Lesson 6: GARDEN REVIEW
Class Room Work

Between lessons 5 and 6 there was a break. This allowed the garden to grow and the children’s science teacher to teach half a semester of other work. The work that they did was on food processing which fitted in very neatly with the vegetable growing project.

The children had to complete individual projects which they had to research and then present both on paper and to the class.

This was followed by school holidays after which garden work recommenced. A quick inspection of the garden with the children revealed a few problems. These were discussed in the class room and we all worked together to find some solutions.

1. Watering

The garden and the pot plants had not been watered on a regular basis. This was due to a number of factors.

• Rosters were not working
• The childrenŐs class teacher was not their science teacher. This meant that although she saw them on a regular daily basis she was not aware that she needed to remind students to do the routine work.
• I did not have time to go and check on the garden every day.

The results were that the worm bin was far too dry and the lack of water combined with the rather poor soil had meant that only a few of the peas had germinated.

2. Worms

The worms were not being fed regularly enough and the bucket needed a good scrub out. However, the plastic roster attached to the worm bucket was being used.

3. Solutions

After a very thorough discussion of the problems I pointed out that plants and animals (worms) were a big responsibility. I felt that the students in this class were more than capable of handling the responsibility required and that all they needed were some reminders of what they had to do. In addition to involving their class teacher, I decided to set some homework. The children were asked to design a poster. The best one was to be used as a frontispiece to the garden book that I was keeping on the project and the others were to be put around the class room as reminders for the daily chores.

Topics:

• Gundaroo Public School - Gardening 1992
• Watering
• Worms

A prize was offered for the best piece of work.

4. Visit to Floriade

A school trip had been organised for the following work. The students were going to visit the Floriade in Canberra and also the National Botanic Gardens. I set the children the task of finding out what sort of plants Aborigines used to eat in the Canberra/Southern Tablelands area.

Designing a plant display

In keeping with the Floriade theme I showed the class how to use graph paper to design a visual display using plants.

Figure 12 Design for planting of lettuces

This design was based on the fact that you can grow 5 mignonette lettuces across one of the garden beds

need:
    32 green lettuces
    28 red lettuces