The School Garden Page

Garden thoughts for newsletter

PIPS October is the month students in grade ¾ will be planting out spring vegetables.

Students will explore the principle of “Use and Value Diversity” when planting out vegetables, and then the principle of “Using Edges” in our growing spaces.

• Foodies will enjoy cooking with the current glut of beetroot, lettuce and broadbeans, herbs, peas and lastly potatoes. The menu will include falafels, salads, samosas and vegetable rice balls.
• Green thumbs will continue maintaining the Edible Spaces: learnings will include crop rotation, companion planting, composting, pest management, garden diversity, responding to change and valuing what we have.

Recyclers will actively manage our “waste” stream. Students will work on maintaining the worm farms, compost bins and chicken coop, so that all “waste” is managed on site, supporting our closed loop system.

      Change of Seasons

Poorneet (tadpole) season continues to the end of October in the Wadawurrung calendar, where we notice air temperatures are rising, the ground is still cold

• The pied currawong continues calling
• Wattles are now setting seed
• Some of the fruit trees have set fruit
• Yam daisies are ready for harvest
• Days and nights are of equal length
  • Lots of tadpoles

The Greenhouse The greenhouse is currently full of student projects: PIPS spring vegetables for the garden and seedling stall, the Grade 5 Tomato Project and in the next few weeks The Three Sisters seed sowing will also be in there, as well as the Buddy Sunflower Meadow.

Seedlings not used for student projects are available for sale via the Seedling Stall at $2 each.

Garden Maintenance and Tuesday after school gardening

 The second Saturday of each month at 2pm is allocated to garden maintenance, usually only a 2 hour commitment, or whatever time you can spare to help out. It’s very rewarding and lots of fun to work alongside families, students, teachers and volunteers to keep the school garden at its best. The next date is this Saturday October 12th..  at 2pm. 

After school garden club is Tuesday from 3.15-4.30pm. We share a light afternoon tea, sometimes cook and then it’s on to garden related tasks. This month we will be netting some of the fruit trees, weeding, spreading compost, mulching, dividing seedlings and more.