Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden
Sonia Nista
Kitchen Specialist
Liz Scott
Garden Specialist
With the holidays upon us and Spring setting in, it’s the perfect time to enjoy some family time in the kitchen or outside in the garden. It’s also a great time to take advantage of the many fruit and veggies still being supplied in abundance, and at great value for money.
Strawberries are still inexpensive, these can be added to yogurt smoothies, cakes, muffins, and lovely fresh fruit salad.
Last weekend I was still able to purchase them at only $1 per punnet and made some yummy strawberry jam for my family.
Avocados are still being sold at the supermarket for a similar price, perfect for a delicious guacamole. Our students made one earlier this year and were pleasantly surprised at how much they enjoyed eating it. During this menu, they also kept the seeds and worked on growing Avocado trees with Liz, in The Patch.
Salad greens, silverbeet, broccoli, and cauliflower all feature in early Spring recipes. Why not try making a cauliflower pizza pie, a silverbeet and potato torte, or broccoli slaw?
Now, more than ever before, food has become much more than just breakfast, lunch, or dinner, it can also be about sharing a memorable moment or spending some quality time with your loved ones. This week I had the pleasure of doing just that with our on-site year 2 students making Lemonade Scones in their specialist class. The on-site senior students were also there to lend a hand. It was lovely to see how proud they were to create something delicious. I can already see I have many budding cooks ready to take part in the SAKG program next year.
Stay safe and happy cooking!
News from the ‘PATCH’
Welcome to ‘Spring’, one of my favourite seasons, days are getting longer and warmer, the blossom is appearing and the birds are chirping.
Connections in the garden with year one!
It was a beautiful sunny day in the patch, Liz was weeding in the garden with the bees buzzing around her. The broad beans were flowering and gently swaying from side to side in the gentle breeze. Aaaggghhh!!!! Aphids! They were all over the broad beans, as she does Liz says “come on ladybugs, come out and do your work, fill those tummies of yours”.
The year one student was reading the book, The very Angry Ladybug by Eric Carle.
When helping one of the students I said "do you know what ladybugs like to eat?" Teo said aphids, I told him we have so many in the garden on our broad beans. I shared my story with the year ones and we walked excitedly up to The Patch to show them the aphids. We gently shook the plant and the aphids fell off into our hands so we could see what they actually looked like.
The next week, I wandered up to the garden to see if the ladybugs had arrived, yes big fat happy ladybugs!! I raced inside to share my news with the year ones and off we went up to The Patch to see the ladybugs.
Edible flowers
There are so many edible flowers, that also can be added to salads, use to decorate biscuits, and look lovely on top of iced cakes.
At school this year for the first time we are growing more to be used in the SAK in salads and for presentation. We continue to grow nasturtium which has a lovely peppery taste.
New to the garden are viola, dianthus, marigold, pansy, and cornflower. Remember flowers from your herbs, broad bean, broccoli, lavender, zucchini, rose petals, peas, strawberries are all edible.
A lovely way to present a cold glass of water is to freeze some flowers in ice blocks.
Pollinating Garden
As we continue to move our vegetable garden into boxes near the Patch Cafe it was decided we needed to build a pollinating bed.
This will help bring the bees to pollinate our growing produce. I have started to prepare this bed for planting and it will be filled with flowering plants, both annual and perennial, to provide a place for the bees to visit all year round.
We have also planted up the vertical wall in the year six Hangout with seedlings to assist with our pollination bee stations.
We were fortunate to be awarded $200 to spend on plants as part of our Woolworths/Landcare grant. We will look to purchase the plants in the coming weeks.
This space will also house some new bug homes, decorated by the students. Watch this space.
We are so fortunate to already have a number of existing bee-friendly plants within our school environment. To name a few we have, Echium, Grevillia, Clivia, Fruit trees, Smokebush, Dietes, African Daisy, Azaelea, Bottlebrush, Roses, Lavender, Gum trees, Lillies sunflowers, and Agapanthus.
Thank you to the Tebb family (Rory 6H) for donating vegetable seedlings (carrots, spinach, tomato, and capsicum). We were fortunate to benefit from the excess they were not able to fit in their patch. Thank you.
One last thing, we discovered who we are sharing our garden with! Sorry about the quality of the photo!!
Please take the time and enjoy your children outdoors in the garden during these holidays.
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