Noelani First Grader Garden

This fall SOFT did something new! We teamed up with the first grade teachers at Noelani to create a wonderful learning garden for their students. Over the last three months the first graders planted seeds, tended to their crops, and harvested the flowers and veggies to bring back and enjoy in their classroom.

This is how it all started. Here we are watering in a basil transplant, but we also sowed seeds for sunflowers, cosmos, daikon, carrots, green beans, mizuna, lettuce, green onion, and planted taro huli!

After several visits where the students tended their garden, it was harvest time. Here they are collecting flowers to make bouquets for their classrooms.

It might be next year's first graders who get to enjoy the taro harvest. But this year everyone is still working hard to keep the taro weeded. The kids have loved to watch these huge leaves grow from the huli we planted just a few short months ago!

Washing the harvest of daikon, carrots, mizuna, green beans and green onions. The first graders brought all the veggies back to school where they prepared and enjoyed a great veggie miso soup!

This is almost everyone! We had a great semester and it looks like the first graders will continue their garden through the spring. This has been a great opportunity for the kids to grow food, get out side and enjoy learning in their garden. Thank you to all of the wonderful UH student volunteers, faculty, and Noelani first grade teachers who made this possible.

Hey, where did fall go?

Well it's been a long dry spell with no blogging, but there's certainly been a lot of activity around the farm. Here are just a few of our accomplishments:

We've managed to grow enough vegetables to sell nearly every week this semester.

We've expanded our Mauka garden to make room for even more tomatoes and greens. If all goes well, we expect to have tomatoes available most of the spring semester, along with loads of arugula (it's been a favorite these past few weeks) as well as lettuce, sweet basil, and carrots.

On the Waimanalo farm, our bananas have gone bananas! Every Saturday when we show up we're shocked at how much more they've grown. With over 20 different varieties there's always something amazing to look forward to, as we await new fruit stalks and tasty yellow fruits. In between the bananas, we've been growing three different kinds of sweet potatoes since the spring. We harvested and sold a bunch of the earlier maturing kinds (like Molokai Red), and also made good use of the tender greens in stir-fries and curries. In the places where we harvested potatoes, we're trying out a few different things, including daikon, birdhouse gourds, and kabocha.

Of course, all of this takes work, and there's been no shortage of that. We're happy to see new faces nearly every week, and it's amazing to see people willing to muscle up and get dirty. We've spread literally tons of compost and mulch, and hand-pulled countless thousands of weeds. We make time for fun stuff, too, like relaxing at Waimanalo Beach Park.