Preparing our new winter vegetable garden

Last week we had a delivery of several half wine barrels. There has been lots of talking, debating and guesswork amongst the children as to what we are going to do with our new recycled barrels at Kindergarten. They are going to become our new vegetable garden.

Over the summer months we have had a great crop of passion fruit, apples, strawberries and now we are even harvesting a few feijoas. The children have really enjoyed the whole process of watching the crops grow, tending the plants, collecting the fruit, and perhaps the most enjoyable, eating the fruit! With sustainability in mind we wished to continue these efforts by growing our own winter vegetables.

Before we could plant any crops however we needed to prepare the barrels. Our first job was to make some holes for water to drain through. We got our drills out and set about drilling the holes. After lots and lots of persistence, hard work and patience we decided that perhaps our drills weren’t quite up to the job! Thankfully for us, we have a friendly builder next door who popped over and made speedy work of drilling the remaining holes for us. The children loved watching him at work, observing just how fast his drill tackled the wood.

Next of course we needed soil. We have to say a huge thank you to Mackenzie’s Granddad John for organising, delivering and helping the children fill up the barrels.

We were now ready to go, the barrels had holes and were filled with soil – but we still needed plants. Up to this point the children have been really involved in the new garden , so on Friday we had a group meeting as a Kindergarten and asked the children what they wanted to grow and what they enjoyed eating. There were lots of suggestions but in the end we had a long list which included broccoli, beetroot, different herbs, brussel sprouts, silver beet, spinach, carrots and some beautiful flowers.

Today, Monday, was the big day we planted our crops. Jaxon brought in some carrot seeds so we dug a channel into the soil and carefully dropped in the seeds.

Discovering science and the natural environment through fun, engaging and hands-on gardening activities

Lots of children were keen to have a go at planting, either using the trowels to make holes or just getting really stuck in and using our fingers.

Gardening encourages sensory exploration

Observing and comparing seeds and different types of plants

The children ‘read’ the pictures on each of the cards, so they knew which plants they were putting into each barrel. We can’t wait to watch our plants grow and see how many vegetables we can produce. 

All done...but we still had time to look after our new plants and give them a quick watering!

Christine