Check out our herb towers. Finally ready (its taken a while) – complete with herbs from our own garden, cuttings of dill and a few extras.
Herbs included are: pandan; chillis; basil; dill; coriander; rosemary and laksa
The towers will be on display in the G5 expo
More good progress occurred this week. As mentioned in the last blog post we were asked to have a stall in the Grade 5 Expo and the progress has been great as we have finished all our research. However, the people in the group don’t feel confident enough to make the infographic so we are all hoping that someone (maybe an infographic professional) could step in and save the day.
A group has managed to book the food tech room for next weeks as the group will be making some delicious Pandan Pancakes and some vegetarian laksa. So stay alert for the next blog post for possibly some mouth drooling pictures (depends on if we succeed).
On the same week on Monday, the Monday group provided some small square paper pots which have been aligned in a tray and have seeds in them. We’ve learnt from our mistakes, don’t plant the seeds to deep or we will end up with nothing. As well as that, a group of daring participants went to produce some compost. And they were ambushed by heavy rain, but that didn’t stop them, they finished the job and came back with what could possibly be a gallon of water.
-Kees
An eventful Wednesday for the group this week. As per request, the Incredible Edible service will have a stall at this year’s Grade 5 Expo. We have a 3 person squad working on the research and a beautiful infographic that will be on display on the day.
We also had a group putting in the herb pot towers into action and the turnout was very successful. We put many different plants into it and it looks very promising and dare I say that it could be a great step for the Incredible Edible service.
– Kees
How can we encourage a passion for growing food in our community?
This is the question the Incredible Edibles team have been wrestling with. We tossed around lots of different ideas but the idea that emerged as the front runner was providing herb pots for primary school classrooms. Tebo and Koko found a great design online for a Herb Tower.
Joahne designed a questionnaire that we sent to teachers to see how much interest there might be in this idea. We had a request for 24 herb towers!
The students in infant and junior classes get to care for and learn about lovely fresh herbs. They can take herbs home to use in cooking with their families. Hopefully this will plant a seed (!) in our youngest students about the satisfaction that comes from growing your own food and it is an opportunity for teachers to talk about how we can reduce our ecological footprint and live more sustainably by growing our own food rather than importing it. In Singapore we currently import over 92% of our own food!
Where were we going to get the herbs for our planters? We haven’t got enough in our own gardens, growing from seed is quite a fiddly process and we are busy weeding and managing our own gardens. Buying the herbs would be expensive. The East HS Propagation team came to our rescue! They are a new HS College service who take orders for plants and then grow them for people in the community.
Meanwhile we needed to get stuck in with making the towers. Last Wednesday we went to Andy’s (head gardener) garden with Nathan (Director of Sustainability) to see how we could recycle old pots to make our towers. Our team worked to create their own designs. We came up with a couple of our own versions of ‘The Tower’ using the materials we had, and Tebo and Koko taught the team how to mix up the potting compost using soil, sand and mulch. The students worked tirelessly, dividing themselves up into ‘pot sourcers’ (who found pots the right size and tried to avoid the ants and spiders); the ‘construction crew’ (who built the towers); the ‘washing team’ (who washed the pots); and the ‘soil gang’ (who made up the soil and filled the towers). We made 24 herb towers in 1 service session and are now ready for the herbs to arrive!
