Dyer Street School Garden Club

Harvesting

2009-09-09T11:19:00.003+12:00

Today the moon said it was okay to harvest some vegetables. We thinned some radishes form the lunar garden and harvested the lettuce.
Our science experiment has definitely shown that using lunar cycles helped our vegetables grow larger (see silver beet, radishes) and healthier (see silverbeet, radishes.
Now...what to grow for summer?

August 5th

2009-08-05T09:23:00.003+12:00

Well the cold, wet weather has been wonderful for our garden, everything is growing beautifully!

At the end of last term our garlic and potatoes came through- they came up in the lunar garden first!! All the plants are through now and looking pretty good.

Last Thursday we thinned the radishes and carrots in the conventional and organic garden. We noticed some bugs eating the radishes in those two gardens, but when we looked at the lunar ones the radishes were fine. No bugs. We are waiting for the right time to thin in the lunar, we need to check our lunar garden calender in the New Zealand gardener magazine. Speaking of which, they replied to our email about all the fungus growing in our garden:

Here's your answer, from Dr Tim Jenkins. This will appear in the August issue of the magazine.

This is a cup fungus but while most cup fungi have a shape that fits their name or at least are saucer shaped, you've found Peziza repanda. This species looks more like a plastic cup that's been in the oven though younger specimens might be more regular shaped. It's related to truffles and morels both highly prized fungal foods but unfortunately this species is not recommended eating. It's often a symptom of wood chips or woody compost that have gone in to the garden and it converts energy from rotting the wood into all those fruiting bodies that you see. Over time their presence will reduce but there's not much point in spraying them as most of the fungus is underground and pretty resilient. Make sure drainage in the soil is good and you could also add a nitrogen source such as rotted manure to speed up the breakdown of the remaining wood.

Now we know. Thanks NZ gardener mag!

June 8th

2009-06-08T17:13:00.007+12:00

Today was a beautiful, sunny day- perfect for checking the crops.
The radish are well up and we could see the carrots, too.
We staked our broad beans as some were breaking.
The lunar cycle was good for turning soil and planting garlic, so we all did that.
The organic garden put straw on their soil for weed prevention. We'll see if that works.
We measured our broad beans and will do so each week to see which one grows the fastest.

Week 3, May 28th.

2009-06-01T14:37:00.007+12:00

Finally, the moon cycle meant the lunar group could get some plants into the ground. We planted silver beet, broad beans, radish and carrot seeds, potatoes.

Week 3, May 25th

2009-05-27T16:12:00.003+12:00

Still no Lunar planting and the weather was pretty awful so we just checked progress.
We also looked at what companion plants would be good and bad for our vegetables in the organic garden. We'll post that soon!

Week 2, 18th May

2009-05-27T16:04:00.005+12:00

We could plant in the organic and conventional gardens, but not the Lunar one as the lunar cycle wasn't right.

We found out we could plant: potatoes, radish, carrots, silver beet, broad beans and lettuce.

Week 1, May 4th

2009-05-27T15:36:00.010+12:00

Our garden boxes are here! So is the compost from 'Seaview Recycling'. A big job filling them up!

Why the garden at school?

2009-05-27T15:27:00.002+12:00

At Dyer Street School, we are using gardening as a way to answer the question 'Do different growing techniques affect vegetable size?". To discover the answer to this question, we are doing a science and mathematical investigation- fair testing, measurement, graphing, understanding how plants grow.
There are three gardens-
Conventional garden- weeding by hand, spraying bugs and disease, chemical fertiliser.
Organic style garden- using worm wee/chicken manure fertiliser, weed control by covering soil with straw, pest and disease control using companion planting.
Maramtaka- planting by the moon to control pests and weeds, using animal manure for fertiliser.

We have documented our progress in photos and will try to upload our investigations as we go.