Summer Garden Days

Saving seed from the dill- a wonderful pollinator plant, and the Sun Hemp is ready to begin clipping and turning in for mulch. Successful summer of putting Mrs. Brasks garden to sleep- while feeding it and feeding the bees and butterflies for the summer. 

Checking in on Mrs Muriel Warne's garden- everything held up great in the heat- the Kalo and sugarcane are getting big

Finishing up the summer internship with Buddy and Jordan and me in a cast :( Slowed me down a bit- but slowly plugging along- inch by inch

Summer Workdays to get the garden installed

Mahalo Jeff for your dedication to making this school garden happen. Summer is not the easiest time for teachers and parents, and we are so grateful that you took the time to lend a hand and help us with the installation.

Aaron giving Carter and the Kamehameha students a lesson on pick-axing. This is one way that people commonly hurt their backs, and tool maintenance and body-mechanics lessons often get overlooked in garden-installations, so we all were so grateful to have an expert on hand to share his guidance with us all. 

So grateful to have the help of an amazing parent Jeff who has been so supportive of the garden from the beginnings- this week he came out and saved us hours of labor by removing a couple of the big shrubs that were in the middle of the garden space. 

Tracy Tarlow taking a much deserved break on the pile of cardboard we got for sheet-mulching. The idea with the cardboard is to get only dye-free board, it's non-toxic and acts as not only a great weed-barrier under the mulch but also as it breaks down it feeds the soil and is a great house for worms.

Leveling out the backs of the beds- pre-measuring each bed and flagging them so that we were able to spend the energy just on leveling the bed-placements rather than the entire area (which could be better leveled after the mulching is added).

Many Hands make Light Work

Mentorship begins with the garden installation- it's a time for intergenerational sharing, for building community, and a sense of pride for a job done together.  

That's a lot of mulch to go through- Mahalo Justice, Jordan and Buddy- it was a couple long-hot days but so rewarding (especially since Buddy was a Pukalani School graduate). Such a great way to give back to your old school. 

Such a great team of volunteers- Mahalo to our Kamehameha Students Buddy and Jordan, to School-Garden Warriors: Justice, Kaleed, Tracy, Carter, Aaron, Garrett, Bob, Ed and Rebekah & Lehn Huff with Maui School Garden Network for making it all happen

It' beginning to look like a garden.
Mahalo to Kimberly Clark/ Events in Paradise/ JNR and all of the employees who built the garden boxes, the compost bins and painted these incredible signs that are actually making this garden possible! We are so grateful

The new School Garden at Pukalani Elementary school needs you!

This year we are finally going to be able to install a full outdoor classroom complete with garden box beds for different classes, a garden designated for Native Hawaiian plants, Canoe Plants, a Pollinator garden and Gardens of the World.

We are just in the beginning stages and a big Mahalo to the amazing School Garden Committee: (Principal Dr Dimino, Lehn Huff, Betty Brask, Jamie Gomer, Todd Craine, Kerf, Ed Lorico-Minchin, Petar Kovacic, Carol Davies, Jeff Williams, Phillip from Ace Hardware, Muriel Warne, Doug Duarte,Jaime Alhman)

 We are so grateful to have Pukalani Ace Hardware as our sponsor for the school garden and our wonderful community member Phillip from Ace Pukalani who is doing the installation of our irrigation for us!

This is what the space looks like now- and it is going to take some helping hands to get this installation complete.

Next Pukalani School Garden Workday:- 

WEDNESDAY JULY 9th 10am- 6pm 

(come for even an hour to lend a hand)

CURRENT NEEDS:

Large Cardboard boxes for sheetmulching (the appliance boxes are best)

Local compost and aged steer manure

Wheel barrows (2)

Shovels/ pick axe/ Rakes

Helping hands

Please join us in making this dream a reality. It is about time that this school had an amazing garden

Planting the "Plants of Hawaii" mini-garden

There were just shrubs lining the outside of Mrs. Warne's  classroom- and thanks to Kindergarden teacher Todd Craine, he removed the bushes, and a parent came out for the day to lend a hand to get the mini-garden started. We did a brief introduction to Canoe plants and the difference between canoe plants and native/endemic plants in Hawaii. We also introduced some plants that don't fit into either category but are plants that the children interface with a lot in Hawaii that are really a big part of the islands- Sugarcane, and Pineapple. We planted the Kalo in the center of the garden- representing that it will always be the center of the culture and the heart of Hawaii. The students had so much fun and got to enjoy an afternoon of watergames for the end of the school-year celebration afterwards. I'm excited to watch this small space grow this year- and thank you to Muriel Warne for seeing the potential in even such a small space- to transform it into a teaching space.

Feeding the soul of the Soil Lesson

We got to build up the very soul of the Soil- and the kids got to understand how the soil likes to eat a diverse spectrum of foods just like we do in order to be the healthiest/most balanced that it can be. This week we compared our own plates to what we feed our soil and saw that there are some striking resemblances between what our bodies need for nutrition and what our soil needs for nutrition- driving the lesson home that:

Our bodies are only as healthy as what we put into them

Our Plants and animals are only as healthy as the soil they eat from

So really--

We are only as healthy as the soil!

So we made quite the feast for the garden....Fed some delicious carbs (compost), some salad (grass clippings, seaweed and comfrey leaf), some fruit (banana peels), some protein (humus), local fish (opihi shell and fish bone meal) and even some dessert (Molasses rich Effective Micro-organisms)

The kids loved it- and had a great day in the garden

The slow and Humble beginnings

Sometimes you just have to start somewhere. Just get plants into the ground, get students connected to outdoor learning, to the act of growing something. It's all about getting the momentum moving. In 2013-2014 We were able to begin small growing spaces at the school. We bought some large planters, compost, soil mix, and a variety of marigolds, beans, sunflower starts and seeds for the kids to experiment with. You could see right from the start just how engaged the students were in the wonder of growing. 

Sometimes when the school is needing more time to get the garden committee formed, the donations gathered, funding/grants secured- the best thing you can do is just start small- a few pots and plants and at least get the intention planted. Growth is sure to follow.