Winter news from Kids Growing

Winter is upon the Waitaki, with recent snows and winds.  This has not deterred the keen Garden Club kids participating in a variety of actives.  Pictured above are some bird feeders that Waitaki Valley School pupils made. Other wintery activites has been making seed tape and planting garlic.

But the main buzz in the Kids Growing project has been the making of a documentary about Kids Growing and the various active Garden Clubs that the Waitaki Community Garden support.
Joel Dyar is the filmaker who has volunteered to make the documentary.  The children had fun being filmed and some lucky children at St Josephs got to do a bit of filming.

The film is going to be a great resource for the Kids Growing project.

In other news St Josephs have recently received a load of Pukeuri compost to top up their vege plots.  St Joseph's continue to be inspirational selling produce after mass and giving produce to needy families through St Vincent de Paul Social Services.  Great work from Suzie their co-ordinator facilitating that.

Fenwick school have been busy, making a frost cloth tunnel house and de-constructing a pellet to make a hanging garden with Hoete.

Graham doing a great job 

Well done everyone :)

Waitaki Valley School makes a start with the Waitaki Community Gardens

Waitaki Valley School have had a school garden for many years run by teacher Gill Meehan.  It has 5 large raised beds and a great tool shed.  They won a competition and received a large supply of tools for the garden.  This week was my first week to run garden club there and the 10 students really enjoyed it.

The 5 beds were sowed with green manure crops and watered in

Here is Lulu Hayes who won garden kid club of the week in the planting team for her help planting flowers.  Lulu is a pre schooler helping out for the day.  

The beds were watered.

The watering team did a great job

Fenwick School gets a new Grandparent helper, Hoiti

Fenwick School welcomes their new Grandparten helper Hoiti to work alongside Graham for the rest of the year.  We welcome all parent and Grandparent help.  Hoiti has shown us some great skills of cutting the tips of the leaves of new seedling before planting.  I've been trying this out at home too and the seedling seem to burst into life :)

Fenwick also has some new scarecrows who look rather smart and keen to work.

Fenwick have been busy last week planting peas 

Constructing a hanging garden from a pellet

And Graham helped construct a frost cloth tunnel house

It looks great

We loved picking fresh produce to take home

Duntroon re-vamps their worm farm

Duntroon School decided to get their worm farm going again

First Step was to scrunch newspaper and soak it in water

 

Having fun scrunching

Then it was stuffed into the tyres

This is where the worm breed

The new worm farm was set up on a pellet on an angle so that worm juice can be collected from it.  A large scoop of the old worm farm was put into the first tyre so that the worms would have a familiar environment 

 Worms LOVE HORSE POO and we gave them a nice thick layer of it.  In the smaller bucket is a scoop of worms from the Waitaki Community Gardens to give Duntroon Schools worm farm a boot in worm population.  Mrs Brown suggested that these new worms would probably be very community minded :) she is very punny :)

Fenwick's TLC Garden

We planted sunflowers. First, we weeded the area. Then, we put soil in a bucket because it was too hard where we were going to plant sunflowers.

We planted herbs in a class garden bucket.

We worked as a team to weed and water the garden. 

We planted potatoes inside tyres. In the tyres with potatoes already growing, we mounded one with soil and two with straw. We planted potatoes with the sprouts up.

The weeding team picked the weeds and put them in a bucket, then in the compost. It was easy!

Pembroke's TLC Garden

After school holidays, the weeding team weeded all the garden beds and found lots of stinging nettle and chick weed.

The potato planting team used compost and straw to plant potatoes in a tyre because potatoes like the dark.

We tasted some rocket--it was a bit weird and really spicy.

Grace brought magic beans--scarlet runners--from her poppa's house and we planted them by the fence.

The next week, we planted pumpkin seeds, weeded and mulched around the two apple trees, and planted brassicas.

St Joseph's Garden

Every Thursday 2 people from each class at St Joseph's do some gardening in our school garden, we have came a long way from the start and there is more coming.

This week we put some peas in we garden.

We also weeded and watered the plants.