Archives | Incredible Edibles

Welcome to the new team

by eal | Jan 30, 2019 | Garden Updates, Uncategorized

On the first day of Incredible Edibles, we were given a tour of the gardens such as the upper garden, lower garden and nursery. At the upper garden we were given a taste of the organic produce such as cucumbers, peppers, whereas at the lower garden we were given a taste of herbs such as parsley and also got to sniff herbs such as sage. We then split into two groups, the planting group, who planted okra seeds at the lower garden and the weeding group, who weeded the upper garden and made it ready for the planting of more okra seeds. We really enjoyed the day and hope to continue with our stellar work after the Chinese New Year holidays!!

By Roye Ganju

Fruity happenings

by eal | Jan 24, 2019 | It's Edible!, Student Experiences, Uncategorized

Our last session for the Wednesday season 1 & 2 group was bitter sweet. We were sad to say goodbye but happy to see the fruits of labours (ho ho) appearing in our garden. Limes, bananas, a beautiful pineapple and some teeny weeny papaya all made an appearance in our garden.

We enjoyed a cup of lemon grass tea made for us by Koko and weeded our garden, adding mulch (thanks Nahel and Keibo), planting magic beans and saying goodbye to the beds we have tended since August.

We ended with a group reflection where we shared highlight moments from the service: things we were particularly proud of, and things we have learned.

Some examples of reflections:

I’m really proud of how we worked together as a team.
I’ve never been in a group that has listened to each other and got on so well.
I’m really proud of the fact that we did everything we said we would: we went to the Citizen farm, we’ve made the herb pots.
I’m most proud of the herb pot project
I really like the way we created the blog. I liked writing the blog posts.
I am so happy we focused on raising awareness about our service and shared what we do on our blog.
I liked getting the mulch! it was really fun.

Here are some quotes from our student reflections

Having understood gardening better, I am now able to spread this knowledge along to other people, just as it was to me. I am now also able to start a garden in my house with confidence, the planting has already started. Not to mention, the amount of respect I have for gardening fresh resources is a lot more, having seen the amount of effort that has to go into gardening!

I think that this service has affected my choices by making me more aware about urban gardening and the impact that humans have on the environment. In the future I think that I will also buy more locally sourced produce as it helps support local farms and may actually be more healthy.

In Incredible Edible, we planted different types of plants in the garden, and researched a lot about plants and how to grow them. Not only did I learn many tips about gardening, but also learnt to be hardworking and patient. Gardening takes a lot of hard work like weeding and watering, and it also takes patience because not all plants manage to survive. I think that this service was very successful because we contributed to make our school better by growing plants and making the school look more green.

I think the best bit about this service was getting my hands dirty!

I think my best contribution has been writing a few articles on the incredible edible site such as Singapore’s urban gardening and fruits such as pineapples and aloe vera. This will help people learn more about plants and the environment in Singapore.

In Incredible Edible, we are taking care of two gardens in the campus, modifying them to make them better (more pots, different plants), building our service website to increase our influence and planning activities or events in and out the campus. We had visited the citizen farm, who is providing veggie boxes for some families in the UWCSEA community, to study their work and to get some ideas and advice. We are also planning to do a Class Herb Garden sell in the Junior School and Infant School.

I have learnt that it is easier and more fun to work with others when gardening because you can talk to each other and get the job done quicker. You can also help each other with things which will make it easier.

I now understand how to appreciate the vegetables that we can get in the market and the effort that was put into making them. I understand how much time, sunlight and water was put into making these plants.

I learned that I could make friends with others through gardening. I think my best contribution is planting garlic because the garlic grew more than I imagined. I think that the trip to the citizen farm was the most successful aspect of this service.

The hardest part has been working int he dust and heat and just carrying on. I used to think you don’t have to put energy in when you are growing stuff, but now I see you have to work hard for good food.

Herb pot happenings

by eal | Jan 20, 2019 | Garden Updates, Projects, Uncategorized

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!

Our goal

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!

A collaborative project with East

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.

Making the towers

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!