Last Post for the 2011 Tui Garden Challenge....

Tell us what you have learnt Grayson...

What did you enjoy Nicole?

Wrap it up Harmony...

Well, that's it from us here at Opua School. I hope you have enjoyed our blog as much as we have enjoyed creating it. Thanks Tui, Mitre 10 and everyone who have made this a great competition. We sure hope we will be visited by the Tui representatives as we would love to show them all around our school gardens.

Have a great summer everyone!!

Room 4 and Opua School out!.....

These are our wheelie bins that a two of our talented pupils painted.

We use these bins for our recycling, paper, plastic, cardboard etc... Aren't they pretty?

Our Garden has sprung into life over the two week spring break. We have had huge harvests of silverbeet, cauliflower, lettuce, cabbage, broad beans and we have even had a couple of strawberries

We have discovered self sown sunflowers and an avocado tree is starting to grow which must have come from the compost heap. We will have to find a suitable place to transfer that to!

We have been sharing our harvest with our neighbours, much to their delight!

Parents of one of our pupils own a local restaurant and have offered to pay us for our parsely on a regular basis! Yay!

Here are our latest batch of chickens that the children have reared. Our first batch are now laying and we are going to sell them as layers to local people. We use their poop on the garden as fertilizer and they take care of the scraps.

We have 5 Giant Pumpkin plants romping away ready for Cinderella in March.

We will be posting our last post tomorrow morning as it is the last day of the competition.

We have had a fantastic time during this comp and the children have learned so much, this will be an on-going part of Opua School's culture.

THANKS TUI!!!

TELL US WHAT YOU HAVE LEARNT?

The children have been working in groups to share what they have learnt over the past few weeks;
* You must measure the worm juice, as the pure worm juice is too strong.
* Keep the chook poo away from the stems of the plants because the ammonia will burn and damage the plants.
* Seeds don't always germinate, you have to be very patient.
* I learnt how to pick the vegetables, you must hold the plant at the same time.
* You must plant the seedlings about 10cm apart.
* Water, sun & soil is very important for healthy successful plants.
* We have learnt how important compost, bees, worm juice/tea is to produce large healthy crops.

WHAT CROP HAVE ENJOYED GROWING?
* We like the colourful vegetables that Tui sent us as seedlings.
* Broccoli, silver beet and beetroot, we loved the quiche we made for lunch and the roasted beetroot!
* Lettuce and parsley because they make our egg sandwiches taste delicious!
* I like picking and eating sugar snaps.
* I like beans because we really get our monies worth!
* Potatoes because it is exciting digging them up to see how many and what shape they are.
* I like seeing how the carrots have grown.
* The giant pumpkin because we are hoping for a GIANT!

WHAT HAVE YOU LIKE SO FAR ABOUT BEING INVOLVED IN THE TUI SCHOOL GARDEN CHALLENGE?
* We enjoyed receiving the Mitre 10 vouchers and we loved going shopping with them. I was a great morning out!
* It was a privilege to get the new garden tools and we have looked after them.
*We really enjoyed experiencing different plants and seeing what they grow into.
* It was fun to see the bees pollinate the flowers and learn about the importance of bees in our world. Also how we fed the weeds to the chickens and then we eat the eggs!
*We enjoyed seeing the plants grow from seed to something we can eat.

Thank you Tui for giving us the opportunity to enter this competition. We have learnt a lot about gardening and how to look after the garden. We know that your garden products work and that our local Mitre 10 stock all your products.

We have had a GREAT time and we are very grateful to our wonderful teacher Mrs. Young who has allowed us to fit the gardening around our school work. She is a brilliant teacher!