The New Sustainability Courtyard

After much hard work and time, Soft finally has a centrally located, on campus plot! Located in the Sustainability courtyard, we collaborated our efforts with the landscaping department with special thanks to Roxanne Adams. Originally a grass "stage", we shoveled and dug until we had created an edible garden.
Some of the planting material include: sunflowers, cassava, basil, rosemary, sweet potato, taro, coco yam, lemon grass, and much more!
In hopes that this installation will encourage more student involvement, we made the area very accessible with rainbow shaped paths and a nice terrace. We look forward to harvesting and selling these publicly grown veggies and herbs, so come on down to our weekly sales! Also, stay tuned for more news about our new "banana walk way" next to the art building.

Photo credit: Miles Hakoda and Kent Kobayashi

Noelani First Grade Garden Spring 2011

Soft has been so happy to help with the collaboration with the Noelani first grade class garden! This semester, we focused on growing herbs that were sold at the end of the semester for the first grade class. The kids grew, harvested and bundled the herbs, both fresh and dried for their families to enjoy. The first graders also made their own cook book using recipes that they brought from home.
The lessons that we focused on this semester were about starting your garden, different types of soil, light, the power of weeds and maintenance, and the harvest.
We had a great time and cant wait to start again in the fall!


Photo Credit: Thomas Lim

Magoon in the Springtime

We have been working very hard this Spring semester to really improve our plot at the Magoon research facility. One dedicated student rallied in the support and built Softs first wood fired oven!
Most of the materials used in building the oven were gathered from the area and all of the labor was done by students. We are excited to host pizza parties and more with our new little oven that could!

We have also expanded our area at Magoon, adopting a couple fruit trees and a handful of land. Our big plans include creating an agroforestry system with bananas, various citrus, starfruit, vines such as passionfruit and black pepper, coconut and an artocarpus such as marang or breadnut!

Our vegetable production has increased, diversifying our sales and our crops. Some of the vegetables that we are growing include: kale, kai choy, green onion, beets, daikon, jaicama, corn, beans, taro, eggplant, cassava, zucchini, sunflowers, and much more!

Kava Harvest

Soft students were invited to harvest and process kava at a local farm. The processed kava was either fresh frozen or powdered for future Soft events and sales. We are looking forward to selling the kava plants that were propagated from the harvested plants at the kava festival later this year. We were lucky enough to work along side Dr. 'Skip' H.C. Bittenbender and Mike , both of whom were very generous with their time and donations.