Seedling trays and labels

With ingenuity we were able to remove most of the plant tags we made from their moulds, some more easily than others. It was then onto sanding with most of the kids unfamiliar with sandpaper.

I think the sanding sent them all a little loopy (or so it looks in this photo) but they loved the flexibility it gave them in smoothing out their tags.

We then moved onto planting our seeds. By planting them at the beginning of the term, they should be a decent size in 9 weeks time. Initially we are putting them into small trays while we prepare the planters over the next few weeks. By then they should be ready to transplant. Just in case we forget what we put where on our trays, the kids all made little labels and for those who couldn't spell, they drew pictures of their vegetables.

The fun part was finding all sorts of things we could use for our seedling trays and deciding whether they would need drainage holes or not. We utilised everything from egg and choc milk cartons through to milk bottles cut in half lengthways and small boxes with one side cut out of them.

Can't wait to see their faces next week when they see that some of their seeds have started to peek through the soil. Stay tuned...

Term One and Vegie Gardens

We have started on our vegie garden that we are making this term. This week we made some of those little tags you have so that you can remember what's been planted. I really should be putting this into practice for my own seedlings. I keep planting them and then within a couple of days have completely forgotton what it was that I planted where.

The kids won't have that problem though. They used all sorts of found objects as moulds for the tags and filled them with plaster of paris. As the plaster began to set, we placed leaves or flowers into the plaster which results in a relief pattern being made. This coming week we will sand off all of the rough edges and attach our stakes while we prepare our containers (kindly donated by our local IGA supermarket at Marmion) ready for planting. I will be sending an email off this week to see if we can get Bunnings to help out with a donation of potting mix. Wish us luck!