Garden

Gardening Program Update

With Summer behind us, our attention is turning to cool season activities. First Term being the hottest, we mostly enjoyed the summer fruit and vegetables and watered the garden. Now it gets busy with soil preparation and seed & seedling planting.  As there will be lots of soil handling, a reminder that all students need to have a pair of gardening gloves to participate in gardening classes.

Saving our Harvest

We grow our produce organically using homemade compost and fertiliser to ensure every harvest is chemical-free and nutrient-dense. As these natural methods produce such healthy crops, the best way to enjoy them is to eat them freshly picked to get the most vitamins and flavour. Students feasted on sun-ripened tomatoes, crunchy capsicums, and honey-sweet figs, all bursting with the vibrant, natural flavour that only fresh, organic garden produce can offer.

While we are enjoying this season's abundance, we also make sure to save some of the harvest, as well as seeds, for the next season. During our gardening classes, we discussed how to preserve this surplus for winter, with students brainstorming great ideas like freezing, drying, and pickling.

For our produce, we used the following methods:

• Cooking / canning - Tomato. capsicum, beens, onions, garlic and basil 
• Freezing - Veg sauce
• Conserving - fig jam
• Drying - lemon verbena and peppermint teas, popping corn, herbs like thyme and rosemary.

Compost

I'm very excited to report that our first batch of black gold, aka compost, was ready to use. It was healthy, sweet smelling (yes!) and had lots of worms which have done the work over the summer. They turned all the fruit and veg scraps as well as leaves and paper into useful food for our garden. 

Great work to everyone—keep it up with collecting those fruit and veg scraps! As the seasons change, we will also begin using autumn leaves to help build our next batch of compost.

Fresh soil top-up

In Week 4, we’re looking forward to a fresh delivery of garden soil on Wednesday morning. We owe a huge thank you to the PFA for covering most of the cost, their support ensures our garden remains productive and our plants stay healthy and strong.

However, we need your help! To get this soil into our garden beds, we are looking for parent volunteers who can spare some time either before or after school on Wednesday May 13th. If you can help us move the soil and prepare our beds for the next planting, please let us know. 

Vesna Simic

Learning Support Officer