Jake harvests the first bunch of radishes from the preschool garden. He told his teacher "You just chop them up and put the vinegar on them. That's how my mum does it". So we followed Jakes advice and were surprised that these crunchy radishes tasted so good. We are watering our seedlings that were planted out before the break. Carrots, sugar snap peas, spinach and cherry tomatoes are taking off.

The Preschool has entered the Junior Landcare "Pumpkin Challenge" so we will be busy caring for our pumpkin seedlings too. We plan to measure and chart the growth of our pumpkins over summer.

Thousands of Australian kids will be honing their gardening skills over summer through the Junior Landcare Pumpkin Challenge, which gets kids outdoors and learning about the environment, 'food miles' and healthy eating.

The term 'food miles' refers to how far food travels - from producer to consumer - and is an indication of how environmentally-friendly it is.

DID YOU KNOW? A shopping basket filled with 29 common groceries travelled a total 70,803km, which is nearly twice around the circumference of the Earth (40,072 km).

Of this 70,000km, less than one-third was from "road miles", emphasising the huge distance contributed from importing foreign food. Just four imported items accounted for nearly 50,000 kilometres.