Posted by Mrs Ferguson | Posted in Term 2 2011 | Posted on June 28, 2011
This last week in the Kitchen-Garden has been a little different! It’s planning week at Berwick Fields, so the usual grades haven’t been visiting the garden. Instead we’ve had 1/2K and 5/6G working together on some fun activities!
Today the 5/6 children buddied-up with a 1/2 student and gave them a “smelly tour” of the garden – showing their buddies lots of different plants that smell nice (and sometimes not-so-nice!)
Then the buddies worked together to make their own perfume!
The students also made advertisements for their perfume, giving it a name and creating a magazine ad to encourage people to buy it. Which ad attracts you? Leave a comment at the end of this post and let us know!
Which perfume would you choose? on PhotoPeach
The adults in the garden went “shopping” at the end of the lesson, seeing which ad attracted them them most and sniffing the different smells. We each chose a different perfume to wear for the day. The advertising certainly made a difference to our choices!
Ps… I think the Thyme perfume really worked for me – definately looked younger by the afternoon I wonder if anyone else noticed…?
Posted by Mrs Ferguson | Posted in Term 2 2011 | Posted on May 24, 2011
The garden has changed so quickly this week!
It’s been all about CONSTRUCTION! AND PUDDLES!!
After huge rainfall over the weekend lots has grown in the garden, including the puddles! So this week was a bit muddy! Apart from working hard to fill in some big puddles of water and refresh the muddy pathways with fresh gravel…
We have saved some bricks that were removed from the school building to make way for an extension and recycled these by using them as garden edging - which we have been needing for such a long time!
Melissa has also worked with students to completely transform our herb garden area – creating new paths, new edging and even the beginnings of a pond with a bridge over it. This section of the garden is looking amazing!
We have built a few new garden beds using recycled materals and have planted these out with brocolli, cauliflower, spinach, leeks,onions and kale. As you can probably see in the photos, this is our trouble spot in the garden, where we are still trying to develop garden beds (on what is very hard clay soil) and really utilise the space properly. Our garden is really big now and beginning to take quite a lot of work to maintain!… We’ll get there
We have also done lots of measuring and constructing work to plan out and prepare a long bed for a forest of snowpeas and broadbeans. A fabulous group of 5/6 boys were doing some great problem solving as they were trying to figure out how to best keep tension in the strings they had tied to hold up our broadbeans and for our snowpeas to grow on. They have done lots of sawing and tying – and have made some unique and useful garden edging which also serves to keep tension in their string – very clever!!!
During our work we also found what we thought was quite a huge worm – 13cm long and 1cm fat!
It’s been a really great week in the garden, with lots being achieved and lots of physical work to keep us warm out there! Well done Berwick Fielders!
Posted by Mrs Ferguson | Posted in Term 2 2011 | Posted on May 5, 2011
After a long Easter break, it’s time to get back into the garden for term 2! The garden did amazingly well over the holidays!
Many of our seedlings have taken off, self-seeded corriander has begun sprouting around the herb garden area and our banana-passionfruit has begun to flower.
This week we harvested the purple sweet potatoes and loads of beautiful chillis which have been hung to dry so that we can store them for the future – don’t they look fabulous hanging up!?
Our very own radishes!
We also harvested some really special radishes! So special because they are the result of our first seed-saving attempt last year. We resisted eating our biggest and most beautiful radish of 2010 – instead opting to let it flower and go to seed. There were thousands and thousands of radish seeds saved from that one big radish and towards the end of last term we planted some of them. After a good mix of rain and sunshine over the holidays, the radishes were ready to eat! They were also DELICIOUS!!! Such juicy radishes! Radishes are a really fast crop to grow – they only take around six weeks from seed to tummy!
New blinds
This week we also used our new blinds on the outdoor classroom which were installed late last term. These have given us a welcome bit of shelter when it’s windy or raining out in the garden.
BUT Our main work in the garden this week was focused on our mums! Students were busy making Mother’s Day gifts using the herbs they have grown.
Bathsalts for Mum
At the end oflast term students collected herbs from the garden and hung them to dry in the seed-saving shed. The dried herbs smell fantastic! This week we used these dried herbs to make some gorgeous smelling bath salts for our mums.
We had some great discussions about the uses of herbs and how many people use herbs to assist with health (and yummyness!) The herbs we used this week were rosemary, chamomile, thyme, lavender, mint, and lemon verbena. Many very thoughtful students chose their herbs based on what they thought their mum might benefit from – such as chamomile to help Mum to relax, or lemon verbena to help her feel energised.
Bathsalts are really easy to make and you can get most of the ingredients from your local supermarket. They make a really special gift. This is the recipe we followed but there are many variations.
Basic Bath Salts Recipe equal parts Epsom Salts and seasalt
Dried herbs or essential oils of your choice to fragrance.
I wonder if anyone else noticed…?
We have also done lots of measuring and constructing work to plan out and prepare a long bed for a forest of snowpeas and broadbeans. A fabulous group of 5/6 boys were doing some great problem solving as they were trying to figure out how to best keep tension in the strings they had tied to hold up our broadbeans and for our snowpeas to grow on. They have done lots of sawing and tying – and have made some unique and useful garden edging which also serves to keep tension in their string – very clever!!!
