School Gardening Partnership 2024

September Update – Potato Planting Workshop

Brydie organised a group workshop with Valley Homeschool to come in and plant potatoes into containers. 14 students attended and each went home with their own pot of potatoes to care for.

“Thank you for your time with our school groups recently potting up seed potatoes. The children are all enjoying seeing the tops push through the dirt after they cover them over. They are very much looking forward to growing their own potatoes and sharing them at Christmas – I feel a cooking class coming on!” – Vanessa, Valley Homeschool Partnership Coordinator

August Update

A very prolific, strong and hearty harvest was reported from the gardens of Valley Homeschool. We are very pleased to see their success. The children are excited to get into their home-grown vege and enjoy fresh food.

We have begun planning for the next stage of gardening, featuring potatoes! Stay tuned.

June Update

“Through the summer the children grew mostly corn, salad greens, zucchini, basil, tomatoes, red onion, sunflowers, strawberries, and cucumbers. 

They decided early on not to plant any Brassicas until after there was no sign of white butterflies around, unlike last autumn when they spent alot of time covering the garden with netting and still having to hunt for butterfly eggs on the leaves. A valuable learning experience which they thought about this time around and problem solved!”

“They currently have silverbeet, lettuce, spinach, leeks, cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower planted.

They are looking forward to growing the strawberries, and are already discussing having a competition to see who can grow the most/the biggest/the smallest etc. So it should be lots of fun!

Thanks to all of the School Gardening Partnership partners for their support.” – Vanessa, Valley Homeschool Partnership Coordinator

May – Getting Going

“Our group of enthusiastic children thoroughly enjoyed the School Vege Challenge last year.
Our goal is to continue developing their life long skills in the garden.

Through this program we aim for the children to enjoy being outdoors, learn and engage in growing nutritious food, care for gardens throughout the seasons, plan and make snacks and meals to share with their families and friends.”

Vanessa – Valley Homeschool Partnership Coordinator

School Vege Challenge 2023

Harvest Time & Judging

One of the families of Valley Homeschool sent their child’s review through. “We filled our box garden with sheep poo, dirt and fertilizer. We learnt about companion planting, rotating crops and germinating seeds. My favourite thing to do was planting the seeds and my favourite thing to eat was the carrots.”
We’re pleased to see how successful they’ve been, and to hear about everything they’ve learnt through the experience.

Comments from the children about their experience in the vege garden:

• I like putting the seeds in the garden.
• The best part is eating the vegetables.
• I have enjoyed building and planting the vege garden, and I learnt that radishes grow very quickly! All of our veges grew really well. It was difficult doing the weeding because the weeds grow in the most difficult places. I was very surprised how fast my celery grew and I enjoyed eating carrot and celery sticks with dip for my snacks.
• I enjoyed decorating the rocks to attract bees to the garden.
• I enjoyed planting the snow peas and it was fun eating them. I learnt to pull the carrots up when the orange bit is sticking up out of the ground. It was quite surprising that everything in the garden grew so big! It was hard to keep the white butterflies away.
• I liked weeding.

Mid Challenge Update

A word from Vanessa of Valley Homeschool: “The kids are really enjoying the vege garden learning experience, overcoming challenges like white butterflies, creating a garden that provides food and looks cool too, the construction of the garden and layout of the plants, learning about companion planting, synthetic products vs organic, pollination and the importance of bees and beneficial insects, germination and propagation of seedlings, and they are now enjoying harvesting, preparing, cooking and eating what they have grown as the plants reach maturity. 

Thank you all so much!!”

Home-grown celery sticks and dip prepared by the children were enjoyed by all!

Getting Going

Our group of local primary aged children come from several families and are excited to have the opportunity to work together to develop their gardening skills and knowledge. Our families all have a passion for looking after the land, the children all enjoy seeing seedlings sprout up and this encourages them to try eating new veges too. This challenge will support other learning they are doing across a range of NZ curriculum strands.