This is my very first blogsite just as this is my very first community gardening experience! I am a new gardener anxious to learn as much as I can about growing plants for food, health and healing and then share that knowledge and experience with you! I am an artist and also a student at the University of Hawaii , working toward my BFA.
On this site I will post photos and comment what I have learned through my research and learning process at the garden. I hope to get funding to use the microscopes at the university to take images of plants, seed, soil and insect from the garden in order to understand and learn more about the garden. I will create artworks during this project with the images I take with my camera and with the microscopes. I may also create paintings as I am a painter. There may be more projects I am inspired to undertake as I discover and learn. I am excited about what I have learned already in just 1 short month of weekly gardening.
Already I have learned how to propagate bananas, planted kalo (I planted my first huli last week), butter lettuce from seeds and peppers. Each Sunday I work in the garden all morning and together afterward our hard work we pick fresh vegetables and share a big lunch together.
I saved 6 huli from my compost bin when Dan, my botanist housemate told me that I could grow them if I would just put them in water long enough for them to take root. After just a week they had rooted but I wasn't ready to plant them as yet. It was 3 weeks before we had a bed for them and they had just about busted out of the glass jars - any longer and I would have had to sacrifice one to get them out. Evelyn instructed me to plant them deep in the soil, putting a little compost in the hole first. These are my babies in thier new bed last week. This week they have already grown new leaves and the baby butter lettuces are keeping them company in the same bed. Their light green leaves look beautiful with the dark red stalks of the Huli (they are color compliments -of course they look fabulous!)