GARDENING

Sustainability Leaders Visit Brickworks Rooftop Garden Burwood

Cultivating Communities

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Rooftop Farm had a Year 6 Sustainability Leaders Group visit today from St Joseph's Primary School Springvale. They did a tour of the glorious farm, then they had experience of crop planting planning - which is no easy task! They then made some paper pots and planted a seasonal seed and then created plant labels on rocks. Finally they ended their session with cooking and created some rice paper rolls using the greens, herbs, edible flowers and carrots from the farm.

Happy Garden Helpers

Carrots from our Vegetable Garden  ready to be used for our Year  6 Graduation Dinner!

GARDEN EDUCATION PROGRAM - YEARS 3 and 4

Every Wednesday this Term the Year 3/4 Students have a Environmental and Sustainabiilty sesson with our Garden Educator Jess. Students work in small groups for a 50 minute period investigating and maintaining the worm farm, the chicken coop, the vegetable garden, and mealworms. 

Parents and Preschoolers are welcome to come in for a visit to see what happens during lessons. The times are listed below.


PARENT HELPERS NEEDED 

Parent helpers allow students to have greater involment with the garden activities. Helpers will need to commit to one or more of these times on a regular basis so that we can show you how to help. Send me an email if you can help at one of the following times:

9.00-10.00am

10.00am-11.00am

11.45am - 12.45pm


If you are interested send an email to alan.brew@sjspringvale.catholic.edu.au

 

Prep Flower Garden

The Prep students recently had a lot of fun digging, planting and watering their flowers for their new garden on Buckingham Avenue. We hope our parents enjoy it too when walking down the street.


Cultivating Community Gardens 

Stephanie Bubnich is our new School Food Garden Educator. Stephanie has been employed to work with classes in our school each Wednesday. Welcome Stephanie to our school community. She will work with the Grade 1/2 classes for the first semester and the Grade 3/4 classes in the second semester. The lessons teach the students about gardening, healthy food, how plants grow, sustainability and much more. The program also enhances students' oral language, communication skills, team work and problem solving skills.

The garden is amazing and the students certainly enjoyed their first lessons this week!

YEAR 3/4  GARDEN PROGRAM Week 5 and 6


1) Learning a bit more about our chickens and their habits: observe their personalities, behaviour and record everything in a journal.


2) Maintenance: watering with worm tea, harvesting, make white cabbage butterflies decoys (we will start planting brassicas in the next few weeks) 


3) As we keep learning about the use of water by plants we can have a look at drying as a food (and seed)  preservation method (sunflower seeds, dried chilli and I might bring a sun dehydrator to sun dry tomatoes).

GARDEN PROGRAM SEMESTER 1 2022 YEAR 3/4

During weeks 1/2, students have learnt the best way to water a garden properly (when and how).

During weeks 3 and 4, they will learn how the water circulate in the plants and how the water is then used.

Activity 1: Celery transpiration experiment with food dye

Activity 2: Vegetable measurements (height and circumference of sunflowers). Learn to make predictions and check your predictions


Activity 3: Garden maintenance and visit to the chickens

The garden is looking magnificent and the chooks are happy and healthy.

National Bird Week (18-24 October 2021)

This week is National Bird Week. Birds are an important part of our ecosystems because they help pollinate plants, disperse seeds, scavenge carcasses and recycle nutrients back into the soil. Studying birds can give us an indication of whether a system is healthy or not. 

Activity:






Activity:


During Bird Week, you also have the opportunity to become a citizen scientist by participating in the Aussie Backyard Bird Count. Your participation will help answer questions professional scientists could not answer on their own. Taking part is easy! Just spend 20 minutes in your favourite outdoor space and record all the birds you see during this period. You can then submit your results, with the help of an adult, here: Aussie Backyard Bird Count 

Thanks for my meal! Make a thank you prayer card or a thank you card.

Make a thank you card to send to the people who help us with food OR make a prayer card and put in a special reflective space at home.


From field to table, we rely on so many different people to grow

and prepare the food we eat each day. Before a meal, how often

do we actually stop to think about how many people helped bring

our food to our plate?


 Watch the video showing the process carrots go through from harvesting to packing

ready for shipping. (698) Western Australian Carrots - from paddock to you - YouTube

 Try to trace back the different people who helped your meal arrive at your table all the

way back to the beginning. For example, if you have carrots for lunch:

1. person who prepares your meal

2. person who buys your food

3. store owner and store workers who put the carrots on display

4. truck driver who delivers carrots to the store

5. farm workers who clean, pack and send the carrots to the store

6. farmer or farm workers who plant, care for and harvest the carrots

7. nursery workers and breeders who sell carrot seeds for planting

 Select one of the people on the list and craft a thank you card for them.

 Deliver your card and spread some joy and gratitude! (Find the right address or email

address with the help of an adult). OR.... Make a thank you  prayer card for one of the people and put it in a special space at home.

yt5s.com-Western Australian Carrots - from paddock to you.mp4

Scrap gardening

Scrap gardening uses the items you'd normally throw in your compost bin to grow a new plant. Here we will learn to grow a new plant from a carrot top. Unfortunately the new plant won’t be able to grow a new carrot but it will look pretty on your windowsill.

You’ll need:

-       A plate

-       Some newspaper

-       A carrot

-       A growing container

-       Potting soil

 

1. Lay the newspaper on the bottom of the plate and soak the newspaper well. There should be no standing water.

2. Cut the top from a grocery store carrot. You’ll need about 2.5 cm of the root.

3. Set your carrot top on the papers, and in a few days, you’ll see the roots spread and new greens appearing on the top in a week or so. Make sure to keep the paper wet.

4. Plant your carrot top in soil in a container and make sure to keep the soil moist.


You can use other root vegetables like beetroots and then eat the leaves as they grow! 

Which Vegetables Can You Re-Grow From Scraps?

Here are some of the common vegetables (and herbs) that you can re-grow from scraps:


Any chunky sections of potato peel or pieces of potato that include an ‘eye’ on them (those small indentations from which the shoots grow) can be replanted to grow new potato plants. 


Lunch at 10 Pomegranate Street

Felicita Sala (This book is available from our School Library)

In each apartment, someone is preparing a special dish to share with their neighbours. Mr Singh is making coconut dahl with his daughter while Maria mashes some avocados for her guacamole. Will everything be ready on time?

Listen to Stephanie Alexander as she reads a few recipes from this delightful picture book.  Mr Brew's favourite recipe is Banana and Blueberry Bread. Ask your parents to help you make one of the three recipes below. Which one did you make? What did you like most about this cooking experience?

Stephanie Alexander reads Lunch at 10 Pomegranate Street.mp4

The sequel to Felicita Sala’s gorgeous Lunch at 10 Pomegranate Street is out later this month. A Year in Fleurville  is a cookbook, a mini guide to gardening, and a picture book rolled into one.

To win one of two copies, thanks to the publisher Scribble, use the email link and write what inspires you most about your community. marcomms@kitchengardenfoundation.org.au 

Salad in a Jar

On Wednesday the 8th September we collected vegetables from our garden to make our delicious salad.

The only bought ingredients were carrots and red capsicums. Enjoy our video.


Salad in a Jar 2.mp4

Salad in a jar - Make this with your children

What is growing in the garden at the moment? There is lettuce, baby spinach, celery, snow peas, mint, kale, cauliflower, broccoli, beetroot, silverbeet and parsley. A very easy way to use the produce from the garden is by making a salad in a jar. You can also add vegetables bought from the store.

1.       Get a big clean jar with a tight sealing lid.

2.       Start by adding your favourite dressing into the jar (for example 2 tbsp of vinegar and 3 tbsp of olive oil).

3.       Get all your ingredients ready: wash, cut and peel all your fruits/vegetables.

4.       Place the ingredients in the jar, starting with the hardest ones like carrots and cucumbers and ending with the softest ones like spinach or lettuce leaves.

Seal the jar with the lid and refrigerate. This can be kept up to 3 days.

When you’re ready to eat, mix the dressing with the ingredients by gently turning your jar upside down or toss your salad in a bowl.

PS: you can add other ingredients to your salad like cooked rice or quinoa, roasted pumpkin, cheese, eggs etc.

Cultivating Community -From our School Educator - Jess



We have a special FREE offer for the pupils in our school to join two school holiday online workshops 


Follow these instructions to apply the code: FREECARROTS


The events are :

Worms Wonderful Worms 

Suitable for children 6 to 12 years we will take a look into the world of worms. What do they get up to when nobody is looking? What is the difference between earthworms and composting worms? And how to make your own in-ground worm farm to promote free-range worms and healthy soil in your garden.


Wednesday, 22 September 2021 from 10:00-11:00AM

Thursday, 30 September 2021 from 1:00-2:00PM


Super Seeds! 

Let's take a look at some seed-saving activities that you can do at home to help make seed sowing, seed saving, and seed distribution fun, creative, and a little different. In this webinar will take a look at making some Seed Tape, Seed packets for seed storage, and Seed Bombs for seed distribution. Simone will show you how to make these seed creations, so come armed with as many of the items listed as you can.


Thursday, 23 September 2021 from 10:00-11:00AM

Wednesday, 29 September 2021 from 1:00-2:00PM


Visit our website to book: https://www.cultivatingcommunity.org.au/shop


Cabbage Butterflies in the Garden 

The cabbage white butterfly is a small white butterfly with black spots which lay its eggs on plants from the cabbage/brassicas family (cabbage, broccoli, kale, cauliflower etc.). When the green caterpillars hatch, they start eating the plant, leaving big holes in the leaves.

Different methods can be used to stop the cabbage white butterflies from laying their eggs on our brassicas. These include:

1-  Covering our brassicas with a net

2-  Growing plants that the cabbage white butterflies hate like lemon balm, sage, rosemary or oregano

3-  Growing plants that will attract the butterflies away from our brassicas, like nasturtiums

4-  Making and placing butterfly decoys (fake butterflies), around our brassicas. Cabbage white butterflies are territorial, which means that they won’t lay their eggs on a plant if another butterfly already lives there.



Activity: Make a butterfly decoy and hang it outside

You will need a black pen and paper, scissors, some tape, a piece of string and a stick

Step 1: Draw and cut out a paper representation of a cabbage white butterfly

Step 2: Cut a string and place it on the sticky side of a piece of tape.


Step 3: Place your cut out butterfly on top of the string on the tape.


Step 4: Add a second piece of tape over the first, making sure all parts of the paper butterfly are covered and sandwiched between the tapes.


Step 5: Tie your decoy to a stick and plant it in your garden.



LET YOUR TEACHER KNOW HOW YOUR DECOY TURNED OUT. SEND  YOUR TEACHER A PHOTO OF YOUR BUTTERFLY DECOY.


Bugs in the garden

 

As the weather is warming up, trees and flowers are not the only ones waking up from their winter sleep; Bugs are hatching or waking up from their winter slumber and they are really hungry and thirsty!

 

Last week at school we found a lot of green aphids on our broad bean plants. Aphids suck on the plant’s sap and can make the plant sick or even die.

Luckily there are a few things we can do to get rid of the aphids.



SPOT THE BUG!  Many bugs use camouflage to hide from predators. Can you find the bugs hidden in these photos?


Find the insect.pdf

What is happening in our local enviroment at this time of the Year? (Wurundjeri Calendar)

You might have noticed a few changes in the weather and the environment lately.

For example the days are getting longer and warmer, even if the nights are still cold. The Silver Wattle, has started to flower, the first of the wattles to do so. The caterpillars of the common brown butterfly feed on grass and at night, male koalas bellow.

In the garden, it is a good time to start growing tomatoes, capsicums and potatoes and make sure that we think about some strategies to protect our broccolis, kale and cabbages from the cabbage white butterflies and caterpillars.

 

Activity:

Have a look in your garden or backyards see how many of these seasonal markers you can find

-          A flowering wattle tree                                             - flowers blooming

-          Magpies swooping                                                      - caterpillars or butterflies

-          Moss or mushrooms sprouting between rocks

Seasons (Wurundjeri Calendar)


April-July Waring (wombat)

Misty mornings and cold, rainy days.

Days are short and nights are long

Wombats seen during the day seeking sunshine.

Moth and fungi by the creek


August Guling (orchid)

Cold weather eases.

Wattle and orchids blooming

Common brown butterfly caterpillars feed at night

Males koalas bellow at night (BBC News Koalas bellow with unique voice organ - YouTube).

Sept-Oct Poorneet (tadpole)

Temperatures rise but rain continues.

Pied currawongs calling https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdQrtG9aGZE

Yam daisies flowering.

Days and nights are of equal length.