With lots of hard work and frequent watering over the Christmas holidays the vegetable garden is flourishing...I would say one of our most productive growing seasons yet!!  As well as watering and maintaining the garden I have also been busy baking/cooking, testing and formatting some scrumptious new recipes ready for the term ahead.

We have a fantastic amount of stone fruit on the trees as well as kilos of produce already snap frozen in the freezer....they include cherries, apricots, peaches and blackberries. Just this week we harvested almost 8 kg of Japanese plums. We have an abundance of fresh herbs and colourful marigolds.  Silver beet, zucchinis, cherry tomatoes and eggplants are also doing well and we have lots of pumpkin and melon seedlings popping up.  Composted soil from last year has resulted in seedlings of all different varieties popping up in all areas of the garden. We have a few lemons, limes and figs on our young trees so hopefully we can look forward to more productive crops from them in the future. Unfortunately no koalas were spotted in or around the garden over the break.     

The Kitchen Garden Program will once again run as a whole school program this year. Each year level will participate in a block of both kitchen and garden lessons. We will be needing lots of helpers throughout the year!! If you have completed the RAN-EC training and have a current DCSI/DHS clearance we would love your help. Please ring or message me of your availability.

Term 1 - 6/7 Power, 6/7 Lewis/Carey, 5/6 Burns

Term 2 - 5/6 Currer, 4/5 Branson, 4/5 MacLean

Term 3 - 1/2 Birss, 1/2 Howlett, 1/2 Idzikowski, 1/2 Thomas, Rec Lang, Rec Pullman

Term 4 - 3/4 Rigney/Knight, 3/4 Stanley, 3/4 Wickham/Dixon, 3/4 Yates

Do you have excess fruit or vegetables from your own home garden? The kitchen garden program is always happy to accept donations of produce which we incorporate into our weekly lessons. Donations can be dropped into the office or the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen, Monday – Thursdays.

If you have any questions regarding the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Program please don’t hesitate to ring or message me or you can often find me in either the school garden or the SAKGP kitchen.

Michele Smith

Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Program Coordinator

Volunteer Mobile 0408 637 850