Spring Achievements

Sown for Life

Seeds Continue to be sown in our school garden 12 months on...

 

This time Last year we started out with a simple vision of creating "an edible impressionist garden that will explode with colour and flavour! By teaming a range of edible flowers that will  self seed and spread throughout our garden over time, with seasonal vegetables rotating through the seasons, and a hope to gradually add more young fruit trees." This year we are closer again to achieving this:

• Flowers and herbs have self seeded throughout the garden
• Assorted herbs, Rhubarb, artichokes, calendula, Statice, lavender and violas have continued to thrive
• An orchard area has been prepared and funds now raised to purchase fruit trees
• A kitchen bench has been installed and resources such as bread boards made/acquired as we work toward establishing our outdoor kitchen
• Composting is being embraced school wide, with our garden providing a source of inspiration for a "Zero Waste" theme this term
• The wider Westport Community enjoys reading about our exploits in the local paper, and we have realised we should host annual open days for more community groups. The Westport New Coasters plan to visit as part of a gardening initiative, and Westport South School are keen for reciprocal garden visits
• Our Garden Warriors have continued to flourish in their garden, acquiring skills and establishing a passion for eating fresh

"Please, what can I take home today for my dinner plate" is the chorus we hear when the bell rings to go back to class ...hearing this at the end of our Garden sessions is what makes all our efforts worth while!

 

Over the next few weeks we look forward to the following:

• Show casing our Garden and produce at the Labour Weekend Market
• Serving our school community Garden Warrior Salads at our twilight orchard planting
• Announcing the winners of our Grow Fresh Eat Fresh Family Garden Challenge
• Planting our growth viewing window
• Designing and implementing our interactive Zen Garden with a kiwi twist, and just maybe the Year 8' swill help with this as a farewell installation...
• Finding a coal range to install (the one our Head Garden Gnome had in mind is only suitable as garden art) as part of our outdoor kitchen
• Serving our fabulous volunteers an Annabel Langbein inspired lunch from her new book #afreerangelife
• Welcoming more Garden Volunteers, keep spreading the word with your golfing ladies Mrs Marsh!

One thing is for certain, we are going to continue enjoying eating and growing in our garden!

 

Thank you Tui for providing opportunities such as this School Challenge, every bag of seed raising mix and packet of seeds has a very far reaching effect...thank you!

 

Westport North School Garden Warriors

Sown for Life!

 

Changing Shed to Propagating Shed

 

Changing Shed to Propagating Shed

 

Last Year when Brian from Tui visited our garden to judge it...he gave us the brilliant idea of converting one of the changing sheds to a propagating shed (Top guy is Brian!)...

 

We used some of our Mitre 10 gift voucher prize to buy some sheets of clear light, repurposed a stainless steel sink  from a classroom renovation and the rest is history...

 

 The weather board partition from the other changing shed (now our utility shed) was removed ...

 ...and placed on top of 4 old school cast iron radiators that had been waiting for just such an uplifting role...

 ...a surplus blackboard went up on the wall for recording seed sowing efforts, more sponsors product was spread around...

 ...worm wine was stored for the market...

 ...and abandoned rock collection was re-homed. Quite an envious propagating shed Garden Warrior's well done building team!

 Another of our re-purposed projects we have on the go at the moment is this growth viewing window...we hope to be able to pull the curtains and see carrots, potatoes and radish growing with worms composting below! The complimentary Resene test pots are going to really enhance it!

 Also scavenged form the classroom renovations were some lengths of rimu that the wonderful builders at TRT Building kindly plained and cut into bread board size for us. Here are a couple of our lovely Garden Gnomes on the sanding production line getting them ready for the Labour Weekend Market while the sun was out!

 

We also have a kid size set of boards for our outdoor kitchen.

 

THANK YOU TRT Builders!

Here is the other changing room partition we took our and the Garden Warriors turned into a "Tasting Table".

 

Garden Looks great Garden Warriors, just need to find that Coal range to add now...we have the kitchen sink!

Making the Most of Monday

 

Being the last week of the Tui School Garden Challenge, we needed to make the most of any sunny lunch break that presented itself!

 

So it was down to the back corner to plant potatoes with mint...

Last year we hemmed our potatoes in with $1 newspaper bundles, a very cost effective retaining system. This year we have moved the still intact newspaper bundles half way back to retain the compost ...a sort of compost rotation where we plant the previous years compost up...

 

The newspaper bundles are highly recommended, they look like they will last several years largely intact (yes we could still read the pages clearly as if they were new), slowly breaking down over time with the help of bugs and moisture. We are definitely going to use them again, only this time ask the newspaper to reserve some bundles for us. It seems they are catching on around town...could be our Family Grow Fresh Garden Competition in competition with our very selves!

 

 This year we are using pea straw bales to hem in our potatoes, as we hope next week to try planting tomatoes and pumpkins straight into the straw bales. We are hoping that the internal warmth of the decomposing bales will really give our tomatoes and pumpkin plants a great head start!

 

Here we are evenly laying out our seed potatoes...donated from the bottom of our Head Garden Gnomes potato bin.

This seed potato looked very "brainy"!

 

 Time to sprinkle around a bit of the sponsors product...

 ...back fill, and wait!

 A small cluster of swan plants to attract the right kind of butterfly to our garden to finish off this corner of our garden.

We have used the bird cage we found at the dump to stop the butterfly from laying eggs on our swan plants before they are BIG enough to support LOTS of VERY Hungary caterpillars!

Picking Flowers continues to be a very popular pass time for our Garden Warriors...

 ...and its actually quite tricky to keep enough flowers growing to satisfy all our cheerful pickers!

 Tea tree is as West Coast as white bait and weka's...perfect for a sweet pea... tee pea!

Nice work Garden Warriors, I'm sure this is going to look "Bloomin" lovely by the end of term!

Last Day of the Tui School Garden Challenge...

 

Hotel for Bugs

 

Today is our last day in our Garden for the Tui School Garden Challenge as a severe weather warning has been issued for our region for the next 4 days...rain & lots of it, even by our West Coast Standards!

 

WE have some pretty special critters living on the West Coast such as wetas...so we thought we should build them some shelter from these unprecedented weather conditions.

 

 WE had a scavenge around and found also sorts of things that might make good bug homes...

 ...what better way to use the archaeological "treasure" we dug up from our orchard area...

 Some of us decided ripped up paper would make a nice home for a slater family...

 ...others carefully selected stones and shells, accessorised with a splash of colour for a designer abode...

 ...holes were drilled for the more solitary dwellers...

...all Garden Warriors were deeply engrossed in designing and furnishing bug abodes. No doubt the bug hotel will continue to have "furnishings" and "treasure" added to it on a weekly basis.

We shall just have to wait and see who moves in now, and how long it takes them to discover our Hotel?

Who thinks we should make some hotel signs & have a competition to name the hotels?
What fun could be had with names like "Dew Drop Inn", "Bed Bug Hostel" & "Weta Bed & Breakie"...keep tuning in to see what signage turns up next week!

While on the subject of critters, our Garden Gnomes installed a critter survey pipe on the fence where we spike the apples for the birds. These apples seem to disappear within 24 hours of being placed here so we are hoping to force any visitors through the orange pipe, where they will leave a copy of their foot prints in the ink! Only problem is I don't think Mr opossum will fit through that pipe?

 

Who is stealing the fruit, whose foot prints are we going to find?

A Living Time Capsule

Today in the Garden we were surprised and delighted to receive a lovely guest...Mr White.

 

A spritely 86 years of age, Mr White had heard about this amazing school garden where there once was a pool, and came down to meet us and see what all the fuss was about!

 As it turns out Mr White is a rather keen gardener himself who has won a LOT of ribbons at the A & P show over the years for his fruit and vegetables. We were all VERY impressed to see that red 1st place ribbons out numbered any other colour 3 to 1!

 One of the reasons Mr White was so keen to meet us all was because over 40 years ago he was one of the first care takers at our school. It was one of his jobs to paint the school pool...before we turned it into a garden!

Like any visitor to our garden we couldn't let Mr White go without offering him some of our produce...

 ...soon he had too much to carry so we tried putting it in his hat...

 ...but the garden offerings and carefully selected gifts just kept coming, so we found a bag...

...but it wasn't long before the bag too, was over flowing with garden goodness and colourful flowers!

Thank you so much Mr White for taking the time to discover our Garden with us, and share your A & P show ribbons and stories. What a very special and unexpected day it turned out to be!

Our Week in the Garden

 It never takes our Garden Warriors long to notice if the Garden Flag is out at lunch time.

School is back and we only have 2 weeks to get the garden in top shape for the BIG Market this Labour weekend...

 Micro greens were sown in egg shells,

Faces next week when we see what sort of hair has sprouted!

Hopefully we can sell these egg heads at our Market!

 Room 6 explored the garden taking note of how we had "up cycled or re-purposed
 things. Our Head Garden Gnome did a deal with Room 6 ...they come up with a design to keep the birds off these strawberries and they could have sole eating rights! There was also mention of an ice cream making session in the last week of term...

 As it so happens Room 12 was also out making the most of the sunshine (it has been in VERY short supply this October!)...and managed to barter a similar strawberry deal with our Head Garden Gnome!

 

 Room 12 were also keen on a tasting session...this is what Rocket tastes like...first you take an exploratory nibble...

 ...you think that's not too bad, then your tongue starts to tingle...

 ...rocket fuel warms you up on a cold spring day!

Brave Rocket nibbling Room 12, filed out of the garden having nibbled on parsley, chives, coriander & silver beet, finished off with a sprig of cool mint!

Small hands clutched small bunches of oregano to take home for pizza!

Button eyes gave sight to our bird seed hedgehog...

 No leaf was left unturned or...un-nibbled!

 Carrots were rinsed and devoured...

 ...and our garden was thoroughly explored and sampled by all!

AND...there is always an opportunity to get involved in something!

 

Windmill wonders

 

 Whitebait Season & Wild Weather...you can't have one with out the other!

 

It was time to embrace our October weather and make windmills!

 Take an ice cream container lid and carefully cut the edge off, then cut in toward the centre from each corner...

 Here in our Garden we like to use power tools...so we drilled a hole in each corner and one in the centre of our lids...

 ..we then drilled a hole through the centres of 2 milk bottle tops...

 We learnt that threading and folding in corners with a nail was tricky business!

 Some felt the need to just practice their hammering...

...hammer your ice cream lid, all weather windmill onto the fence & let the wind do the rest of the work!

Well done Garden Warriors, these have certainly added some colour to our fence posts!