Families Go Wild in the Garden!

Today we had two new families join us for Families Go Wild! They were very helpful and took quickly to the jobs we needed to do. We were glad to welcome them to our session!

We started by taking a look at the Families Go Wild garden beds, where we’ve been growing vegetables for the last few months. Some of the volunteers were here when we planted most of the vegetables, and hadn’t been to the farm since. They found it amazing how much the corn and tomatoes had grown!

Once we had looked around the garden, we got to some planting. A few weeks ago, we sowed nasturtium seeds in big modules, and this week they were big enough to be planted out.

We planted them in the bed by the treehouse, which already had Cosmos flowers and beetroot growing in it. Once we had planted the nasturtiums, we watered them in. Nasturtium leaves are hydrophobic, meaning they repel water. We had a lot of fun pouring water on the leaves, watching the droplets form and travel around on the leaves.

Once we had found space for all the nasturtiums, we went back to the community garden to pot up some herb cuttings we had taken several weeks ago. There were lavender, rosemary, mint, and lemonbalm cuttings.

We transferred them from the modules they were in into bigger pots. We could tell they needed potting on, as we could see roots growing out of the bottom of the modules.

We made sure to water the cuttings once we had potted them, and we’re excited to watch them grow over the coming weeks and months.

Our work wasn’t finished yet! It’s been a hot week, and we want our plants to grow strong and healthy. This means we need to water them regularly, and give them plenty of water when we do. We watered out vegetable garden using rainwater collected in a tank in the community garden.

When we had finished watering, we picked some mint and a bit of lemonbalm. We washed it in water and then added it to a jug of water to infuse. While the flavours were infusing, we sat down and tried to remember the names of all the plants we had interacted with during the day. We also took the opportunity to taste some sorrel that was in the kitchen garden. We all loved it and wanted more and more, but we made sure not to pick too much.

We drank our water, refreshingly infused with mint and lemonbalm. It was very cooling, and exactly what we needed. We’re looking forward to seeing each other and the farm again, for the next Families Go Wild!