Home Grown Eat Fresh:Family Garden Challenge

 

 Home Grown Eat Fresh Family Garden Challenge

 

This year our Garden Warriors have launched a "Home Grown Eat Fresh" Family Garden Challenge to their School Community. For $5 each registered Family receives a "Garden Start UP Pack" of seedlings that includes the following:

• 2 flat leaf parsley seedlings
• 2 chive seedlings
• 1 yellow cocktail tomato
• 1 celery seedling
• 1 zucchini seedling
• 4 rainbow silver beet
• 4 different lettuce seedlings

This should provide herbs for flavouring summer salads and frittatas. More than enough zucchini to grate into afore mentioned frittatas and hide in moist chocolate cakes. Silver beet will be able to find its way into curries, feta filo pies, and lasagnes, while the assorted lettuces will make wonderful "imagination salads" for several weeks!

 Our lovely Garden Gnomes were very busy yesterday afternoon bundling up all these wonderful Awapuni Nursery seedlings ready to go out to our Garden Challenge Families'.

 

Unfortunately we couldn't get our own seed sowing efforts to grow quite big enough to have ready to go out ready for the school Holidays...so it was a last minute order from Henri and his Team at Awapuni Nurseries!

 Some of our Tui prize winnings got mixed up and bagged up with instructions ready to go out with the seedling start up packs...

 Fourteen "Garden Start up" packs ready to be delivered, complete with fertilisers & instruction sheet!

That's a take up of our Garden Challenge by almost 10% of our school Families...can't wait until judging time at the end of next month to see how they grow!

 Our School Garden Gomes (parent helpers), were also busy this week organising our Garden Warrior Stand for Wednesday nights "Northern Lights," end of term  Show case. We sold a few more raffle tickets, and took a few more Garden Challenge registrations.

There was no shortage of willing helpers to circulate our pesto and dip... nibbles platter.

Ali once again volunteered his services at front of house, after thorough quality control was first undertaken!

 

This time we also handed out pesto and dip recipe cards in response to overwhelming feed back last term!

Tuesday's Tasting Table

 So just what have our Garden Warrior's been building in the garden this term?

 A Tasting Table!

 

Some of our Garden Warriors have been very busy in the garden wielding power tools, saws and crow bars! They removed a weather board partition from one of the changing sheds and up-cycled it with the addition of some legs...to a table!

 

Add some of our prize winning Tui product, a bit of fertiliser and you have the biggest seed raising, tasting table ever...

 Smooth some Tui Vegetable mix over 3 bags (that's a whopping 75 litres!) of Tui compost mix...

 Mix some blood and bone and vegetable fertiliser into the top layer...

 ...then choose your seeds!

 

We placed apple cucumber seeds in each corner to hang down, peas round the edges for Niagara Pea pod falls, then cress, mustard, radishes, baby spinach, sweet basil, and other tasty nibbly treats in patterns...

Bird netting draped over re-purposed fire surrounds... are a must if we are going to be first with the nibbling rather than the birds!

Hopefully when we get back into the garden next term our tasting table will be a mat of green munchiness!

 

Another good team effort Garden Warriors

August Garden Growth...

 What was happening in our Garden During August Garden Warrior's?

 

I know the weather was unseasonably warm and dryer than usual...

perfect for gardening!

 A large bag of strawberry plants was kindly donated to our Garden Warriors...more than we had room for in our Garden as it transpired!

 Just as well we had all these plant pots to reuse, and a fantastic stash of Tui product on hand...

 ...the strawberry potting and fertilising production line proved very efficient...

 What a tremendous effort team! Over 50 strawberry plants potted up ready to transfer to our orchard area once we have the soil prepared (watch this space).

 It was back into our stash of prize winning Tui products to prepare the "raised quarters" for planting...

 Even Lego Policeman's "quarters" were refreshed ready for some garden companions...

 Now our "raised quarters" were ready to sow...rocket, carrots, beetroot and radish for subterraneous growth!

 In went our lettuce, spinach and celery seedlings that were kindly supplied by Tui and Mitre 10 as part of our Tui School Garden Challenge start up package...THANK YOU!

 A final water before the bell goes...can't wait to see what pops up in a few weeks time!

 Our Tradesman Warriors have also been VERY busy in the Garden this month...I wonder what they have been building???

What ever it is, it certainly requires HEAPS of concentration and muscle power...all will be revealed in good time...keep watching this space!

Druming up support

 Garden Warriors Hit the Streets with their Silver beet feta filo's

This week we hit the streets to drum up support for our school garden, sell a few raffle tickets, and see if we could reel in the local votes. Who could turn down a platter of fresh silver beet feta filo's on a rainy day!

Our Garden Warrior Filo's were so fabulous... that request after request came in for this quick & easy recipe, so here it is below:

Mini Silver beet, feta filo's:

8 sheets of filo pastry
4 eggs
1 packet feta
Steamed silver beet (about 2 loose cups steamed)
Pepper to season
Olive oil for brushing pastry and mini muffin  pans

Makes: 48
Total preparation & cooking time: <40 minutes
Cost: $7.50 ($2 1/2 packet of filo pastry, $1.50 eggs, $4 feta, silver beet from garden free)

 Rinse and finely slice your fresh sliver beet from your garden, lightly steam (or pour boiling water over in a bowl, allow to rest, then drain)

 Whisk eggs with feta in a large bowl, season with pepper (what sort of chook laid this egg?)

 Lightly brush & layer 4 sheets of filo with the olive oil, then cut into 24 small squares. Repeat with the other 4 sheets of filo.

 Press the filo squares into the lightly oiled mini muffin trays.

 Place steamed silver beet into the pastry cases, spoon over egg and feta mixture.

Place in a hot 200 C oven and bake for 10-15 minutes, serve warm!

 

Perfect for brunch while watching the America's Cup, picnics or posh dinner parties, & are yummy in lunch boxes too!

We Need Your Votes!

Please Help...We NEED your VOTE!

Mother Earth Award

 

This week we found out that we had made it through as one of 9 Mother Earth Award finalists. This is a HUGE achievement and fantastic recognition of ALL the effort that has gone into creating our school garden. It is also a wonderful pat on the back for our very small team of parent volunteers who help make it all happen. Over 50% of their volunteer hours go toward trying to fund our garden, this is time they would rather spend in the garden with us!

 

So PLEASE help us get our wonderful Parent Volunteers back into the garden eating and growing with us...by Voting for us on the link below by Monday the 23rd September:

http://www.motherearth.co.nz/reward/peoples-choice/

A HUGE Thank you from EVERY Garden Warrior who turns up every Friday lunch time to eat and grow!

 

This month we have also entered "Lets Cook with PARMCO", with our students cooking up the weekly Challenges alfresco style in their Garden.

Please also spare a minute to vote for Westport North School through the link below by Monday the 23rd September:

 

http://www.letscookwithparmco.co.nz/class-of-2013/Westport-North-School

WE could really use this prize package to set up our outdoor " Garden To Table" classroom.

 

Thank you!

Parmco cook off week 2: Salmon tagatellie

 Today we had salmon tagatellie on the menu.

 We even made our own pasta, with silver beet form our graden.

 While we made our pasta, our salmon was grilling on the gas cooker.

 Here is our pasta after everyone had a go putting it through the pasta maker.
We are going to stir through our Rocket & parsley pesto through it once its cooked...delicious!

 Now we have our pasta and salmon all plated up and ready to eat...

with the rest of our Garden Warriors helpers!

Here is Sophie scoffing our delicious pasta.

 Yummy!!!

All that remains off the pasta!

Posted by Naomi Rm1

Week 1 of the Parmco Cook off! chicken with oragano

 

 This week in the garden we completed our first challange in the Parmco cook off, we cooked chicken with oragano.

 Our school ambassadors Sam and Naomi got to school bright and early to put our chicken on. 

 At lunch time our slow cooked chicken was nearly ready.

 We put our saffron rice on to cook.

 Our chicken was now ready

 So was our steamed silver beet.

 We now washed some silver beet plates to eat off.

 Looking delish!

YUMMY!!!

 

Blogged by Sam Room 2