Kumara weighing

Kitchen Garden

Our Kitchen garden is alive and kicking. We are lucky to have Jennie coming in each week to to do gardening with our enviro agents.

Look what was harvested today!!

1. 

   Delicious!!!!

Update: How is the kitchen garden growing?

Update: Hamilton East School has had a really busy year with an Operetta and a visit from ERO. However in between all the busyness we have been gradually working on our lovely kitchen garden area: planting, weeding, upgrading, building and much more.

Here are some photos of how the garden is looking. We are very proud of the development and send a big thank you to all the students, teachers and volunteers who have put in the hardwork.

We have new gates at each end of the garden...come on in...

 

The plants are growing well!

                      

Our fantastic new green house and some plants growing already.

 Trees and plants down the sides of the garden looking good.

 The tyre planters being well used.The start of the passion fruit vine!



 Our new seating so we can all enjoy this space.

What a fantastic looking space, we are very proud!

Composting

At Hamilton East School we use a composting system to make sure all our food scraps can be turned into compost and used to help grow more food. The enviro agents take it in turns to be on compost bin duty.  Their job is to collect the food scraps from the compost bin outside each classroom and bring it to our compost bins in the kitchen garden.

                 


They bring the scraps to these bins and put it in the correct bins. When the compost bin is full we put the label that says 'resting'. This means the compost is full and is becoming usable compost.

 

Here is one of our enviro agents being interviewed about her role as a compost monitor.

Look how our gardens grow!!!

Our gardens are beginning to look very healthy. Look at the planters by Room 1!!!

Greenhouse

This is the Greenhouse that was gifted to the school by the WISE group.

It has been incorporated into the improved area between the Old Dental Clinic and the Hall.

We hope to grow early tomatoes this spring.

We have installed a watering system to irrigate the Greenhouse.

Planting out the seedlings

Here are the students in Room 2 and their big buddies from Room 12 planting out the 'Little Garden' seedlings in the round planters by Rainbow Playground

Kitchen Garden

Development of the Kitchen Garden. 

Hamilton East has a wonderful space behind the hall that we use as a kitchen garden. We grow produce, have some fruit trees and have a composting area. 

Parts of the garden are working well but we have a whole area that is not being used and is looking messy. We would like to create an area that students can sit in as well as do gardening in. Ms Jones has an exciting vision for this part of the kitchen garden: we can build a wall that students can sit on and sketch parts of the garden.

Looking down towards the entrance to the hall

Here are some photos of what the area looks like now 

The end of the garden by the old dental clinic

By the entrance to the hall

 This is Ms Jones' vision created on photoshop.

Students can sit on the seat and the wall creates a planting area above

Ms Jones applied for funding and we were able to build this fantastic wall!!

Here are some photos of the process of  building the wall.

Looking good!

Now whole classes can come down and enjoy the garden and learn about growing plants and sustainability.

So with the goal of achieving Green-gold status as an enviro school, what is on the agenda this year?

Here is a list of areas we want to work on this year, there will be more to come so please keep reading and make suggestions if you have any!

Kitchen garden

Develop our kitchen garden and develop an area that can be used for whole classes to come down and sit in. At the moment it is hard for a whole class to come down to the gardens and know what to do. We would like classes to be able to come down and sketch as well as do some planting. We also want to get the gardens a bit more organised and have a lot of usable produce.
 

Fruit trees

Create an area to start planting a small orchard of fruit trees on Putikitiki.

Rubbish

We are not happy at the amount of rubbish around the school, we are thinking about ways to reduce rubbish and encourage students to bring in less pre packaged food, as this is often much less healthy.
 

Nature Trail

Can we get the nature trail ready to be used by students?

Composting

Continue and improve our composting system – work on educating students about what can be put in the compost and what cannot!

 

Potted chives - Room 1

Potted Chives

We had little seeds,

And put them in a pot.

We put them in the sunshine,

And watered them a lot.

We waited and we waited.

Watched them grow and grow.

And then one day little shoots

Came out to say hello.

See the original blog post here.

Finding feijoa's by Room 4

FINDING FEIJOAS!

Our gorgeous garden is filled with delicious feijoas at the moment, so we took a trip down to collect some. They are on our windowsill while they finish ripening. We can't wait to eat them!

Harvest Festival - Room 9

Room 9 made crispy potato chips with yummy kiwi dip.

Most of the food prepared and eaten was taken from the school garden.

All of the food was prepared by the kids in the school.

It was fun to try new things and enjoy the yummy food.