Winter activites

Despite the cold weather all out Garden Clubs are still buzzing with activites.  Bird feeders have still been popular.  Children at Waitaki Valley School had fun mixing the bird seed and dripping and placing the mixture into cookie cutters.

Students also got to practice and learn plaiting for the bird feeders

Hearts, angels and pine cones.  Chrissy from the Kurow vet donated some plastic scoops that have been a great mold fro the bird feeders.  Thanks Chrissy.

Also Students at Pembroke School had a turn at plaiting and stringing up the bird feeders

A lovely visit from Carol and Hannah

It is so nice to have mums and their children come to help in the school garden

Even wee pre-schoolers who come along to Garden Club get to be involved and try out some of the tasks

Making seed tape has also been a popular winter activity.  Students at Kurow made some seed tape of leeks and carrot

Pembroke students also made some seed tape

These Students set up this seed tape station with rocks to stop the wind blowing it away

Pembroke school garden is looking good with recent bok choy and garlic plantings and we noticed some bird damage so the children placed this spinning flower to deter the birds from the new seedlings.

The Community Gardens had a wonderful visit from a group of Home Schoolers.  We were so thrilled to hear that every family had a garden at home.  We toured the garden, had games, worked through stations of seed bombs, worm farms and compost.  The afternoon was finished up with delicious pizzas from the dragon wood fired clay pizza oven.
One creative task that we mastered that day was making a paper pocket.  A great easy pocket to make that can be used to share seedlings or seeds.  Here is a step by step recipe to make you own paper pocket.
A standard newspaper sheet can be ripped into thirds.

Take your  piece of paper and fold over a top edge towards you

Flip/turn over your piece of paper

Flod in your first side of your pocket

Fold in your second side of your pocket

Flip /turn over your nearly done pocket, fold in the bottom edges of your pocket to make it easy to slide it into the top edge of your pocket

Slide the folded edge into the top edge of your pocket

Flip/turn over you pocket and lift the top of your initial fold and place the the underneath edge inside it

And there you go

Good luck with giving it a go

Winter Garden activities buzzing along

The gardens around Oamaru Schools are still buzzing with activities. Despite the cold frozen temperatures the sun shines by day and there are plenty of fun jobs to be doing in the garden.
Pembroke School had fun learning to plait up bird feeders.

In garden news from Pembroke.  One student ate a delicious peach and planted the stone.  From that stone grew a tree and in the last year it produced peaches.  What a delicious story!!

St Joseph's School had a great time last week when they planted a speical applet tree.  It was bought with the proceeds from their producing selling after mass each week.  The apple tree is one variety of root stock, another variety grafter on near the base and another variety grafted near the top.  So this apple tree will prdue two different apples on different branches.  How great. The children enjoyed helping plant the tree.

The hole was filled with compost before the tree was placed in it.

A happy bunch of students

 St Joseph's also made some painted stone signs for the garden

Painting both sides of the stone and writing on it with a vivid once it was dry

They look great in place

Fenwick School got busy pricking out some seedlings that have sprouted under a clotch.

Filling containers with come potting mix

And mixing in some dirt/compost from the garden

 They carefully pricked out the seedlings and potted them up.

Hoete  led a digging crew and they dug in a lot of autumn leaves into the garden

Happy diggers

Hoete's gardening tip of the week is to clean, sharpen and oil if necessary all garden tools, to be ready for the spring.

Fenwick School have so much produce still growing and the students LOVE to harvest it and take it home to their families

A healthy abundance of Silver Beet

Go Fenwick

In other exciting 'Kid's Growing' Garden club news.  We are planning a fundraiser fro the end of the year.  Keep you eye out in the near future for tickets to tour our School Gardens.  With fair like stalls, pizza from one schools Pizza oven and produce for sale it will surely be such a fun day out.  We'll let you know when it is so you can book some time for it.

Keep Warm!!!

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 :)