KVC 7Hm

7Hm are exploring planting fruit on the urban farm. The main focus is to plant berries and currently a lot of the research has been investigating Blueberries. We have also been investigating strawberries, raspberries and other fruit like apples, grapes and passionfruit.


Questions
1. Are any other classes considering fruit? If so what fruit?
2. Are any groups investigating a watering system that we could join up with? If so what area are you planning to water?
3. We would like to net our plants to avoid loss of fruit to birds. Is this going to cost too much compared to how much fruit it will save? 

We have been testing the soil in the Urban Concept Farm field

The back field soil is pale, clumpy and very wet we could even mould it into shapes

 The compost is much darker with larger bit in it


Look at the different colour of water when we mix it with the soil samples. The left sample is from the worm farm the right sample is the Urban Concept Farm soil see how pale it is! 

When we tested the water's pH we found that the Urban Concept Farm soil was acidic and the compost and worm farm was neutral, which surprised us.

2nd August 


Some very keen lunchtime volunteers and I (and Duncan came to help too) have just heeled in some of the large fruit trees that Mr McMIllian has bought for us to plant in the Urban Farm. Heeling in is to protect their roots until we have the holes ready to plant them. Hopefully a digger will be here to dig 14 large holes for us before the end of the month. 
Some of the varieties that were bought are:

Buerre Hardy BA29, Liberty 106, Egremont Russet 106, Merton Russet 106, Discovery 106, Bos Koop 106, Epicure 106, Fortune 106, Kidds Orange 106, Prima 106, Hetlina BA29, Jargenlle 106,

The numbers tell us the rootstock type that the apple variety is grafted to.


We bought the trees from heritage fruits in Waitati, they have a great website that details what we need to do to plant out the trees. There is also lots of information on this web site about the trees.

http://www.habitate.co.nz/2016/03/12/fruit-tree-planting-training-pruning-guide/

Looks like we have a lot of work to do to prepare the holes for the trees!


After a huge day of planting and preparing holes all but one tree was planted. This left the final apple tree, Kidd's Orange, to be planted by the Minister of Education, Hekia Parata. Check out the great article in the ODT! 

20 comments:

  1. Hi 7HM! Your class is working really well - good on you all. I like the idea of having some tasty fruit on the farm. Have you thought about what type of soil is best to grow, say, blueberries? I heard they need acidic soils - we should test this in the lab. Dr McMillan Kaikorai Valley College

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  2. Kia ora 7Hm, some students in our class, 8Fl, are also looking at fruit trees/berry bushes. Rather than netting the bushes - how about building some scarecrows?
    Ngā mihi 8Fl Science students.

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    1. Kia ora 8Fl,
      Thank you for your suggestion, we did think about scarecrows we decided that nets would protect our fruit better. we look forward to sharing some more ideas about the fruit as we learn more. We are also thinking about the wasps easting our fruit, have you any iideas about them.
      Ngā mihi 7Hm Science

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  3. Dylan 8Nk: Passionfruit is a summer plant - it will die over winter.
    Brie 8Nk: says banana passionfruit might grow better? (even though we think this might be a weed)
    Lochlan 8Nk: Says his Grandad uses nets and he thinks it saves heaps of fruit.

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    1. Thank you 8Nk for the comments on fruits to select. We are learning lots as we research each of the fruit we like. We are even looking into goji berries! It is good to know that a net is worthwhile.

      Nga Mihi 7Hm

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  4. Good work 7HM! Its been interesting to work with you during investigations into the properties of soils. Someone in class should tell the rest of us what you did!? Dr McMillan

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  5. We found out that our soil is very wet and made of lots of clay. You can see it is pale compared to the compost. The soil is acidic and our compost and worm farm were neutral. Check out the images that we have added to our page.

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  6. Logan and Archie Bva: room 7 is doing composting we can lend you some compost for your fruit trees.Have you thought about the types of fruit trees you can grow at the urban farm.

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    1. Hi Archie and Logan thank you for the idea of lending us the compost soil. We are thinking about doing apple trees we are going to plant them at the bottom of the hill so they can collect water. We will see what type of soil that they need and depending on the soil we would be happy to have some?
      Jamie and Claire 7hm kvc.

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  7. Sean Annalise (kaikorai).Lovely presentation but how are you going to solve this.Does that mean no planting for us?

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    1. Hi Sean
      We are still investigating what plants we could plant next to our fruit trees and bushes. We know it is really important to attract bees to our flowers. What flowers are best to help keep bees happy?

      Thank you Brennan 7Hm KVC

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    2. Sean and annalise (kaikorai) well these are what we were thinking of growing the manuka, Borage, Lavender, Rosemary, calendula and comfrey. hopefully they are able to grow.

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  8. Zoey BVA In some way we could link in because you are looking at the soils and we are doing composting we could see what soils are best to mix in with compost.

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    1. Hi Zoey, Thank you for your comment
      We read your comment and thought it was a great idea, we would love to work together if it would help our plants and our learning, we could get a sample of the soil and you could do some experimints on the soil and the compost mixed.
      Thanks again, Talia & Brooklyn 7Hm

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  9. Hi 7HM. I am trying to grow some blueberry bushes from cuttings I have taken off my own plants here at home. So far so good. The cuttings have new buds on them. If they grow into a new plant with roots I will have produced a copy of the older plant. Wish me luck. If it works, I'll give you them for the farm. Tasty blueberry muffins will taste very good indeed! Dr McMillan

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  10. The apple and pear trees are going to be planted next week. It is exciting to be making the first changes to the back field and see our farm start to develop. Check out this great illustration of a planting guide from where we bought our fruit trees.
    http://www.habitate.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Planting-Guide-Illustration-400x409.jpg
    I am really looking forward to seeing them all in the ground.

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  11. Hi I'm Liam from 7Hm.We Have Planted are trees ( Apple & Pear ) and I have planted one. The discovey apple tree.I planted it with jack ( 7Hm ). It was very fun. We had to get rid of all the clay that was there. At the end of the discovey apple tree were looks of twigs and we had to make sure the werent squashed. We made sure it was straight and the dirt was up to the twigs.

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  12. Hi Liam. Good to know you have planted the first trees and enjoyed doing it together. All the planning and thinking you and the class did has come to fruition! Are you watering and maintaining the trees too. Good to see the class decided to put in some animal protectors around the trees. All the best to the rest of the 7HM students - go for it!

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  13. Hi. Brooklyn here. Over the past weekend I've made a planter box with my dad to give to the Urban Farm. I really wanted to make the box so I could help the school by donating the box to the Urban Farm to provide a place to plant more crops. I really enjoyed making the box and I'm looking forward to planting the seeds and filling the box with soil. I suggested we could plant some radishes or some spring onions. The planter box has 2 boxes attached to the side of the box to plant flowers in which will hopefully attract bee's around the farm to pollinate our plants and crops.

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