It's turning into summer

As the weather warms, we are getting some hints of the summer season ahead.  School gardens have been preparing and planting out the essentials.

We have a fair bit of thanks to give out.  Over the last month many generous souls have donated their time and seedlings to the Kids Growing programme.

A big thank you to Burnadette from Otematata who donated many tomato plants.  Kat Mac from Kowhai BnB in Duntroon who donated strawberry plants and goji and raspberry plants. St Vincent de Paul donated a big beautiful blue teapot for the communtiy gardens so we can make herb teas to enjoy.

Project Oamaru have donated a cast iron pan for us to cook in the school gardens. Think vege and herb omelets and berry pancakes!

Hi flo plumbling has lent us there wonderful hot windowsill on Thames Street.  Here the Kids Growing programme has been able to start tomatoes for the School Gardens. 

Also Topflite seed company have generously donated a big bag of sunflower seeds that have made there was into many school gardens, pockets and plots at home.

So a very big thank you to the generosity of our community members and businesses that have donated to the Kids Growing Project.

In Kids Growing news.  Duntroon School Garden Club students have been making seed containers so seeds are dry and safe from mice in the shed.

 Students enjoyed going home with a selection of seeds and the latest kids gardening magazine

 Students have been enjoying taste testing the purple broccoli

St Joseph's School Garden Club Co-ordinator is Suzie.  She brought her wee pup Lou Lou to help out.  Here is a wee video of  Lou lou staring at St Josephs school

This week students also got planting the Topflite sunflower seeds infront of the staff room.

Weeding was completed

 Courgettes and tomato plants from Hiflo's windowsill were planted

Pembroke School Garden is looking good, especially the salad bar

At the end of Garden Club we have been making salad wraps with mint, kale and chives rolled in a leaf of lettuce

Students also chopped in the green manure crop to give nitrogen back to the soil for the tomatoes. Jade the co-ordinator of Pebroke School Garden helps students

Pembroke Garden Club about to plant the hiflo tomatoes.

Thanks Hiflo for your sunny windowsill!

Fenwick School are enjoying their pallet wall garden.  The strawberries are blooming. Ruby gives them a good water

 We are so pleased to have parent help Mel come on board to help out.  Here she helps students plant out

 Great to have Lucianne, extreem weeder, tackling the biggest weeds in the garden this week, doing an amazing job.

Weeding and planting out!

We encourage students and their families to come to the Community Gardens in Chelmer street on Fridays 5-7pm over summer, to partake in Pizza Friday's. W

e light the wood fired pizza oven and for $5 for adults or $2 per child they can enjoy a pizza, fun, music and games in the garden.

We also have some fun parties coming up as part of the Heritage Celebrations, be sure to come along.

Warm Weather and a new moon mean GET PLANTING

With the wild winds in the holidays behind us and tales of the damage done, children got stuck into their gardens today, planting planting planting!
Seedlings were raised in the Waitaki Community Gardens glasshouse and with this new moon today the time was perfect to planting them out.
Some moon info: 'At the new moon, the lunar gravity pulls water up, and causes the seeds to swell and burst. This factor, coupled with the increasing moonlight creates balanced root and leaf growth. This is the best time for planting above ground annual crops that produce their seeds outside the fruit. Examples are lettuce, spinach, celery, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, and grain crops. Cucumbers like this phase also, even though they are an exception to that rule'

.Duntroon School had a lot of seedlings to choose from, parent helpers Page and Megan got to preparing the soil

 Mrs Janet Brown helped dig the healthy soil and students planted some cabbages

 It was such a beautiful day today.  Lots of weeding and planting got done

 Planting lettuces

 All of Duntroon Schools native trees and fruit orchard got a good watering too.

Grace watering the feijoa that the students bought with money they made on their pumpkin soup stall recently.  Nice skills.

 Watering the kowhai trees

Waitaki Valley School in Kurow planted out a huge salad bar.  They were encouraged to come and add lettuce to their sandwiches from the school garden.

 Lettuce, mizuna (aka Japanese mustard, aka spider mustard), red lettuce, chives, rocket all filling up the salad bar

 Salad bar ready to grow

 The late harvest garlic is growing really well

 Andrew gave the garlic a good water

 A whole bed of broccoli was planted out and watered in

 The garden looks lovely with a boarder of tulips and irises.

 There is a physical challenge for Waitaki Valley school, a) to assemble their new glasshouse and b) to secure it firmly to something so it can withstand the mighty Waitaki Nor Westers :)

Spring in full swing

Spring is here as we are enjoying some beautiful days, frosty starts and spring flowers.  The gardens are getting planted out with seedlings and seeds.  Duntroon School is still buzzing from it's great Bee Aware day and this week Garden Club Kids made Buzzy Bee's with the help from one of the Duntroon School Garden Co-ordinators, Janet Brown.
                     The bee bodies are made by twisting the pipe cleaners around your finger.

The students buzzed off to the flowers to test their bee pollinating powers on the school fruit trees

Bees like daffodills too

Equipt with wings the bees could sting too!!

 Aren't they cute bee's.  Nice work Janet Brown and students

Teams also got weeding

                              GREAT to see more parent help come to have fun in the garden :)

Teams got planting.  Here is Mischa and Sophia

Of special mention is the feijoa shrub that Duntoon School have proudly bought with their proceeds they made from their soup day last week.  

Here they get planting with Duntroon other School Garden Co-ordinator Mischa Clouston

                              And it got watered.  What a neat way to spend their soup money

Duntroon School have a shed and Mischa has designed these neat hooks and trays for the students to have good access to the tools and it looks so cool and tidy.

  Great ideas for others schools

Waitaki Valley School Garden Club students had Ella McKelvey parent help bring along some raspberry cuttings that the students planted out

                                                              Katie dug a good hole

Katy did a goo job watering

Students got to pot up some currant cuttings to take home.  Katy Tyrrell suggested the berries are delicious on pancakes! Thanks for the tip.

This week students weeded the garlic patch and dug in some of the green manure plants we planted

 The late harvest garlic should be read to harvest and plait up when the students return from their summer holidays.  It is looking good.

Students dug over a new garden bed and planted sunflower seeds

 Students also potted up some paper pockets with a few sunflower or collard seeds to take home

Fenwick school have been busy in their lovely garden, weeding the garlic.

 Digging in the left over cauliflower leaves

 They have some exciting news, that their hanging garden is now up and ready for planting!!
Made wtih the help of Hoete, a grandparent help, it looks AMAZING.  Complete with carpet lined growing shelves the children enjoyed planting strawberry plants. YUM

 And also in great news, a new parent help in the Fenwick School Garden! Welcome Alice

                                        Sorting out the strawberry plants and weeding

 It is always fun for the students to be able to take home plants, seeds, seedlings.  Last week they got to take home whole silverbeet plants

Something nice we have started at Fenwick School is 'Mindfulness in the Garden' at the start of every gardening club we have a sit down around the herb tyres and go through a mindfulness exercise.  The children have responded well.  It is nice to have a calm start to all the gardening activity and for students to draw their attention to the peace and sounds in the garden.

At St Joseph's School there has been some awesome parent help.  Louise McDougall continues to inspire the students with her creative ideas.  Nice work Louise. 

 Whilst removing the parsley that was bolting the team found a few tasty carrots that EVERYONE was keen to try.

Another great thing for the School Garden's is when grandparents visit and impart their wisdom.  Here Grandfather Morris visits and plants potatoes with the students.

We had some left over bird feeder mix that we placed into the trees for the birds to find

                                          Lots of weeding was done, pulling out the last of the kale

 Some mizuna seedlings were raised that the Waitaki Community Gardens glasshouse.  Students got to plant out the seedlings.

Having fun in the process and getting hands a bit dirty. 

And last but not least Pembroke School have been having fun in their lovely garden.  More and more student's seem to come each week.  So a call out to more parent and grandparent help!

Here our only parent help Jade gets planting with the keen gardeners

 Students LOVE taking trays and pockets home to get their home gardens going.  It's great to see

Student's getting paper pockets to fill with flower or sunflower seeds 

                                                   Putting seeds their paper pockets

                                    Grace is a keen gardener and is watering the strawberry patch!

                       Eating, and harvesting and weeding the broccoli patch that has gone to seed

 It is great when pre-schoolers come along to Garden Club with their parents.  They get to hang out with the big kids and in this case plant some sunflower seeds along the way :)

 Time for School holidays.  Try and visit your local school garden or offer to help out on Garden Club day next term. Get planting.  Sunflower seeds take 100 days to mature so now is a good time :)