Term 3 Week 1 Preparing the strawberry bed for summer

Digging over the old strawberry bed and sorting out which plants to save

Putting the strawberry plants in one of the other beds to look after them while we finish digging

Our broad beans have started to grow so we tried to decide what food we could make with them

Our lettuces are growing too - great for a salad

Reptile trip to Motueka

Skinks love this plant - it gives them lots of places to find food and to hide from predators

This is a forest gheko, you only find them in NZ. You can only keep them with a permit.

Using a hand lens to see the skink

The skinks did not move too much because it was a cold morning

This one lost it's tail, maybe a kingfisher tried to catch it?

So now we knew where they lived and what they looked like, so we went to find some in the wild

We looked under driftwood and found some. You have to put them back EXACTLY where you found them

So we went to get some drift wood for our skink garden. We'll have to look out for the cats though!

We have been doing lots of vegetable gardening and we wanted to find out how to make a garden for wildlife. We went to see a ranger at DOC in Motueka and he showed us how to make a garden and what NZ skinks look like. He told us loads of interesting information and took us on an adventure to see some skinks in the wild. Thanks DOC!

Mahana Garden Week 2

This week we weeded then planted some beans, brocolli and lettuce.