Reviving the Veggie Garden

Today we finished up our normal Friday activities--planting the beds we harvested yesterday, and seeding all the lettuce seeds for the whole week (~10,000!!)--and everyone headed up to the Upper Garden.

It's a wonderful mess up there, a constant effort to reclaim weedy areas and keep up with the faster growth rates that we find here in Hawaii. I've been managing it more closely in the past few months, with amazing results...Really, with 6 folks up there for two hours, it's like 1 person working for two days straight!

Today Matthew tackled the giant overgrown sugarcane. He macheted it all down to the ground and passed around sweet watery sugarcane sections, a kickback to his recent time in Costa Rica. Max is awesome at flamethrowing, so he torched the weeds encroaching at the edges of the garden. Cristina joined Kate to take out some old flowering Jamaican Amaranth (Kalaloo)--a prolific leafy plant, growing to about 5 feet tall, with killer roots. There was lots of grunting and hoe-hacking involved in this job. Rachel has a broken foot, so she stayed put organizing seeds and making garden signs. Ken hand-weeded the ginger patch (yea! it's finally coming up, so beautifully!) and added rich compost soil around some baby plants. And I weeded, weeded, weeded--using the Hori Hori knife (a supremely useful Japanese dagger-like tool) for handweeding, the hula hoe for within beds, and the hefty wheel hoe for the aisle ways.

I'm so pleased with the improvements up there...it provides the farm community with a lot of nutritious food, which will only grow as it becomes more organized and better cared for.

Here's a list of what is currently growing up there:
Kale (Dino, Red Russian, and Curly varieties)
Rainbow Chard
Collards
Green beans
Carrots
Beets (Chioggia and Red)
Bunching Onions
Cilantro
Parsley
Basil
Jamaican Sorrel
Jamaican Amaranth
Green Cabbage
Asparagus
Arugula
Celery
Plus, there is a row of papaya trees lining one edge and white pineapples flanking two corners.

The garden is an important and sacred place for me. When doing lettuce and coffee work I feel useful, part of a team, like I am learning so much and growing as an apprentice and a leader. The garden provides me with a different sort of space, one where I can experiment with new plants, styles of growing. It's a place that allows for an essential creativity, where it's okay if I mess up occasionally. Plus, it's the best spot on the farm from which to watch the sunset, a true blessing.

~Molly, feeling very dirty, sweaty, and satisfied.