The Carrots had so much to do! Week 7

We were going to plant a fejoa tree, plant some peas and plant some spinach seedlings. 

Our fejoa tree won't get as large as the one above because we will keep in trimmed. 

Once we got to the garden we changed our plan. 

Mint had returned to our garden bed we had cleared last week. The carrots had done an excellent job digging up all the roots. We found we had not taken out all the root and so we pulled out the sprouted plants and their roots. 

 Then we checked out compost. It had begun to compact and dome of the leaves were beginning to decay. 

We moved into action taking done bamboo stakes and making s frame for our peas. We read the seed packet instructions and planted the seeds. We will have to watch for pea shoots that have sprouted in 10 days - 2 weeks.  

Then we split into two groups. 

One group planted spinach seedlings with Miss Stevenson. 

The other group dug in compost and turned over the soil of our top garden bed they we took the mint out of ready for planting!

Next week we will transplant the other fejoa tree so we have two ready to have flowers like those below in spring! 

Carrots cooking in week 7 - stewing apples

In Week 1 we wanted to learn how to make an apple pie and we wanted to plant an apple tree. 

This week we got closer to both. We don't have enough time to make an apple pie but we did stew apples. Stewed apples could be used in a pie, a crumble ot just eaten as they are, or with nuts, cereal, yougurt or ice team as a treat. We call that a versatile food. 

We stewed three different kinds of apples  learning how to use knives safely. The reason we stewed three kinds of apples was to decide what variety of apple tee we would like to plant. 

We had to choose between Pacific Rose, Royal Gala and Granny Smith. 

We have decided we liked the Granny Smith stewed apple the best and would like to grow a Granny Smith apple tree. While the Room 7 Year 4s might not get to enjoy it's fruit, their little brothers and sisters might. The Room 7 Year 4's can tell them the story why we have theGranny Smith apple tree! 

Fruity forest in the making. Week 7 with the Beans.

In week 1 when we planned what we wanted to learn about room 7 decided they wanted to plant a fejoa tree, an apple tree and a lemon tree. After checking the idea with Mrs Malcolm about where these trees could go we started to plant. This week we planted one of the fejoa trees. We all had a turn using the spade to cut through the grass and dig the hole scooping out the dirt. We dug the hole deeper than the fejoa tree and added a mix of compost and the earth we dug out. Then we added the rest of the soil and compost around the fejoa tree. We discussed clay in the soil, drainage, observed worms and most of all planted the first tree in the fruit forest at PPS. 

Tidying our gardens

Today was a great garden to table day organising our garden before it started to rain. 

The carrots weeded the kakariki garden and pulled out the mint discussing how invasive it was. Invasive means it will invade everywhere and that is definitely what happens with mint roots. Mrs Mardell said sometimes gardening needs all the strength you've got and the boys took to the task of ripping out all the mint roots. 

Well done Jayden! It was so windy that it whipped up the soil and we had to be careful not to get it in our eyes. Perhaps it's a day to wear goggles a few people problem solved.

The girls composted all the waste putting the roots in the black bag to rot. We mixed green matter with brown matter as we went. 

The beans organised and weeded the planters tidying up the planter boxes under the fig tree we worked as a team dragging them into place and once again worked to mix brown and green matter and make compost. 

We found lots of insects under the bins such as slaters, earwigs, worms and 2 ant colonies. This was most interesting. Seb stepped on it and the ants got it his shoes, he hopped around and mrs Mardell joked they now Seb knows what people mean when someone says, "have you got ants in your pants?"

Both groups recognised that certain materials they found in the soil where exactly as they always had been, except a bit dirty. They don't decompose or as Sebastian said "break down".

Ted found a smiggles sticker that was buried in the soil. 

Tommy found a piece of red plastic. 

We also found a piece of glass. Glass can be recycled and melted down at high heats, but some plastic can't. 

As an experiment the beans have put some plastic labels in the compost to see what will happen