Wollongong West Public School

Only our best will do

Telephone02 4229 2096

Emailwollongwst-p.school@det.nsw.edu.au

Garden update - Term 1 Week 10

View of the school form the corn plants.

Wollongong West Public School has a beautiful orchard and vegetable garden. 

Helping in the garden

Many Wollongong West Public School students help in the garden during class time as part of their learning, or before school and at lunch and recess. Parents and carers are also welcome to come and help in the garden, especially on Thursday before school, and on Tuesday afternoons from 2pm. We are very lucky to have Vince and Lucy in the garden at those times most weeks, so if you’re not sure what jobs need doing, talk to Vince or Lucy. 

What is happening in the garden

In Term 1 this year we have harvested more than 5 kilograms of sweet potatoes. Some of our sweet potatoes are purple and some are orange in colour, so we can ‘eat the rainbow’. Sweet potatoes make great chips, and delicious soup. We have planted some more sweet potato runners. These runners will take 100 days to grow, so we hope there will be more sweet potatoes later in the year. 

We have been harvesting our sweetcorn. We were very lucky that we had some rain just before it was ready to pick, so our sweetcorn is extra juicy. Sweetcorn tastes great as corn fritters, or just as corn on the cob. 

Our garden has some Vietnamese cucumber vines growing cucumbers that look a bit spiky on the outside. When they are peeled and cut up they taste delicious in a salad, or on a sandwich. This plant was brought in by a student who has a great garden at home. It is exciting to discover new plants we can grow. 

Stage 3 students have planted some sunflowers. Sunflowers look fantastic, and the seeds can be eaten. Stage 3 also planted some coffee plants. They will probably be in high school before the coffee plants produce beans, but maybe one day our teachers will be enjoying a cup of morning coffee made from the coffee beans we have grown in the garden. 

We have planted some beans as an experiment. We are not sure if the weather will be warm enough for our beans to grow well, but it will be interesting to see what happens. 

We are getting ready for the cooler weather. The citrus trees in our orchard have plenty of fruit that we will be able to enjoy this winter. 

While we wait for the oranges, lemons and mandarins to ripen, we have been spreading mulch around the garden. This will help stop weeds from growing, and stop the soil drying out. The mulch will gradually break down into the soil, and then we will need more mulch. We have also been weeding and pruning. This keeps the garden looking good, and means that the work we do watering and improving the soil with compost is not wasted growing weeds. Pruning helps some plants to grow, and also lets more sunlight into our garden. Sunlight helps our fruit and vegetables to grow and ripen. 

Learning about ‘Mini Beasts’

Wollongong West Public School students sometimes visit the garden when they are studying ‘mini-beasts’. Mini beasts are the worms, slugs, grubs, insects and spiders that make their home in our garden. We have found ladybugs on the leaves of nasturtiums, worms in the compost bin, ants in the garden beds, grubs in the soil, and even an Australian native bee, the blue banded bee. We have nicknamed this very special bee ‘The Blue Bandit Bee’. We are happy to share our garden with these mini-beasts, because we have learned about all the important jobs they do. Mini beasts help pollinate the plants we need for food, turn our food scraps into soil, and provide food for birds and animals. They are also really cute.

More photos can be found in the Garden update - Term 1 Week 10 2019 gallery.

 

Ali Smith and Vince Carolan