RAS School Fruit and Veg Competition Vegetables and Fruit we think are Beaut!

A Mystery in our Midst A mysterious box arrives at Glen Alice. What could be inside? A puzzle which became our vertical garden.

Extreme Weather Summer in Glen Alice is usually hot and dry but this year it has been boiling. Our poor garden didn’t fare well. We were relieved when it was suggested that we enter Lithgow Show instead of Mudgee Show two weeks earlier.

Divide and Conquer! So as to not lose all of our plants, we decided to break our garden up and put it in two places. First we chose a sheltered spot on the trunk of big, old gum tree.

But where should we put the other one? After much discussion and study of the weather conditions around our school, we decided on a south facing wall because it doesn’t get as hot as everywhere else.

What to grow? Of course everyone wanted to grow mangoes but we soon discovered that it would be impossible. The factors we considered were: The size of the plant The season Water needs of the plant Taste!

Our living pantry We chose the following plants Strawberries Beetroot Chives Rocket Lemongrass Radishes Chamomile Round carrots Thyme Basil Oregano All types of lettuce Won bok Silver beet

Our Little Gardening Helpers In our garden there is an army of vertebrates and invertebrates at work to produce our wonderful fruit and vegetables. We have reused old fridges and freezers to create compost bins. In these bins we put all of our shredded scrap paper, litter from the chook pens and weeds from the garden. Many different kinds of bugs break this all down to make nutritious compost for our gardens. In our worm farm we put some shredded paper and just a few fruit and veg scraps. Sometimes we put some grass clipping in too. We use worm casting and worm wee to add nutrients to our garden soil. Our chooks get the rest of the scraps, they even get scraps from our homes. The great thing about the chooks is that they don’t even realise that they are gardening as the scratch about, doing their business in our garden. The rest of the army is made up of US!

Decisions over, time to Build The vertical garden was much easier to put together than we at first thought. We used wire to attach three columns of pots to the tree. We put together the rest of the pots and used screws to attach the vertical garden to the wall of the school. We mixed some potting mix with water crystals and worm castings. We used this mixture to fill the pots. We planted a mixture of seedlings and seeds in the pots.

Time to Reap the Rewards The plants have grown well and we can now harvest some terrific produce from them for delicious lunches that we cook each Friday. Thank you to the RAS for supplying us with this terrific garden. It has been great fun growing lovely fruit and veges and especially entering them in the Show! Our entry for the Lithgow Show