Kitchen Garden

From Simone & Jill

LA5

LA5 are a grade 1-2 class who were in Kitchen Garden for weeks 3 & 4 of term 3. 

Thursday 30 July

 Today we Acknowledged the start of a new East Kulin season, Guling, evidenced by the wattles in bloom here at Richmond West. Outside, edible plants were explored and snails captured for release elsewhere. As we had sufficient adults for the four groups, we were able to focus, in turn, on: exploring the worm farms; fertilising all edibles with either Seasol or worm wee; remediating a garden bed with our vegan compost and removing the pineapple sage to add to the empty compost drum. This year we have worked hard to improve the health of our soil, for example adding calcium in the form of parsnip peel to the worm farms and borage to the compost tumblers and planting green manure crops. Regenerative farming on a very small scale.

After lunch we ground up donated eggshells and built walls around our carrots and beetroots. Afterwards we looked at a range of seeds. The edible ones all came from our garden or home kitchens in 2025 or 2026 and were all correctly identified. The native seeds ranged in size and shape but were generally much larger than the edibles. Students were keen to document what they had seen in the garden in our journal, with many of the class drawing and writing entries.

Friday July 31

Today LA5 made carrot muffins with the carrots they picked yesterday in the garden. They put their best grating skills to the test, grating up the carrots as well as some cheddar cheese. LA5 also picked parsley, oregano, thyme and lemon thyme to go in their muffins. They got very good at pulling the tiny thyme leaves of the stalks in one swoop, and a couple of the students gave Simone tips about how they get parsley leaves off the stalks at home, by pulling the stalks through a colander. 

While the muffins were being prepared, two jars of cream were passed around and everyone took turns to shake, shake, shake them up until the cream turned into butter! Then the butter was spread onto the hot muffins when they came out of the oven. 

Thursday August 6

After Acknowledgements of Country, it was outside to find new prisoners for snail jail and to identify how many beds of warrigal greens we have (2) and to harvest some for tomorrow. Corn, carrots, beetroot and bean seedlings and sunflower, calendula and pumpkin seeds were planted; we will protect the seeds with wire and the seedlings with eggshells. Afterwards, we discussed how corn is pollinated by the wind and removed the husks and the plants. After lunch we discussed the Kulin seasons in more detail and looked at how we actively care for Country in kitchen garden (e.g., by composting, gardening organically and preventing rubbish from entering the storm water drains). Then we crushed eggshells before heading out to build more walls for our seedlings and transplant some of the viola and borage seedlings which have been growing from last year’s seeds. When we came back inside, we washed and prepared the warrigal greens and leeks for tomorrow and checked the heirloom corn husks. Unfortunately, they had not grown as hoped; the slugs’ preference for the red kernels didn’t help.

Friday August 7

Today LA5 made green soup from various greens growing in the garden and served it with cheesy pita toast. Yesterday they picked and washed rainbow chard, silverbeet and warrigal greens. Last week had lots of grating, this week it was all about careful cutting. There were lots of vegetable stems to cut and cook, then some potatoes for creaminess in the soup, then all the big bundle of various leaves were cut and added for the last few minutes of cooking. Then it was all blended up for a nice smooth soup. 

Honing their grating skills from last week, they also grated some parmesan which was sprinkled onto wedges of pita bread & toasted in the oven for crispy pita toasts, perfect for dunking into soup.

Thank you so much to our weekly kitchen helper Maureen K, and to our family helpers Cathy, Rosalie, Vivian & Jaweria who came and gardened and cooked with us. Much appreciated.  

Well done LA5! It was great to have you in Kitchen Garden.

Thank you also to our Year 5 student helpers and to all of the families and staff who have donated 10c containers, eggshells and coffee grinds. 

Please return any Ecobin bags you have at home. A booking has been made for a collection in early September 

Please click through all the photos below to see LA5 in action