Enviro Kids Week 10 Term 2 2015

Kia Ora Whanau!

This week the Enviro Kids created their mini hanging gardens.
We got our half bottles from Mrs Hart and drew faces on them.

Then we pushed the string through the little holes at the sides and tied it to make the handle.

(Here is how our gardens will look when the seeds have sprouted.)

Then we went outside to put the potting mix into the bottles.

Then we lined up to get our seeds.

We are looking forward to watching our seeds grow!

And that is all for Enviro Kids for Term 2.

PS: This is the last blog I will be doing since I am retiring from full time classroom work and taking up relief teaching instead. It has been a great pleasure to work with all the gardeners over the last five years! This means that a new person is taking over the Enviro Kids. We are very happy to welcome Mrs Joan Maitland to the group! 

Happy Gardening Everyone!

Enviro Kids Week 9 Term 2 2015

Kia Ora Whanau!

This week the Enviro Kids have been doing some planning for next week's activities.

Mrs Hart had a good idea! We could make small gardens to take home and eat the sprouts that we grow.

We will be planting some cut off milk bottles to create a hanging garden. We will be putting potting mix into the bottles and some seeds. 

We have been given the challenge of finding something that will prevent the soil from falling out of the bottle but allow the water to drip through.
Caleb suggested a sieve.
Mose thought we could put holes in the lid of the bottle. 
We decided to try the holes in the lid idea.

We are looking forward to making our mini gardens.

Happy gardening Everyone!

Enviro Kids Week 8 Term 2 2015

Kia Ora Whanau!

The Enviro Kids have been very busy in the gardens this week.

They planted some more spinach in the gardens with the spring onions. And did a little weeding at the same time.

They also worked on the gardens by the front door to the office. They took out the mint that was being eaten and replaced it with some parsley that they have found grows really well here.

Happy gardening Everyone!

Enviro Kids Week 7 Term 2 2015

Kia Ora Whanau!

Due to the stormy weather the Enviro Kids have not been able to get out much this week.

They did get to harvest some more spinach, however, and give it to Room 6 to take home and share with their whanau.

Nice sharing Enviro Kids!

Enviro Kids Week 6 Term 2 2015

Kia Ora Whanau!

This week the Enviro Kids have been investigating pests that can attack mint.
We looked at the Tui Gardening website to try to identify the pest that is eating our mint.
We think it might be mites and we are now trying to find the best way of dealing with them.

If anyone else knows what might be affecting the mint please let us know in a comment to the Blog. 

Happy gardening Everyone!

Enviro Kids Week 4 and 5 Term 2 2015

Kia Ora Whanau! We hope you have had a chance to spend some time in your gardens over the last two weeks. We have found that the rain is really helping our spinach and silverbeet.

This week we did a lot of maintenance on our gardens and worm farm. We fed the worms some juicy rotten left over fruit and made sure they  had some paper too. 
We checked on our beetroot and pulled out any weeds that were trying to take away nutrients from our plants.
We inspected our spring onions to see how they are doing and we watered the gardens by the office because they do not get as much rain as the other gardens. 
We examined our mint plants because they are being eaten by something. We can see the holes in the leaves but we did not find what is eating them. We will investigate this using the internet to see what we can find.
We dead headed the marigolds that help to keep the bugs away from our herbs and Mrs Hart showed us their seeds.

Happy gardening Everyone!

Enviro Kids Week 3 Term 2 2015

Kia Ora Whanau!

This week the Enviro Kids have been harvesting again! We are really enjoying having lots and lots of leaves growing on our silverbeet and spinach plants.

We had so many this week we decided to give them to Room 1 and Mrs Savidan to take home and share with their whanau. We hope you like those juicy leaves!

We also fed our fabulous worms! They love getting banana peels and old spinach leaves and rotten kiwifruit!

Happy gardening Everyone!