Kitchen Garden

Kitchen Garden Update

Spring is here and so is the wonderful blossoming world all around us. It is not often that we have the opportunity to just pause and take in the beauty that the change in our seasons brings. Our Kitchen Garden sessions provide our students with such opportunities. Our outdoor space provides a world of activity and engagement during all phases of the year, even when it is raining and cold. It is an area where we can all come together and appreciate how quickly the beauty that surrounds us changes. 

As the great Stephen Hawking says, “Remember to look up and not down at your feet, be curious,” and last term, our Year 5/6 students had that opportunity to enact this theory while our wattle trees were in full bloom. Using the fluffy, yellow wattle flowers, we all learnt the ancient Japanese technique of printmaking called Hapa Zome. This involved pounding the wattle flowers on fabric, obtaining the vibrant natural colour to create unique artworks. These printed fabrics will be ironed, which will seal the colour permanently. We hope to use these to create a very special bunting dedicated to our senior class of 2025. Thank you to our special guest helpers Romelo, Anna and Miranda.

Last term we also said goodbye to our baby chickens who actually grew up to be beautiful roosters! Our Environment Captains did a brilliant job of nurturing and taking care of them with unconditional love during their time with us. This was a huge effort for all involved and many life skills were learnt during the process. Thanks to Christine Martinelli, our roosters have now been re-homed, to a farm in Mt Evelyn where they will have plenty of room to be truly happy. 

Term 4 will be busier than ever! We will begin with our Foundation students revisiting the garden and our kitchen, to cook up another scrumptious recipe. Our Year 1/2 students will plant out their tomato and eggplant seedlings, and our Year 5/6 students will endeavour to grow a very special variety of corn, called ‘glass gem’. This variety is an heirloom flint corn, known for its multi-coloured, translucent kernels, each one with a unique colour. These special seeds were provided by Marsden in Year 5, who presented them to me back in Term 1 for use in our garden. Lawrence in Year 5 also donated watermelon seeds, after eating a specific delicious and sweet variety he thought would be great for our program. It is now the perfect time to plant both of these seed varieties. 

For this purpose, we plan to create a new garden patch where these plants will enjoy plenty of room and sunshine. After some research, we have decided to follow ‘the three sisters’ guide to planting, which involves companion plants supporting one-another in various ways. In this case, this will involve planting the corn seedlings in a block, with beans underneath to be supported by the corn, and finally planting pumpkin plants surrounding the corn, with the prolific leaves providing shade to the soil.  This will be important in summer. Fingers and toes crossed that we have a bounty of produce when we return in Term 1 2026!

Ms Leda Semercioglu

Kitchen Garden Coordinator