Harvest Time

The onset of Autumn brought on the time to reap the rewards of our vegetable garden. Along with the lettuce and tomatoes that were harvested through the summer the other crops flourished and came into season.

The students involved in planting the crops were amazed to see the wheelbarrow of produce that was collected.

The seeds from the sunflowers were collected for planting again this spring. Any left over seeds will be distributed to the children from last year's planting. The corn we grew was pop-corn, it isn't a variety that is commonly put on the table as it is especially grown for the kernels outer shell which is much harder than other varieties. Once dried the kernels will be ready for popping.

Other vegetables harvested were spooky face pumpkins, a variety that are grown for ease of carving. Gourds; these didn't quite turn out as expected and only resulted in very small gourds. There were also some parsnips and beetroots. There were even a few potatoes from previous plantings.

The vegetable selection was part of the curriculum activities that the grade one and two students participated in as part of the "things that grow" unit. The Sunflowers and Corn were grown as whole class activities to examine the process of the growing cycle of plants. The other inclusions were as a result of a persuasive text station with the Friday "Exploration Stations". On a Friday students participated in a variety of activities related to horticulture and Spring. One activity involved students randomly drawing the names of two different vegetable varieties out of a tub and then writing a persuasive text that convinced the teacher to allow them to plant their preferred vegetable of the two. Other activities were to make bottle terrariums to experiment with the requirements of plants, design and create a wheat maze, make a board game with a healthy food theme, design and build an innovative chook house with Lego, survey students on their favourite vegetable/fruit and animal and display it in a pictograph and work in the yard to maintain the gardens by watering, weeding and rubbish collection.

               

After the harvest the garden beds were cleared and turned over ready for the next planting.