible Gardens.  As they are bare rooted trees the children have learned about digging holes big enough to accomodate the roots and allow for growth of the root systems.  We had some exciting discoveries.  While we were digging the holes for our fruit trees, Liam noticed a large worm. There were lots of them and they were huge. Mr. Curtis said they bite but Mrs. C said not to believe that.

Look how big they are compared to Darrin-Rays hand.

Upside down Tomatoes

Here is an idea to try with the children over the summer. There is a seed swap at Great Start in Taita on Saturday 27th of August. Will update the time when I know it. Get your seeds and get some tomatoes or other seeds started at home for a lovely summer crop.

www.facebook.com/pages/Great-Start-Taita/123204021074817

www.basicgardentips.com/

We have been busy in the strawberry garden.

Room 9 and Room 12 weed and divide the strawberries on PhotoPeach

Room 2 and 14 buddy classes

Mrs. Jo and Whaea Luana had their classes in the garden this week digging over the bed and adding compost and blood and bone. They are getting ready to plant their seeds in a couple of weeks.