How to make a no-dig garden

 This term we have been learning about growing plants from seeds, the parts of a plant, and, what plants need and do for the environment. We have worked together to create a garden to plant our sunflower seedlings in and a 'Butterfly Garden' where we will plant the swan plants we are growing. 

We joined hands and measured the space our garden would be.
Our garden will be a curved shape. It is 16 strides long.

Next we spread out the cardboard onto the ground.

We had to stand on the cardboard so it wouldn't blow away.

We worked in pairs tipping soil out of buckets, spreading soil and returning the buckets for Mr Mullholland and our helpers from 

Te Puawai to fill up again. 

Our gardens still need some more soil but that's our job for next week!

We went back to the classroom, washed our hands and got rewarded for our great mahi and . . . so did the lovely tuakana Levi, Miley, Kingston and Mason from Te Puawai.

We couldn't have made our gardens without their help.
They displayed all of our school values -Hiranga/Excellence, 
Rereketanga/Diversity, Ngakau/Integrity, Porihanga/Community and
Partnership and Kaitiakitanga with big smiles and their willingness to
help out! 

 

Gardening

 Our inquiry topic for term 4 is, 'From Garden to Table.'

During the last three weeks we have learned many new things about seeds and plants and have also extended our prior knowledge about plants and gardening. 

We have germinated bean and sunflower seeds without using soil and also with soil.

Without soil: Here is a written procedure that tells you how you can do this.

Here is what our seeds look like after two weeks. 

I look, I notice, I wonder

Many have sprouted and some of the seedlings were touching the top of the bag. We wondered what we could do to solve the problem so the plants could grow up straight. We opened the bags and after just one day the plants look straighter and they have grown even taller right out the top of the bags. We can also see the roots on each plant.

We also noticed that some seeds had not yet germinated. We think there was too much water in the cotton wool so we squeezed the balls and some are starting to germinate. 

Too wet!