Urban greens
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.
Lets Talk About The History
Incredible Edibles is an activity where we grow food products in UWC. We know that it’s important to have Incredible Edibles because it enhances our learning and also provides us with the knowledge that we can use in the future. From learning new things to having fun with friends Incredible Edibles allows us to do many things. When In Incredible Edible we realise that the environment and the area around us matter more than the mobile phone in our bag and the desktop that we have at home, We realised that the area around us has to be cared for and also to be seen as for what it is.
Incredible Edibles has had many names throughout the years that it has been open, it has been called names such as ‘Edible School Yard’ and ‘Urban Farmers’. Many people have contributed and helped towards making our school a more green and healthy community and this is another major way that we contribute as well. We know that urban gardening in Singapore is very important. It is important because only 8% of the food that we eat is made in Singapore and the other 92% is imported from halfway around the world, we need to start taking action and growing our own food. We need to start realising that gardening and growing our own crops is extremely important and that action has to be taken for it.
UWC has two main gardens, one is a roof garden and the other is the original one which is downstairs near the canteen. Both gardens have a variety of different fruits and vegetables and both of them are tended very nicely.
It’s not only the students that make Incredible Edibles what it is but it is also the teachers and parents that volunteer to help. Every single person that helps is another pair of hands that we can use. Everybody can make a difference
Notice anything new?
The lightening was threatening on Monday, so the Incredible Edible team took the chance to do a creative rainy day activity.
This was the old noticeboard for Green Campus in the tent plaza:
As one student said, “I’ve never even noticed this”. So we set about making it more….noticable!
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| Tired old posters were redesigned. |
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| Measurements were taken and a new design laid out |
Here is the final design. A few more items are still being created, feel free to add relevant Green campus materials yourselves.
Incredible Edible Update: Half Term
The Incredible Edible college service started on the 3rd of September with an extremely successful first session. We spent the first twenty minutes getting to know our fellow gardeners and our mission. The Incredible Edible mission is to encourage the community to grow edible plants in public spaces for anyone from the community to harvest. We also spent time sharing what the Incredible Edible mission means to us, on a personal or social level. This year the team consists of 10 middle schoolers and three high schoolers.
The second half was dedicated to removing the excess weeds from the soil that grew over the summer. Weeding is a routine task for our gardeners in Singapore as the high amounts of rain encourage growth. Half the team weeded the beds, whereas the other half worked on mixing the beds and preparing them for planting. We planted spinach saplings that were grown over the summer and long bean seeds from our old successful plants.
One of our goals this season was to work on increasing the variety of herbs and vegetables that we grow on campus. We dedicated the subsequent sessions to weeding the beds, this helps remove competition whiles the plants are still young, and transplanting our larger trees or planting new seeds and saplings. Students also spent time walking to the far nursery across campus to collect wheelbarrows full of soil and mulch to aid in preparing our new metallic beds.
The grade 10 area of focus on UWC Day 2018 was “Inspire Change”. Two mentor groups worked in our garden and helped out by weeding the side beds along the bridge walkway. This helped us substantially as that previously neglected area can be put to use. We covered the side beds with mulch to prevent the weeds from growing and will get to work next half term.
The Singaporean climate is perfect for growing a wide variety of vegetables and herbs. There is lots of sunlight and rain, however the main issue that we face are pests. The Incredible Edible garden on campus is completely organic, it comes with benefits, however, the influx of pests is the price we pay. The three plants that grow the best are: Asian Dil, Arugula (a smaller sub species of rocket) and Capsicum (this is the first year it is thriving). Sharing our produce with the community around us is an integral part of our mission and we love it when we find some of our food missing.
Feel free to come down to the garden after school to harvest some of your own green goodies!
Lemongrass tea, anyone?
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!
The new Wednesday team
The new Wednesday Incredible Edibles team met for the first time on Wednesday 5 September. After a few introductions the team got straight to work in the lower garden. Here is what we achieved:
- clearing unwanted plants
- planting corn, spinach, peas and beans
- breaking up compost to speed up decomposition
- making a map to show what we had planted where
- constructing a steel bed for the upper garden
The team were brilliant – positive, focused and collaborative. Everyone is looking forward to growing stuff and learning about urban gardening.
Thanks to our environmental leaders Charlotte and Joahne for stepping up to lead.
A new season
Walking around the gardens at the start of the year it is lovely to see the herbs and vegetables that have come through during the Summer. As the photos below show there are peppers, tomatoes, the pepperiest (is that a word?) rocket/arugula ever grown, and, as usual, a forest of dill!
Enjoy the greenness of the images below and if you are passing do have a taste, nothing tastes better than food picked and eaten in the sun.
Here’s looking forward to some great urban gardening in the Incredible Edible service this year.
