Kitchen and Garden & Sustainability News
Food Scrap Friday Total Amount for 2023
The calculated total kg for 2023's Food Scrap Fridays collection, including the last two weeks of December was a whopping 2,482.5kg of food scraps, saved from landfill and instead it was ALL composted in the school garden. The program has grown so much since inception:
301.7kg in 2021
1,316.1kg in 2022
2,482.5kg in 2023!
We are already at 362kg this year thanks to the efforts of our team and community over January. Friday 9th February was one of our biggest mornings ever with 94kg collected!
If this inspires you and you would like to get involved, come on down to Petes Gate on a Friday morning 8.30am til 9am and chat to our fabulous Food Scrap Warriors!
Thank you for all of your suport with this awesome, important program we run
Garden & Kitchen News Wall
We now have a news wall along the wall at the office. We love sharing what our students have been up to so please check it out when you next pop in.
Kitchen
Welcome back to the kitchen Grade 4 and 6!!
What an amazing start to the year with Seasonal Muffins, Red Onion and Feta Parcels, Flat Bread and Broad Bean Dip from our last year's harvest.
Our new Kitchen Garden groups have been created and it was so wonderful to see such great team work happening and new connections being made. We look forwards to what these little chef are going to produce this semester.
Here are our recipes this week:
Please check out our Term 1 Kitchen Garden Timetable if you would like to volunteer in our classes
Garden News
Summer is now in full force and we have had a few hot days now. The garden is growing along nicely and the students are getting stuck into some gardening. Last week our year 4s reconnected with the space and discovered some fabulous produce growing in The Patch.
The insects are busy too. Like others we have an influx of White Cabbage Butterflys (moths others refer to them as). These butterflies are an introduced species from Europe and love brassica crops (cabbage, broccoli, kale etc). The butterflies are actually great pollinators however its their babies that cause all the damage, munching away on our yummy produce. The best way to stop them is to net your crops. Our students have been helping by removing them and our chickens are eating them.
We also have some fabulous insects in the form of labybugs munching on the aphids in our garden. I have noticed there are more than usual this year. This unusual weather has really altered the natural environment and things eco systems are acting a little odd, almost out of balance.
We are in need of some garden helpers please. You dont need to be a gardener you just need to want to help and have a spare hour or half hour to help. The weather has encourged the weeds to grow and also patches of the garden are a little dry where the sprinklers dont quite reach.
Please contact me if you can help in any way!
clancey.mckenzie2@education.vic.gov .au
