Garden Newsletter Term 2 2021

Hi Everyone, We have had some great Autumn rain and sunshine for our garden. Our plants are growing well, soon we should have some broccoli and cauliflower to enjoy. Room 2 and 4 will be able to harvest their radishes soon and then wait for their baby carrots to finish growing.

Students have already been busy in the

kitchen making the most of our fabulous crop of lemons. Room 7 feasted on very professional looking lemon cheesecakes. This week room 6 is baking lemon cake with lemon juice glaze and no-bake lemon cheesecake. Rooms 5 and 9 made smashed egg and lettuce sandwiches to use their delicious lettuces. Toa even made a sandwich for Mr Brock!

Next week room 3 will also be whipping up some delicious lemon cheesecake. Last year we planted some strawberry popcorn, it was very slow growing! Over the holidays we dried out the kernels and rooms 9 and 6 have tried popping them. They popped into snowy white popcorn and were very tasty, the children are keen to grow some more. 

 The children have been very industrious in the garden, painting the old gnomes and freshening up their garden signs. Don’t they look great!

Our garden projects are coming together, the water tanks are now fully installed and ready to go. We have locks on the tap to make sure our water is safe until we’re ready to use it. The tank also has a gauge to show us how much water it is holding. When we use the water we will attach a flow meter to the tap so that we can track our water usage. Tony Winter has continued to help us with these new installations, thanks Tony.

Our new Hungry Bins for the worms are now in place. These bins should make more worm juice for us to use in the garden and also allow more of our food scraps to be composted. Brendon did a great job of fitting them into our shadehouse.

Our Leafcutter Bee home has finally arrived, we will find a spot for it in room 4’s garden. In the Spring we will receive 150 pre-incubated cocoons to place in it, we can watch them hatch out. Leafcutter and solitary bees are safe around children and pets, and provide a wonderful opportunity to visually learn about the lifecycle of bees and observe pollination in action. Leafcutter Bees are very effective pollinators they will pollinate plants, fruit trees and veges within a radius of up to 800 metres. Moanataiari School is the very lucky recipient of a Countdown grant to help rejuvenate our native garden. Thanks Julie for all the work you put into securing this grant.

Room 7 is going to lead this project, it will include planting new trees and flaxes, putting in bird nesting boxes, birdfeeders, a bird bath and seating for the bird watchers. We are planning to plant the new trees to mark Arbor Day this June. Any ideas or help with this project are very welcome. So much to look forward to in the coming term! See you all in the garden, Claire