Abundance in Re-using

 This term we are looking at recycling and how much we can recycle to create greenness and beauty and bounty. Our original little sandpit garden is blooming and we are seeing buds and flowers and the first signs of baby beans and tomatoes. Our chief concern for this little garden is how to control pests: at the moment they are being relocated by hand and we have started using an organic spray made from garlic and chilli.

We planted small hanging gardens this last week: in recycling old milk bottles and plastic soft drink bottles we can make a walk of green herbs. We used wire from the fence which was taken down, to make a hanging garden wall and the hooks to suspend the bottles.

Our tyres in the sandpit are happy and all seeds, except for the carrots, have come through. We are especially excited about the potatoes and watermelons!

This is our new garden. It is a "Pizza Garden". This means that the tyres have been set out in a pizza formation and each tyre has been planted with ingredients that go into making exciting pizza toppings...except for cheese vines. We will have to bring in a cow for that at some stage :-)

This term we have 16 Roots and Shootsers and each has a tyre garden to look after. This little Pizza Garden represents a LOT of recycling. We have found uses for old tyres, the cut-down fence, old cardboard to line the tyres, old milk and soft drink bottles, the broom sticks from the school play...even mini water bottle have become an intricate drip-watering system.

Ideas Bursting Out

We have been challenged by  Juliet at the Roots and Shoots Foundation to come up with an earth/eco project, a people project and an animal project. Forres Prep is already so involved with outreach at Kiddies Educare in Philippi, that we thought we would wait a while for a new People Project to inspire us. We LOVE animals of all sorts and so this is going to take some time before we can find a specific Animal Campaign to look after and make our own. So, after brainstorming and looking at what we would like to get involved in, we decided that something to do with plants, growing things and digging in sand was our first choice. We are very excited about getting our hands into the soil and making things grow.

The first set of ideas are brewing around experimenting with creating and designing easy-to-use, productive and economically sustainable veggie gardens. We like the idea of developing Tyre Gardens  and want to try our hand at actually growing a few. We will need some guidance as to how to set them up. We want to design the sort of family-sized-easy-to-maintain-and-renew veggie garden which EVERY family can set up. So actually this is more a People Project after all. YAY!!

Now while we get going with digging, we must think of an Eco Project!

They develop these gardens all around the world - and we would love to get the idea out there to more and more families to grow gardens themselves: after all EVERYONE benefits from loads of fresh veggies!