This summer we planted our very first garden. And we grew things. And we ate them. It was so exciting.
Here’s a little re-cap of how it went, what we learned and what we might do differently next year. We by no means are master gardeners. We (or really I) can keep houseplants and herbs alive inside like nobody’s business, but when it comes to outdoor gardening, other than begrudgingly helping stick seeds in the ground in my parents’ garden growing up, I had zero experience. Ta’u had learned some gardening skills back in Binghamton helping out with a local church garden, but basically this was our first time doing it all ourselves and with, well at least an 80% interest in it, if not for the love of planting, at least for the potential outcome of free (mostly), all natural, locally grown food. I say 80% interest because we could have invested a lot more time in the planning, caring for and harvesting, but the lesson learned is, even with only 80% input of time/energy, you still get a lot of great fresh food. Sure it could have been better…we could have maximized space more or replanted a few times with early and then late season crops, but in general, it was a great first try. 
We pulled out our Organic Gardening Encyclopedia, given to Ta’u when he was in his Binghamton gardening phase, and looked around for ideas of what to plant, when, and how to space it. We basically picked the things we buy the most at the farmer’s market, and the things we thought would be easy-ish to grow. We decided to try more of a 1’x1′ square layout versus rows of plants to maximize the 10’x4′ plot we had. And we tried to plan out where to put things based on which side of the garden would get the most sun…..We planted the largest plants (tomatoes) on the eastern side, and plants that would grow up the trellis (cucumbers) along the north side so that they wouldn’t block the stronger southwestern sun from the rest of the garden [File that under things you don’t have to think so much about when you live on an island near the equator (ahem, Hawaii)]. Most of the seeds themselves were gifted to us by our landlord, a master gardener for real, so we spent 0 dollars on seeds. Yippee. Although, I have since learned not all seeds are created equal, and they actually expire, and there are things such as organic seeds, and sometimes you can save seeds from your plants for the next year….so as I said, still lots to learn. But for this year, free seeds got us pretty darn far. Continue Reading →