Some of our K1 students have been wondering about creepy crawlies and things that grow. In small groups, the students visited one of our worm farms and they learned about how these special worms break down fruit and vegetable peels and turn it into valuable fertiliser for our school gardens. The worms are Malaysian blue worms and they are used for vermicomposting. Some of the students were very brave and picked up a very wriggly worm and giggled as it tickled their palms. One worm even leapt out of a student’s hand and landed on the ground. Who knew that worms could be so athletic?
The worm farm has a number of layers and the first layer is where we leave the food scraps. The second layer is where the ‘castings’ collect and the third layer is where the ‘worm tea’ collects. The castings and the tea are produced by the worms, after they eat all the fruit and veggie peels that the K2 and Grade 1 students feed them. The castings and tea contain lots of nutrients that our plants need, so we pass these along to the Incredible Edible Garden group to put on the garden beds.
The next stop was to explore the edible gardens to see how eggplants, dill, kafir lime and basil grow. It was great fun to try and guess what all the different plants were. The K1 students were very clever and could identify the banana trees. They saw a banana flower and how it developed into a whole bunch of smaller bananas.
Photos by Rekha Jansen
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