Worm Farms Underway and Future Kowhai Forest Sown!

Yahhh! We have finally achieved one of our goals set last year and with the help of Rose, Grant, Errol (and Carlin the Seeing-Eye-Dog) from Bunnings, we have our worm farm, and another one, all set up and in place.

On the Wednesday afternoon, before the snow, Rose and her team, taught the Green Team leaders how to put together the layers of a worm farm, using coconut fibre, then the worms, and then the damp shredded newspaper. Grant demonstrated the layering process, while Errol explained the purpose of each step.
On the Friday we added the first small handful of food scraps.
The children learnt that some scraps such as orange peels, bread, meat and dairy can not be added. Some foods take a long time to break down and may start to mould off and smell bad! (We don’t want that as both farms are wintering in a work room!!!!)

Bunnings very kindly donated a worm farm box, two bags of worms, and some coconut fibre to get us started.
So its all go!!!
The next project was the sowing of kowhai seeds! The children filled yoghurt pottles with seed raising mix and planted their seed. The pottles will sit in their classrooms and should germinate in the next few weeks. We will then have a lovely kowhai forest to plant out next year, once the plants are big enough!! That mass of yellow is going to look fantastic!

Thank you again to Bunnings for donating the seeds and mix to get this started, and for allowing Rose, Grant and Errol to spend the time with us. We really appreciate the wonderful contribution you are making to our school environment, and our sustainability goals.

Peastraw Frenzy!

OK this must be a world record!!!
At the end of last term, 10 children and 4 adults took one hour to spread 5 cubic metres of compost/soil mix and spread 50 bales of peastraw. Phew!! Incredible!! There will have been some tired children (and teacher aides) that night. Very keen Green Team!!!
Thank you to Graeme Woods and Vic Philips, (our new caretaker), for all their hard work and for getting the soil spreading underway before the children came out. It was a great team effort.

Our native area is all ready for planting out this term!!

Bunnings to the rescue with Compost

A huge thank you to Bunnings in Riccarton who donated 5 cubic metres of compost/soil mix for our native garden!!

We will be working alongside Rose, Penny and the Bunnings team next term, as they help us finally get our worm farm underway, and help us with the propagation of native seeds. Addington is on their “Schools for Sustainability” programme. We are looking forward to working with you!

Thank you again Rose and her team for the wonderful soil mix. This will get our new plants off to a great start!

Walnut Bagging Factory

Yesterday and today Green team members have been busy bagging the walnuts that they collected furiously two months ago! The plan is to bag them all in two kilogram amounts and then sell them this Friday. The team have also made wonderful signs for our stall.

We will also sell a bit of silverbeet and parsley from the garden. Any money made will go towards more plants and seeds for our school gardens.

Cosy Vege Garden

The Green team has been busy cleaning up and tidying up various parts of the school garden.
Yesterday lunch time, the children from the junior classes harvested the last of the potatoes. Leek and potato soup is on the menu for next week. Yummy!
The children also spread compost over the vege beds, making the leeks, silverbeet, cabbage and bok choi cosy for the winter! More peastraw managed to make its way onto the grass, than the garden beds, but was soon raked into the right place!
Broad beans were sown for a delicious spring feast.

The Green team, and Vic Philips, (our new school caretaker) continue to spread leaves and grass clippings over the area for our new native tree zone. Pea straw for this area is still to come.

Native Area Work Begins

Recently the Green team started clearing up along the Brougham St boundary and down the adjacent fence line as they began work on the area to be planted out in natives trees and shrubs over the next few months.

Children were busy raking up the leaves and mown grass to use as mulch for the ground area to be planted. John Moore, a friend of the school and member of the Lions organisation, who has put together our planting plan spent time cutting back some of the existing trees. These were planted 30 years ago and in real need of some attention.

Now that John has marked out the planting area, the Green team will spread more mulch and some of our own compost, and then pea straw over the lot so that we are already to start planting. Very exciting!! Jack Elphick came down to school to visit the Green team and see where his seedlings will be going.

Once the pea straw goes down, and the boundary is marked out with posts shall start the exciting job of planting.

The Christchurch City Council recently granted us $150.00 worth of plants from Trees for Canterbury. We look forward to going there to choose our plants in the next few weeks.

It is all coming together beautifully!!

Seedlings For Native Revamp!

Today Hanna and Sean, Green Team leaders from Room 10, visited with Jack Elphick to look at the plants he has propagated and now offered to the school.

Jack who lives locally has been very active in environmental issues, both in New Zealand and overseas. He has worked in South America and was involved at Muraroa, protesting against nuclear testing in the Pacific. More recently Jack was doing volunteer work for DOC propagating native plants on Mana Island.

Jack, who has been very busy has offered us wineberry, ake ake, cabbage trees and kanuka seedlings for our revamping of the school's native area. The Green team plan to pick these up early next term, and put them into an area near the compost heaps to grow on until we are ready to plant them out. A huge thank you to Jack for his wonderful offer.