Whanganui City College
School Vege Challenge 2023
Harvest Time & Judging
Mid Challenge Update
Chillies have been a focus for City College recently as they’re easy to grow and they have goals to making chilli sauce with the harvest through the school terms. Nice, large gardens, with good, healthy plants reporting little to no bug issues. The students and supporting team won’t stop there as they have lots of ideas for bigger and better projects, including establishing a greenhouse.
Getting Going
Work with food processing classes (yr 9 – 13) to demonstrate how food is grown and harvested in urban setting. Have students plan, plant and grow a crop which can be processed into a food product for a community group either this year or next year.
School Vege Challenge 2022
Harvest Time & Judging
Mid Challenge Update
City College has its vegetable garden on the far side of it’s fields. I meet the team in the learning support centre who do gardening with their students. Phil soon joins us, whose senior students are also involved.
Phil is inspirational in his ideas for the garden area, and I can see that he will succeed.
In February when we dropped off the starter kits he explained how the area for the vegetable garden did not have water but that there was a toby in the street through the fence.
Upon this visit there is a trench and water pipe being laid to supply water. Water is essential for vegetable gardens and fruit. They are looking to add an orchard to the area too.
There are well laid out beds separated into four house groups as well as the garden for the learning support students.
They have an area ready for a new greenhouse which will be for growing strawberries.
There is tremendous dedication from this group who have been carrying watering cans across the fields as well as a water tank on a trailer which gave a slow stream.
The plants are happy they got this care. At the moment produce is being distributed amongst the school community. As their new water supply comes on stream, they are planning to grow more vegetables and give the produce to community groups.
We then went back across the fields to the ‘gardening shed’, this has a clear light roof and is where they are growing the seeds that we gave them. They are learning many skills here at City College and have rigged up an irrigation system on a timer over the seedling trays to keep them watered. There is lots happening here and things moving forward. I’m looking forward to seeing the garden again in a couple of months.
Getting Going
Our vision is to get our students involved to gain life skills and learn how to grow their own food.
Our kura is developing a community garden. It is in the early stages and we want students to learn about growing from seeds, successive planting and crop rotation. We will use this with Yr 9 – 10 students. All produce from the garden will be donated to the wider school community and those in need. We are also looking to put in an orchard later in the year and we are going to build and create a full scale garden and green house.
