The Final Harvest

Today Melissa and Alex harvested the final batch of vegetables for the year from the school garden. They then distributed the harvest to several of our school families.

The school garden has been a huge success in 2009. The Enviro Club is looking forward to getting back into it in 2010.

Celebrating Our Success

The Enviro Club celebrated their success with the school garden this afternoon with lunch at Lansdowne Nursery. Marilyn showed the group how to make a pie using ingredients from the school garden.

A huge thank you to Marilyn for all of her support this year. We are very lucky to have someone in our community who is so supportive of Lakeview School. Thank you also to Victoria from the Wairarapa DHB for her ideas and support with the school garden. We couldn't have achieved the success that we have had without Marilyn and Victoria. We are looking forward to having both back to help out in 2010.

We will do our best to keep the garden going over the school holidays and look forward to geeting back into it again next year.

The Enviro Club harvested the first load of vegetable produce from the school vegetable garden this afternoon. Vegetables have been given to school families. We hope that those that got them enjoy the fruits of the Enviro Club's work!

A huge thank you to Victoria (from the Wairarapa DHB) and Marilyn (from Lansdowne Nursery) for their input and support in the journey we have had in creating and harvesting the school garden. We couldn't have done it without them!

We also spent time planting our first potato crop. We are looking forward to having the same success with these that we have had with our first vegetable harvest.

Weeding the garden

Today the Enviro club weeded our great looking garden. Mr Poehlor a school reliever, showed us how to do the weeding. The amount of weeds we got was astonishing! There were about 3 bread bags full!

After we had finished weeding at school we went over to see Marilyn at the Lansdowne Nursery.

When we got there Marilyn invited us to see her personal vege garden. After she had shown us her special cucumber patch she gave us some scarlet beans, corn seeds, tomatoes, zucchini and peas. When we got back to school we planted our scarlet beans straight away.

Minor Setbacks

We have been held up for a number of reasons (weather, athletics, etc) over the last two weeks, which has prevented us from panting our potatoes. No matter what happens at school this week, we are going to make sure that our seed potatoes are in the ground!

Picking Potatos

Today the Enviro Club went to High Street Plants to choose potatos to plant in the school garden. We chose Red Rascals, Heathers, Van Rosas, Moe Moe and Maris Anchor.

A big thank you to Victoria from the Wairarapa DHB, and Marie at High Street Plants for helping out with our selections.

We are looking forward to seeing them grow and eating what they grow in to!

Planting the Garden

On Friday afternoon the Enviro Club did the first planting in the school vegetable garden. We are really looking forward to seeing the results of all of our hard work.

Fortunately there has been a lot of rain over the last couple of days. Thanks also to Mrs Singh for coming in to water the strawberry plants over the weekend.

Click here to see more pictures of the kids planting the garden.

Holiday Planting

In the Term 3 holidays the Enviro Club came in to start our garden. First we went to buy some tools from Mitre 10 (Marg, thanks for your help with this). Then Ashleigh got a text that Tanieka was at school so we set off to find her. After a nutritious lunch we wnt by the junior playground and dug lots of holes for the pathways. After that we had to put the wood in for the path, which was really hard work. Luckily Mr Murphy was on hand to help out!

Yummy strawberrys

Yesterday the Enviro Club went back to Lansdowne Nursery for the first time this term. Marilyn gave the school 12 new strawberry plants for use to have a girls vs boys grow off. Mr Nelson brought two bags of potting mix for the strawberry's. We only had ten minutes to plant them. We then sprayed the plants with this fish guts spray to help them grow; it was gross! We then got to spray our own plants that we were taking home.

Mr Hodgkinson came along to help with the planting. We hope he doesn't reach out his window to pick them once they have grown!

Click here to check out the slideshow of the Enviro Club planting strawberries.

pricking the plants

Yesterday afternoon the Enviro club go back to the nursery, Marilyn showed us how to prick our plants that we planted last week. We are put into groups of two and and shared between five containers to put the baby plants in. Zoe and Tanieka, Jack and Theo, Annie and Ashleigh were all pairs while Alex and Aidan worked by them selves. Zoe and Tanieka were the first to finish their tray. Alex on the other hand was going really slow and Tanieka had to help him. when we had finished pricking we went outside to water the plants. After the watering we went and put them in one of the greenhouses. We then went to go check on our other plants and some had just grown throw. Marilyn then told use when we come back from the holidays all the plants we had grown from seedlings would be ready to plant into our garden

Watering the plants

When we go to Enviro club we usually plant seeds. After we plant seeds we have to water them.
Last week Marylin showed us how to use the hose, when you water the plants it MUST be a light sprinkle or else the edges go brown, here's a tip for when they are still in a punnet (you will know when to stop because all the water drips down off the special type of wheelbarrow Paul made. At the end of the day Marylin gave us a plant to choose from. I chose broccoli, lets hope it grows!

Enviro Club goes planting

On Wednesday the 16th the Enviro Club did some planting. We were learning how to plant different types of seedlings from beetroot to beans to lettuce. We also learnt how to plant the seeds that Jack climbed up in the story Jack and the Beanstalk. We also put vermiculite on our seeds to help them grow. We were put into two groups; Alex, Jack and Tanieka did the beans and Annie, Ashleigh and Zoe did some peas.

Landsdowne Nursery

The Enviro Club are now learning to plant a vegetable garden at Lakeview School, but first we have to learn how. Landsdowne Nursery is the perfect place to learn how. Marilyn and Paul are the owners of the nursery. They grow vegetables, flowers and fruit. We also have Victoria who comes with us to help.

At the nursery there are lots of jobs; like sewing the seeds and flattening the soil. We are going to plant our vegetable garden by the junior playground. In our vegetable garden we will have vegetables and flowers.

Some Good News and Some Bad News

Unfortunately our trip down to Martinborough and Featherston didn't take place due to some pretty appalling weather. However, all is not lost. We will be looking to visit Martinborough School early in Term 3 to check out their wonderful garden. Hopefully it will be a source of inspiration for the Enviro Club as we set about creating our own school garden.

Here's the good news; we have received a grant from the Wairarapa District Health Board HeHa Programme to set us on the way on our own school garden journey. We would love you to join us on our school garden journey. You never know, you may end up buying some of our produce from the Wairarapa Farmers Market!

Getting Started

This week we will be going down to Martinborough and Featherston to look at two school gardens. Hopefully we will get a lot of ideas that we can use as we set about creating our own garden. In our next post we will include photos of our visit.

Please take the time to visit our blog to check our progress over the next few months. We look forward to getting comments and feedback from you.