Almost there

Planning... the garden of your dreams

Almost half way through the term and we are still a week away from setting up the landscaping to get the school garden operational. It's exciting to think that in two weeks we will have completely transformed a relatively barren area into a productive food garden. There seems to be a real interest from parents about the garden, with many saying they will be there for the landscaping busy bee. It should be a great atmosphere, with good coffee, cake and even a bbq to keep the workers feed and watered!

We haven't been idle though while we wait for the big push. Students have been doing their own garden designs. They have looked at the site and created designs with consideration of the buildings and land. It has been great to see some of the ideas come out and has led to some discussions on pretty advanced areas like crop rotation, aquaponic systems and soil composition. 

We have also carried out sessions where the students created there own 'paper pot', filled it with soil mixture and planted a pea or broad bean. We hope that these will germinate in time to plant into the garden in two weeks. Since we made about 180 over two days, there should be plenty to use!

The paper pots are really simple to make, use a cheap material which will decompose (paper) and work as really effective pots. Using a rolled up card as the template (about the size of a large toilet paper roll), you simply roll a 15cm wide strip of newspaper around it, making sure there is an overhang on one end. With this overhang you fold it in (this is the base of the pot) and then press down using a round glass jar. Fill with soil and get planting!

Students placing their paper pots into the box, ready for watering.

I was worried that taking so long to get materials and resources together to set up the landscaping day would mean that the kids would lose interest, as each week they would see the same old grass on the garden site. I think we have managed to keep them engaged with some pretty cool hands on science and gardening. Next stop, No Dig Garden methods...