Charlotte, Jianna and their team, counted the number of large trees (over 5m) we have for shade and habitat. Jensen, Connor and their group looked at the understory of shrubs and grasses we have planted for ground cover and habitat for birds and mini beasts. Alex and his team had the big job of counting the large rocks and logs we provide for the little critters and worms that improve our soil. Josh and his team recorded our perfect score of 20/20 for all the habitat we have in the school including our orchard, chook yard, Indigenous Food and Fibre Garden, mulched beds, compost, worm farm, veggie gardens, sheep, bird bath and nesting boxes. Marianna and her team recorded for Soil Management that we have some areas we need to work on to stop erosion and cover bare soil. Jimmy’s team found out that we have quite a few weeds that we need to work on controlling. Eli’s team recorded in great detail the organic litter that we have, that creates habitats for bugs, worms and fungi. We will analyse all the data next week to come up with our overall Biodiversity score, which we are hoping is an improvement on last year’s score of 88/100.
The whole school came together this week to conduct our annual Biodiversity Audit for our ResourceSmart Program. Every year we observe, record and document the data for how we are improving the biodiversity of our school grounds.
Charlotte, Jianna and their team, counted the number of large trees (over 5m) we have for shade and habitat. Jensen, Connor and their group looked at the understory of shrubs and grasses we have planted for ground cover and habitat for birds and mini beasts. Alex and his team had the big job of counting the large rocks and logs we provide for the little critters and worms that improve our soil. Josh and his team recorded our perfect score of 20/20 for all the habitat we have in the school including our orchard, chook yard, Indigenous Food and Fibre Garden, mulched beds, compost, worm farm, veggie gardens, sheep, bird bath and nesting boxes. Marianna and her team recorded for Soil Management that we have some areas we need to work on to stop erosion and cover bare soil. Jimmy’s team found out that we have quite a few weeds that we need to work on controlling. Eli’s team recorded in great detail the organic litter that we have, that creates habitats for bugs, worms and fungi. We will analyse all the data next week to come up with our overall Biodiversity score, which we are hoping is an improvement on last year’s score of 88/100.
1 Comment
Our junior students excitedly harvested the last of our summer veggies this week. They picked an abundance of ripe and green tomatoes, the last 6 corn cobs the birds didn’t get to, an eggplant and 4 large zucchinis. We will use the harvest in our cooking in Week 10. The students, then pulled out all the plants that had finished fruiting and fed them to the chooks. We have saved the large sunflower heads for seeds. We are trying to ripen some of the green tomatoes by hanging the bushes we have pulled out, in the warm garden shed. Give it a try too, if you have lots of plants with green tomatoes. Our garden beds are now ready for our Autumn planting thanks to the hard work of our junior students with great assistance from Jo and Kate.
Our senior students' learning in Indonesian and our gardening and cooking skills came together this week when we made and shared a delicious Nasi Goreng (Fried Rice).
Bu McElgunn worked with the students to translate into Indonesian the ingredients we needed for the recipe. We grew and harvested the following ingredients for the Nasi Goreng: garlic (bawang putih), walking onions (bawang), eggs (telur), green beans (kacang hijau), Corn (jagung), cucumber (timun ), tomato (tomat) and zucchini (timun Jepang). We are going to continue this great collaboration of growing ingredients to be used in delicious Indonesian dishes throughout the year. The sunflowers we planted at the start of summer last year grew very tall. Hannah, Grace and Connor measured them last week and found out this is how tall our sunflowers grew.
Sunflower 1 1.8 metres Sunflower 2 1.4 metres Sunflower 3 1.35 metres Sunflower 4 1.45 metres We look forward to harvesting the seeds before the birds feast on them. Interesting fact: A sunflower is actually hundreds of tiny flowers grouped together and each tiny flower becomes a seed. The large yellow petals around the outside of the sunflower are called false petals. |
Sustainability at St JosephsAt St Joseph’s we inspire our students and our community to care for God’s world by conserving natural resources, through positive daily actions. We aim to provide practical environmental education in all aspects of school life and stimulate environmental consciousness for a sustainable future. Archives
September 2022
Categories |