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Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Worm Farms Underway and Future Kowhai Forest Sown!





Yahhh! We have finally achieved one of our goals set last year and with the help of Rose, Grant, Errol (and Carlin the Seeing-Eye-Dog) from Bunnings, we have our worm farm, and another one, all set up and in place.

On the Wednesday afternoon, before the snow, Rose and her team, taught the Green Team leaders how to put together the layers of a worm farm, using coconut fibre, then the worms, and then the damp shredded newspaper. Grant demonstrated the layering process, while Errol explained the purpose of each step.
On the Friday we added the first small handful of food scraps.
The children learnt that some scraps such as orange peels, bread, meat and dairy can not be added. Some foods take a long time to break down and may start to mould off and smell bad! (We don’t want that as both farms are wintering in a work room!!!!)

Bunnings very kindly donated a worm farm box, two bags of worms, and some coconut fibre to get us started.
So its all go!!!
The next project was the sowing of kowhai seeds! The children filled yoghurt pottles with seed raising mix and planted their seed. The pottles will sit in their classrooms and should germinate in the next few weeks. We will then have a lovely kowhai forest to plant out next year, once the plants are big enough!! That mass of yellow is going to look fantastic!

Thank you again to Bunnings for donating the seeds and mix to get this started, and for allowing Rose, Grant and Errol to spend the time with us. We really appreciate the wonderful contribution you are making to our school environment, and our sustainability goals.

Friday, August 5, 2011

Peastraw Frenzy!






OK this must be a world record!!!
At the end of last term, 10 children and 4 adults took one hour to spread 5 cubic metres of compost/soil mix and spread 50 bales of peastraw. Phew!! Incredible!! There will have been some tired children (and teacher aides) that night. Very keen Green Team!!!
Thank you to Graeme Woods and Vic Philips, (our new caretaker), for all their hard work and for getting the soil spreading underway before the children came out. It was a great team effort.

Our native area is all ready for planting out this term!!