Nearly there!

Having potted all our seedlings last week, we moved onto the little trees in root trainer pots that were growing too big for their homes: we re-potted a mix of manuka, tea tree and flax, kindly helped again by Karyn, Nora and Leigh. Thank you so much, ladies!

We only have one more session of potting to go before the end of term, and slightly more plants to pot than we did today, so if anyone can come and lend us a hand next Wednesday afternoon, from 1.30, all help would be greatly received!

Potting the last of the manuka seedlings

A big thank you to Karyn and Sue, who joined us again this week, to finish potting the last of the manuka seedlings! We worked so fast, we moved on to potting on some of the manukas that have been in the root trainer pots for the last few months.

Manuka seedlings

We had a big planting afternoon with Shelley today: she had invited some extra helping hands along, so as well as parent help, we had Vanessa and Nora from Auckland Council, and Karyn and Sue, who are our sponsors for our Trees for Survival project. We managed to pot around 140 manuka seedlings together, and the children did a great job, working hard all afternoon, either filling bags with soil, or potting the seedlings. 

So a big thank you to everyone!

Pots and pots of trees

Seed planting

We took a break from tree potting this week and concentrated on planting some seeds for our edible garden, which will be in the garden bed along side the junior room.

We talked about what the seeds needed to grow well, and what sort of plants our seeds would grow into. We focused on our edible flowers first, and everyone took part in planting some borage and some viola seeds.

We will keep our pots up at the nursery with the tree seedlings, so that they are protected, while still getting plenty of sun and rain. Next week we can check in on them and see if any have germinated enough that we can see them breaking through the soil.

When we had a few minutes free during the afternoon, we took a look at some seed catalogues.... You  can grow some pretty unusual looking fruit and vegetables!

Getting planting bags ready

Shelley is bringing us more seedlings to pot, so today we all worked hard at filling the planting bags with potting mix, in preparation. We filled 111 bags!

Great work team!

(Isabel and Montana worked especially hard)

Shelley's visit

We had a lovely visit from Shelley, from Trees for Survival, today.

We showed her what we had potted so far, and she helped us pot the last of the cabbage trees.

She will be back in two weeks with more seedlings for us: we are growing a forest!

Potting cabbage tree seedlings

This afternoon we worked in pairs to pot cabbage tree seedlings. We went on a stick hunt for pencil sized sticks that we could use to poke holes in the potting mix. Then, while one of the pair held the root trainer pot steady, the other poked a hole and gently planted the seedling. We talked about "tucking the roots into bed" so that they were covered in soil and would not get dried out. Then the seedlings had a good water while we had a good hand wash!

We potted 96 seedlings and there are still more to go!

Combining Clubs

As the tree potting is nearly complete, we have combined these two clubs this term, and we enjoyed a sunny afternoon having a look around
school at what we have on the go. The trees are looking happy in their nursery after the sun and the rain of the holidays, and the edible plants we started last term have joined them there until we are ready to plant them out. We checked out the vege gardens and the compost heap, and put up posters around school to remind everyone to put their fruit and vegetable scraps in their class box, to add to our compost bin each day.