Progress with the zen garden

Progress with the zen garden

This week we mainly worked on our zen garden at the rooftop garden and were split into three separate groups. One group was responsible for gathering sand to put on top of the soil as a base to prepare to apply the special “zen” sand while another group were working on both watering and weeding the rooftop and the lower gardens as usual.

The main group worked on the zen garden by adding swirls and designs to the sand as well as creating patterns with rocks until we unfortunately discovered that the pandan plants that were planted last week had died due to the watering system malfunctioning so the decorative plants may be put on hold until we find a solution to the issue.

by Ethan

Laksa Pesto

Laksa Pesto

One of the groups made a delicious pesto made with some of the fresh ingredients grown in our gardens, such as, the laksa leaves and the chilli’s. They had some obstacles, but since they made two batches of pesto, they managed to correct their  mistakes. The pesto was served pasta (prepared by Sodexo) and even some teachers and maintenance people tried it!

As we are planning to make a zen garden in the upper garden, one other group helped out with clearing out the upper garden, like weeding it and making the ground even, preparing it to be made into the garden. 

And because we are making a zen garden, of course we need sand, so two girls helped bring up the sand. And more about the zen garden, others helped carefully dig out some of the Pandan plants (and possibly dill), and transport it to the upper garden for planting. 

By Inaya

 

Anyone for dill? (or Laksa? or a zen garden?)

Anyone for dill? (or Laksa? or a zen garden?)

This week we did a lot of different things. We first planned who was doing what, and split into groups. One group did some weeding as usual, in the lower garden. We cleared out the weeds in a couple of the beds that contained lime, mint, and dill. We also pulled out the Laksa, because it was not doing very well, and it could make more space for new plants.

One of our groups started to plan a new tool rack to access our tools more easily. It is going to go in the lower garden where the tools are currently, but it will help be more organised. They are planning to build it in the Ideas Hub later, when they have decided on everything.

We also are going to make a sort of zen garden, in the upper garden, along the walkway . Before planting and building it, we first needed to draw out exactly what and where everything is going to go. So far, we are going to put plants that look kind of spiky and nice. Since we are Incredible Edibles, we have limited plants because they all have to be edible, but we had some ideas of what to put in it, like lemongrass and pandan.

Another group continued the vertical garden from last week, but we found out that there is a piece missing, so we need to find it or get a new one to build the whole thing. Near the end of Service, we harvested some of the dill that was getting really tall in the lower garden and some of us brought some of it home. Next week we are planning to make a pesto pasta using Laksa leaves!

By Anila!

First harvest of Plantains

First harvest of Plantains

This week, we introduced a few new plants to our Lower Gardens.They were brought from the East Campus. We started with a quiz to see if we could identify any of the species. What we’ve got included some little cucumber plants, a small lemongrass plant, and a tomato plant — we were especially excited to have it in the garden. The most interesting one was a small plant which produces tasty mini-melons called cucamelons!!

Same as last week, we split into two teams. One went to the upper garden and focused on weeding, and the other stayed in the lower garden.

In the lower garden,  the beans were growing really well, but there weren’t enough sticks for them to climb onto. Therefore, some of us used bamboo sticks to create more space for them. Others planted the “newcomers” into our garden, but some of them were too small to be grown in the beds, so we kept them in the pots.

As new plants were introduced, there were not enough beds. We looked around and found that a part of the garden seemed to have plants that we don’t really know what they are so we will try to figure it out if it can be used to grow new plants.

We also harvested some of the plantains from one of the trees. It tastes very sweet after a few days but was not so nice when we had just cut them off the trees, because they were not yet ripe even though they had cracked already. At first we thought they were bananas – they looked quite different from the usual long, curved ones in the supermarkets. Instead,they were much shorter and bigger in diameter, and they are plantains.

We did some really good stuff this week and can’t wait to find out about the beans, the newly planted “travellers” and the mysterious pots at the end of our garden. If you know about the plants growing there, please tell us by leaving a comment on our website.

If you want to learn more about our gardens and what we grow, please feel free to take a look at this short video — A tour around our gardens — filmed by some of the students from Season 1 and 2 Wednesday group, or continue to explore our website.

Last but not least, right below the quotes, at the bottom of the page, there is an Edible Joke section that you can take a look at.

Any ideas? Leave Comments!!!  ;D

Soursop tree, Irrigation system & Tumeric

Soursop tree, Irrigation system & Tumeric

During the second week of Incredible Edibles, the Wednesday team divided up into several different groups.

Group 1 were busy planting and weeding in the upper Garden. The quality of soil in some of the beds is pretty poor so we will try to address that next time. But we tried to break up the soil with the spades this week. We had a bit of a panic as we worried that we were weeding our own Ladyfinger seedlings, but we checked and it was ok!

Henry replanted the Tumeric in the upper garden, adding mulch (organic matter from our own UWCSEA compost bins) and a sign so we knew what was in that patch of garden.

Another group checked the irrigation system and did some watering and weeding in the lower garden. They also checked that the signage matched what was planted there.

Christian and Mia planted a Soursop tree to add to the other fruits in our lower garden – which is developing into a fruit tree zone with limes, pineapples, papaya and banans already flourishing there.

The final group focused on building and testing a hydroponic farming device gifted to our very own Mr Sparks. This week was fun and everyone at Incredible Edibles is looking forward to next week.