At Silverton we are excited to be part of the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Program.
There are four parts to this program:
We started in Term One with the Grade Three/ Four students by learning how to grow vegetables from seeds. Students learn how to sow seeds, watch them grow into seedlings ready to be planted into our vegetable garden at school. They have also learnt how to collect seeds from the plants to grow for next year. Students also harvested food that we grew over summer to make passata for mini pizzas and zucchini and purple carrot rosti served with cacik- a cucumber yoghurt dip. We used our school grown tomatoes, basil, purple carrots, cucumbers, parsley and oregano.
In Term Two grade five/ six students have been using silver beet from the garden to make silver beet and ricotta cannelloni and a garden salad. Students have been learning about safe food handling practices and three main knife techniques. The program is going very well and students have really enjoyed learning new skills, making new recipes and trying new foods.
We have planted cabbage, cauliflower, celery, beans, lettuce, coriander, spinach and rainbow chard in the vegetable garden. We have been making samosas in Term Three using the herbs from the garden whilst waiting for our winter vegetable garden to grow.
Foundation students have been using the flowers in the garden to press and then decorate the recycled paper that they made for the Art Show. They have also learnt about compost and the life cycle of an apple tree.
Students from our Environment Club have been growing carrot and flower seeds during lunchtimes and have been planting lettuce and harvesting sugar snap peas.