Week 4 and 5 Mrs Mardell is away

Here are some tasks to think about before Mrs Mardell returns on 9th of July.

Tasks 1

-Carrots buddy teach the beans using the wormfarm and compost page. Explain why these things are worth learning about and how they benefit our garden. 

-Discuss the think points together.

-List any unknown words here https://padlet.com/cmardell/mdnsborvift4

-Draw a Venn diagram with wormfarms on one side and composting on the other. Keep this so we can put these on our blog.

Keep the middle part large because this is where all the things that are the same between the two processes. Fill in the Venn diagram with the new information you have learnt. 

Discuss with your buddy what you learn, sometimes talking to another person is how we learn best.

This is a completed Venn diagram on another topic, so you can get an idea of what your diagram will look like.

Think about how Room 7 will start the wormfarm again at Ponsonby primary and keep it going. 

Post any ideas here https://padlet.com/cmardell/dlu0n1m60xr8 

         We will discuss this and present the best idea in an upcoming assembly! 

Spare time task... We have wooden signs made for our gardens. Design what should be painted on these two signs for the garden. This is the shape of our signs. They have a border. Bring your designs to Mrs Mardell in Week 6. The best design becomes our sign! 

Working hard to get the garden ready to grow our bounty - week 3

The hard work

Left - old garden plants ready to compost. We need to break them into pieces

Top right - 'Oli' uses strength and skill to dig up the sotrrel roots twirling his fork to latch onto the roots. Good thinking! 

Bottom right - hard at work

This week was all about pulling out more of the old plants and transplanting plants we wanted.

Using garden tools

We learnt about using garden tools safely. Miss Stevenson and Mrs Mardell had the same tips to keep us safe.  

Tips

-When walking always carry your tools facing downwards

-Always check for fingers (and toes) when using garden tools especially the big garden fork Mrs Mardell needed to use to loosen and lever up the Sorell roots. They were deep into the garden bed.

Garden gloves

Tips

-Store pairs of garden gloves together so they are easy to find.

Transplanting plants

Mrs Mardell showed us how to transplant plants and we gave it a go ourselves digging holes and patting the soil around the base of the plant. 

To finish with we watered the transplanted plants to help them settle into their new homes. 

Top left - The Strawberry plant before transplanting, it's in the vegetable garden! 

Top right - Ted digs out the plant keeping itsroots undisturbed 

Bottom - Mrs Mardell shows us how to  replant the plant (then we plant the other two).

Our transplanted mint from last week. We will keep it in a plastic pot so it doesn't get too wild. Also mint needs lots of nutrients so we can keep it well fertilised.  

The Beans Cook - week 2

The beans made leaf rolls on Thursday.

They harvested the spinach and baby courgette vegetables from the garden  (and Mrs Mardell added some carrots from the supermarket).

They washed the vegetables.

They helped to make the food.

We peeled the carrots using sharp kitchen tools. Miss Stevenson helped us make carrot noodles in the spiraliser. We chopped the courgette. Mrs Mardell showed us a chef skill to keep our fingers safe.

Conan decided he'd like to be the chief salt grinder and ground the salt crystals to a beautifully fine powder. Well done.

We took the leaves off the thyme and sage stalks we picked for the dressing and used the hand blender to whizz it all up. (There was a wee bit too much vinegar)

Oh no there were sounds of 'I don't like it' from some people without even trying a new food.

And Mrs Mardell said 'you don't know until you try it. Just pick out some bits have a try,  and if you don't like it we will return it to the compost' it's ok to not like something, but at least try it!

We found out plants give us leafy vegetables such as spinach and kale, Flower vegetables such as broccoli and cauliflower, stem vegetables such as celery and rhubarb and root vegetables such as artist and Beetroot. 

Our goal is to try 1 new plant food a week. Let's see how we go. 

Clearing out the mint bed - week 2

Today we started to prepare our garden beds to plant some new veges next week. We started by clearing out the catmint that had taken over prime growing space. We learnt to pull out plants by pulling them at the base of the stem. 

The mint had become wild, sending out roots under the soil and shooting new stems of mint throughout the planter box. It had taken over. This was a very big job for the Gardeners.

Before 

The carrots prepare to tackle the catmint bed

Piles of catmint are made ready to be composted

There are so many roots through the planter, we use tools to get them al, out.

After

The beans finish the job and clear away all of the roots. That's a job well done beans! 

Miss Stevenson has an idea to stop the mint roots from reroute get. She suggests we bag up the roots on a dark bag with no light or water so they won't sprout in our compost...

Next week we will learn about compost and worm farming and why they are important to our garden! 

The carrots first cooking session - week 1

The carrot group used carrots, sage and spinach they harvested in the garden, together with some courgettes to make courgette pasta in a vingerette leaf sandwich. 

Everyone got a turn to use the spiraliser.

Some of us harvested carrots, washing and preparing them.

Mrs Mardell used the knife today showing us how to cut

We sampled the vegetables left over sharing them and offering them to others. 

It didn't matter if we didn't eat it all because we all tried our fresh produce from garden to table! 

First day garden to table with love at Ponsonby Primary school with Mrs Mardell - week 1

Today Mr Bish said 'Mrs Mardell will be coming in to take groups for garden to table' and like magic Mrs Mardell appeared. Room 7 has two garden to table groups. Each group has 40 minutes of gardening time and every fortnight a cooking session or a special project to make our garden the best garden full of love.

The carrots

The carrots were first in the list if things to do Mrs Mardell wanted them to 'own' their learning so she asked them -

What do you know?

What do you want to know?

Then we had a quick garden tour looking at all the beauty planted by Mrs Robins and Simon.

We found courgettes ripening and two carrots that we ready to pick so we harvested them with sage leaves for our cooking. Tommy noticed the courgette plant had a 'moss' growing on it. Good skills!

Time went quickly and next week we will be in the gardens digging and planting learning about the 'what we want to know' things with all the stuff we never of dreamed of to make it all make sense.

The Beans

The beans did the same thing as the carrots.

 In the end our boards looked like this.

What we know:

What we want to know:

Wow it looks like we will be busy! 

Next week we get our hands dirty- yayyyy!

Fact of the day. Courgettes have another name - ask us what it is?