by eal | Feb 26, 2019 | It's Edible!, Uncategorized
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
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.
by chris | Nov 27, 2018 | It's Edible!, Uncategorized
A selection of Incredible Edible produce on our urban rooftop. Today students could take home beans, peppers, lettuce, limes and fennel, as seen in the urban setting above.
by eal | Sep 30, 2018 | It's Edible!, Uncategorized
The Incredible edibles team have been busy.
In the lower garden we have been planting seedlings (rocket, beans and lettuce), weeding and mulching (which means spreading organic matter on the top to reduce weed growth and stop the soil drying out).
We’ve also been assembling new steel beds. It was quite fiddly, especially getting the plastic rim on the top. You can find the beds in the upper garden above the Heritage cafe. Once they had been lined, our next job was filling them with soil. This was not straightforward given that some of the wheel barrows have flat tyres. We had to mix the soil 10:20 soil to mulch as this is the right balance for growing food.
We also drank some lemon grass tea – our first opportunity to taste something from our own garden!
