Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden

The wonderful Christie from the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden has been working with students in years 1 and 2 out in the garden! 

Here are some of the highlights: 

• We staked the pink lady apple tree so it will grow straight and tall
• We built a new netting frame for the raised beds
• We planted lots of different pollinator friendly plants – some with edible flowers. Alyssum, Lobelia, Johnny Jump Ups, Calendula, Nastursium, Gaura and Jonquils (Alyssum, Johnny Jump Ups, calendula and nasturtium all have edible flowers)
• We talked about always asking before eating anything from someone else’s garden, there are lots of look-alikes and sometimes plants have been sprayed with chemicals that could make us sick.
• We planted garlic and went treasure hunting for more potatoes – check out this pink potato snowman we found!
• We inspected the vegetables that we planted last term, some had shiny silver trails and hole in the leaves so we knew there must be some snails and slugs around.
• We tasted some of our beautiful lettuce plants – can’t get fresher than straight from the garden!

I had some great chats especially with Paeton and Polly, they wish to grow passionfruit, kiwi fruit and avocado’s in the garden and it may be possible to construct a strong trellis of hardwood posts concreted into the ground and reo mesh attached to them along the wooden fence to grow the climbers on.

Polly diligently explained to me that its best to grow our own food because some vegetables we buy in the supermarket have been picked a long time ago and sprayed with things to help them look good. Our kids aren’t fools are they!

Some ideas for the coming weeks are – building a scarecrow, making seed spheres of local grassland seeds that can be thrown around the bush garden beds and planting some broad beans and root crops.

We look forward to seeing lots of colour in the beds over the coming months!