Term 4 Week 9 Potatoes and Garlic!

Today we harvested our garlic! We each took some bulbs home to try in some cooking this summer.

Even though they have been in the ground for half a year, they haven't grown very much bigger! However, they still smelt like garlic. We hope they will taste good too!

Once we had harvested the garlic we had a look to see how many potatoes had grown in our 3 black plastic bags and our one special potato growing pot. 

We were disappointed to discover that NONE had grown in the black bags, even though we followed the instructions of the lady at Bunnings very carefully! 

We were happy to find five nice new potatoes in our special potato growing pot. Miss Raven is going to cook them for us tonight so we can try them tomorrow.

We have had some successes and some failures this year in the Enviro Kids Club vegetable beds. We have all learnt a lot and had fun. 

Miss Raven hopes lots of children will come to the Enviro Kids club in 2018 and keep on learning about helping the environment, sustainability and gardening.

She is planning on coming to visit to see how our fruit trees and gardens are growing next year and says a big THANK-YOU to all the children who have taken part this year.

Term 4 Week 8 Sunflowers, Leeks and peas!

This week we harvested our leeks! Here is our lovely big bundle. Miss Raven washed them and trimmed them and cut off their roots. Then some children took them home.

We were also excited to be able to take our sunflower seedlings home to plant in our own gardens. Hopefully they will grow and flower beautifully in everyone's gardens over the holidays.

Finally we planted our pea seedlings... Here is Liam with them next to our stake tee pee.

Next week is the last week for our Enviro kids club. We are very excited because we are going to harvest our garlic since we won't be at school on the longest day of the year when garlic is traditionally harvested. 

We are also going to see how many potatoes we have managed to grow... 

Term 4 Week 7 Tomato Planting

Today Maddison, Ela, Bella and Rebecca planted the tomato seedlings we grew from seeds into our raised bed. 

Mr Gillions has nailed up a wooden frame for us to put strings on to support them as they grow.

The lovely African daisies Mr Schneider gave us are flowering beautifully at the moment.

Here are the planted seedlings. Great job girls!

We were also really happy to discover that FINALLY one of our capsicum seeds has sprouted... We were beginning to think none of them would! Hopefully some more might sprout soon...

Term 3 Week 6 The basil seeds have already sprouted!

This week at Enviro Kids Club we talked about the word 'sustainability'. Then we watched a clip about recycling. We discussed how recycling helps the planet, the recycling that we do at school, and the recycling that we do at home... We thought of some things we have at home we could recycle that we don't use anymore like clothes and toys.

We were surprised that the teeny tiny basil seeds we planted last week have already sprouted... WOW!

We watered our potato plants and some of us were worried that they are beginning to look like they are dying... but Miss Raven told us that the plants have to wither and die back before our potatoes are ready to harvest!

Finally we went out and watered of our new fruit trees which all seem to be doing well.

 

Next week we are going to plant our tomato seedlings (on the right in the photo below) in one of our raised beds. Our pea seedlings (on the left in the photo below)are getting taller and stronger week by week but they aren't big enough to go into the raised beds yet. 

Term 4 Week 5 Planting Basil Seeds

The first thing we did this week was check on our tomato seedlings which are slowly getting bigger...

Hopefully they will be big enough to transplant into our raised bed by the end of term!

We also checked on our surviving strawberry plants too and were happy to see that one has a flower!

Next, we checked on our pea seedlings which have got 

little pairs of leaves now 

and are getting bigger everyday!

Then we had a look at our sunflower seed containers and we were happy to discover some of them have sprouted too! Here is one that has just broken through the soil.

After that we scattered some basil seeds on top of damp seedling mix in some more recycled newspaper containers. 

Then we put a little bit more seed mix on top. 

We couldn't believe how small the basil seeds were!

Finally we went outside and had a look to see if we could spot any potatoes inside our special potato growing pot... and we spotted two! We wondered how many more there are hiding in the soil, and how many are growing in our other black bags of potatoes....

We also had a look at our carrot seedlings in our raised bed.

 Some of them are growing bigger too.

We would love to eat some of them before Christmas but it looks like we may have to wait and try them in the New Year!

Term 4 Week 4 Planting sunflower seeds and the rest of our Enviro School Action Plan fruit trees

This week in the Enviro Kids club Maddi, Ela, Bella, Isla, Ava, Mia, Kobie, Jayden T, Jayden P, Eva Evonne, Tayla, Sammy, Vivian, Charli, Tasman and Sophie planted sunflower seeds!

They take 7-14 days to sprout, so we will check on them next week...

                                                     

The pea seeds that the Enviro kids club planted last week have already begun to sprout!

                                       

Once we had planted our sunflower seeds we watered our beans and checked on Seaview block's lettuces which are growing nicely.

Here are Jayden T and Eva from Rata (Room 4) next to the nectarine tree they planted this week as part of our Enviro School Action Plan.

In front of the chicken coup we have planted our 5 Enviro School Action plan citrus trees.

Near the gate to Seaview Road we have planted the final four fruit trees from our Enviro School Action plan. 

We are very grateful for the $250 grant we received from Nelson Enviro Schools Action Project Fund, and for the $200 donated by our Reading Recovery teacher Mrs Woolf to buy these trees for future generations of Birchwood School students and their families to enjoy.

We hope you will enjoy growing alongside them at Birchwood School in the coming years.

Term 4 Week 3: Enviro kids planting capsicum and pea seeds

Eli loves to eat sweet juicy capsicum, so he was really keen to help Liam plant our capsicum seeds into seed trays at lunchtime today. 

We had to do some maths first though! 
We had to count how many spaces there were to plant the seeds in. 
Then we had to count how many seeds there were and work out how many to plant in each space. 
Luckily both Eli and Liam are good at maths! 
They worked out there were 24 spaces (2X12) and that we needed to plant two seed in each of them as the packet said it contained approximately 50 seeds (2X24=48). Great work boys!

Counting the seeds and spaces.

Making holes for the seeds with a pencil!

Planting the seeds.

Holly and Amelia planted pea seeds into the recycled news paper seedling containers that Maddison, Indigo, Rebecca and Ela made before school.

They also used pencils to make their 5cm deep holes.

Great job all of you...

Now we are looking forward to watching the seeds sprout and grow inside our seedling house in Room 7. 

We wonder which will sprout first, the capsicum or the peas...

Here are our tomato seedings in our seedling house. 

They will be big enough to go into the garden soon...

Mr Gillions is going to help us put up a wooden frame up on one of our raised beds 

that we can tie string on for the plants to grow up.

Our potatoes keep growing and GROWING and GROWING!!!

Hopefully we might get some nice new potatoes before the end of term.

Our two surviving strawberry plants are slowly growing too.

We might have to wait until next year before we see any strawberries on them!