Welcome – this is a blog for community garden and farming news – and highlights from One Island’s special field trips and events.
Learn more about the Same Canoe Community Garden Project. Join us for seasonal field trips to explore our watersheds.
If you have attended a workshop, field trip or special event – or are interested in seeing one repeat – feel free to post a comment about your interests or experiences.
Your feedback is welcome!
Susan Cox from the County of Hawaii Recycling brought a lot of valuable information to the workshop on composting on March 20th. Did you know at leat 60% of the waste we generate is ‘green waste’ and can be recycled? An island is a closed loop and we must ship our recyclable plastics and bottles far away. It is not only a great idea to recycle those disposable items, but what about our green waste? A compost bin is a great idea for getting green waste out of the landfill and getting into your garden can turn it into healthy plants – and food. Thanks Susan for bringing great information and to the County for donating ten compost bins to our participants. Conmpost ho!
What happens when you open your worm bin and find the compost/nitrogen to paper/carbon ratio is completely out of wack? How do you make compost tea from your worm castings? Thanks to Ellen Jacobs instruction and hands-on solutions, we tackled these subjects and the group helped revive the worm bin. Thanks everyone!
Located up at the edge of the clousforest in Opihihale, South Kona, Malamamalama Farm was the site of our 2013 spring aquaponics tour. Stan Lyons lead the tour and we saw his innovative raised bed – hip height or higher – aquaponics gravel and water beds growing lettuces, peppers, kale and chard with plans for a full greenhouse production soon. It was a really informative tour and quite inspiring to hear and see his innovative discoveries. Thanks Stan!
This Saturday morning field trip studied four different locations that impact the water quality that feeds into Kealakekua Bay. Led by Dr. Rick Bennett, the group explored mountain-to-sea impacts, methods for improving stewardship, and the negative impacts when stewardship is not practiced.
If you participated in the field trip, please post comments about what you learned and suggestions for any follow up activities you’d be interested in participating in. We welcome your feedback!
One Is
land brought a crew of eager learners up to Kuaiwi Farm in Captain Cook for a morning of very informative gardening instruction with Una Greenaway on March 13th. We toured her beautiful farm, learned about her crops, her plant family rotations, how to make great compost, and even got a little sample of their delicious chocolate and tangerines.
If you participated in the workshop, please leave a comment about what your learned with Una – and if you have suggestions for other learning topics, also let us know.
On March 6th One Island hosted a deeply informative workshop with Bob Shaffer on soil – what is it, what creates it? how do we help keep it healthy and thriving? and who lives in it doing all the amazing work below the surface to help grow healthy plants and FOOD?
We also had an overivew of our watersheds and ahapua’a with Mary Robblee of the Kona Soil and Water Conservation District who shared the history of that organization as it was formed in response to the Dustbowl and the services it currently provides.
If you participated in this learning circle, please share with us the highlights of what you learned – and what you’d like to learn more about! Thanks for your participation.
Garden projects at Honaunau School include art, greywater construction to create irrigation, seeding, planting nd celebrating the gden with the youth!
Ethnobotany is the study of the human relationship with plants. One of the most fascinating bodies of work being conducted by an ethnobotanist are the research and teaching efforts of Kathleen Harrison. Kat is the founder and director of Botanical Dimensions and when not visiting her legendary garden and farm in Hawaii, is busy working on indigenous culture folklore research and botanical herbarium projects in Mexico and Peru.
We were honored to have her present an ethnobotany overivew and share a little about her life work at a Same Canoe workshop.
Growing our own food is not always as easy as picking up a packet of seeds. To get mushrooms started, you need a source of innoculated mycellium and One Island hosted an Intro to Mushroom cultivation workshop that brought shiitake kits to each participant. We had 19 people show up! And the mushrooms are sprouting up all over Kona already. Our second Mushroom workshop will help us create our own local substrate and innoculate from local stock. Watch the newsletter for updates!
The Amy B Greenwell Ethnobotanic Garden is an exceptional ethnobotany resource in Wet Hawaii. The Same Canoe project hosted a tour fo the Ancient Hawaiian Agriculture features on the farm, led by Noa Lincoln. He focused on the food and medicinal crops of taro, sugar cane, banana, kukui, and kava and walked us through one of the few remaining intact stone wall pre-contact Hawaiian agricultural field systems. We even learned how to water with rocks! (think condensation)
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