Year 8 Gardening Tech

At the beginning of 2020 Term 1, we started a new tech class called Gardening Tech. With the guidance of Mrs Arthur and the help of Mr Hefferan, we have built and filled new vegetable gardens. We started with making long oval-shaped raised garden beds. We made 3 of these beds for 3 different groups. Then we laid them down in bigger beds and filled them nearly full of soil. We planted our first 4 plants which were chillies, silverbeet, climbing spinach and cherry tomatoes. After putting them in, we laid mulch all along the top and around the new plants. This was to stop any weeds and to keep the soil nice and moist. We designed trellises for our climbing spinach. We collected some sticks from the playground to use to build the structure and then put them together with wire. We had an option of two designs. One of them was designed like a ladder and the other one was where we just put sticks randomly. So far all of our trellises are holding up and our spinach is really growing! We have added radish, beetroot, and eggplant to our individual beds and are looking forward to picking the heirloom black radish. The communal beds were a lot simpler than the raised garden beds. We started with a pile of dirt and raked and shovelled two piles with a small trench in between the two mounds. Then we put cardboard on the bottom of the trench, to put the tiles on for our path. The communal beds have a large range of plants in them now. In the first, there is corn, sweet potato, carrots, shallots, and climbing beans. The second bed has been reserved for pumpkin, spaghetti squash, and button squash and we are crossing our fingers that they will fruit for us this late in the season. Each week we spend time weeding, watering and tending to our plants and we are realizing how important agriculture is in our lives.