Eco Adventure Incursions | Gardener
Eco Adventure Incursions
Address: Geelong 3220 Greater Geelong, VIC, Australia
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22.01.2022 Winter in the garden, beautiful vegetable plants grown from heirloom seed varities-- turnip purple top, broad bean crimson flowered, snow pea, cabbage mini, oak leaf lettuce. Plus borage and parsley left to flower to keep the pollinators and other beneficial insects happy year round.
21.01.2022 We've created this group as a space for early childhood educators across Geelong and the Surfcoast to share ideas and support each other around sustainability, gardening and permaculture. Please feel free to join if you are an early childhood educator and share with other educators.
21.01.2022 Beautiful spring blossoms...and some great ideas for spring blossom paintings to engage and inspire any children in your life https://toddlerapproved.com///spring-blossom-painting.html https://www.artycraftykids.com//finger-print-spring-bloss/
17.01.2022 Hello Spring! Some wonderful spring veggies almost ready to pick- fennel and the first of the baby broad beans. Beautiful blossoms on the nectarine and peach trees. And a very young mulberry tree forming it's first fruits.
16.01.2022 Children love pretend cooking and colourful pickable plants make it even more fun. My kids love using nasturtiums, borage flowers and a variety of greens with sand and water. Our pots and utensils are all the real thing purchased at the op shop. What other plants have you found kids love to play with (and can stand up to their picking!)?
16.01.2022 Banana passion fruits ripening. This plant is a great alternative to regular passion fruit. It grows with ease, quickly covers a large area, develops large amounts of fruit and has beautiful pink flowers throughout winter. The fruit is yellow when ripe and tastes similar to a regular passion fruit but is not as juicy. It also peels easily making it a popular garden snack for kids!
13.01.2022 Ever wondered why bees build hexagonal honeycombs? This short video explains it and it's all about maths. https://youtu.be/kxDEcODUEP0
10.01.2022 Broad beans are coming along nicely. This year I've planted 2 varieties aquadulce and crimson flowered. Both broadbeans and regular beans are a great way to engage kids in the garden. They are relatively quick and easy to grow and I've found young children particularly enjoy podding the broadbeans.
09.01.2022 While we often like to pick our produce at it's prime and pull it out to make way for other crops, there's a lot to be observed and learnt (for both children and adults) about natural cycles from leaving things to go to seed. This parsley plant below shows some of the different stages- flowering, seeds developing and ripening then finally the dry brown seed head from which the seeds have fallen. Plants like this are also invaluable in attracting pollinators and other beneficial insects such as ladybugs and lacewings which are predators of aphids.
09.01.2022 Cherry tomato seedlings are coming along nicely! If you plant one thing for a child this summer, make it a cherry tomato. Loads of sweet fruits that kids can easily pick themselves and eat straight from the plant. Most of mine are still in the greenhouse, but I've put a few out in my raised beds which are also doing pretty well. It's worth experimenting in the garden with the current changes in climate.
07.01.2022 Even more reasons to get kids involved in the garden. https://www.sciencealert.com/daycares-in-finland-built-a-ba
06.01.2022 Raspberries are a fantastic plant for children as they adore picking the berries and eating them straight from the plant. With 2 little ones in my house we struggle to get any berries inside! To extend your harvest it's best to plant a variety of plants selecting some each of summer fruiting, dual fruiting and autumn fruiting varieties. As they have different pruning requirements it's best to plant them in sections. I've used a room trellis here with 3 different sections. The... first section has the summer fruiting variety- old canes (that have fruited in the year) are cut to the ground after fruiting. The next section contains the dual fruiting berries which can produce both a summer and Autumn crop. They benefit from a tip pruning after the summer fruit. After the autumn fruit all canes are cut to the ground. Finally the last section contains autumn fruiting berries- the easiest of all, these are cut completely to the ground after their autumn fruiting. By setting it up this way I'll get maximum fruit across the season without accidentally cutting away next year's fruiting canes from my summer varities. See more
04.01.2022 Some of our weekend at home was occupied making (and playing with) rainbow playdough. See recipe on the link below- easy to make (no cooking) and last 6 months plus in the freezer. We made half a batch of 4 different colours. It's a great way to use up old flour and food colouring. We had a packet of self raising flour well past best before date and some food colouring that came in glass bottles with a price sticker 72 cents! Kids have been really enjoying it for a range of creative play activities. https://theimaginationtree.com/best-ever-no-cook-play-doug/
04.01.2022 Making more strawberry plants- for free. If you haven't tried this out definitely give it a go! At this time of year strawberry patches are getting pretty crowded so it's time to remove some of the runners and turn them into new plants. You can pot these up to share or plant straight into another spot. How to: 1. Find the runners (small plants coming off of your existing plants and attached by a long "stem") 2. Cut the "stem" and dig up the small plant.... 3. Trim most of the leaves off. 4. Pot up or plant somewhere else. 5. Water...and that's it! See more
03.01.2022 Winter Veggies - making good use of space This 2 x 1 metre patch was planted out in early autumn with seedlings grown in late summer. This means veggies have enough time to put on some good growth before the cold of winter sets in. Mini varieties of cabbage and cauliflower mean you can fit more in your garden bed. Sprouting brocolli will provide an abundance of smaller florets that can be picked every week throughout winter and spring. Small lettuces fill the gaps and can be harvested as individual leaves and left to grow back, providing a long harvest.
02.01.2022 Ordered too much sand for the sandpit? Make your own seed raising and potting mixes. It's easy and lots of fun for kids. My toddler enjoyed collecting the ingredients (made even more fun with a 2nd hand tip truck toy), scooping, sieving and mixing. Inspired by a fellow gardener at Grovedale Community Garden we used homemade compost (sieved through a fine kitchen sieve from the op shop for the seed raising mix), coconut coir and of course the sand! Some links to more recipes below if you want to give it a try. https://www.frugalandthriving.com.au/save-money-in-the-gar/ https://www.pipmagazine.com.au//make-your-own-diy-potting/
02.01.2022 These strawberries I potted from runners a few weeks ago went off to my childs school as gifts for his classmates to celebrate his birthday instead of lollies or plastic toys.
01.01.2022 Halloween is often filled with waste creating plastic decorations. But it doesn't have to be that way, with some simple found and recycled objects you can make some pretty cool decorations. Spiderweb sticks, disused shoelace to secure, wool from the op shop Spider black tissue paper, staples, black ribbon from a gift Ghost bubble wrap for head and body, covered in an old ripped white sheet. Another shoelace to tie and permanent marker for face.
