Sustainable Gardening Class & Family Dinner

Happy Sunday!

The Common Ground crew had a great day yesterday! We took the first in a series of 10 Sustainable Gardening classes at KCC. Our first class focused on how to evaluate land and choose the best locations for the various elements that that make up a backyard or commercial farming project. We learned about the importance of taking soil samples to figure out how healthy your soil is. Sometimes you won’t know the history of your property so you’ll have no idea what kind of things were done to it. Taking a sample is a great way to figure out what you’re working with and how you can amend the soil to make that area fertile and productive.

Many of the techniques outlined in the class came straight from permaculture founder Bill Mollison’s Introduction to Permaculture; if you’re unfamiliar with permaculture check out some videos featuring Geoff Lawton to see the kind of things that are possible… expect a lot of cheesy music, but the information is great and the concepts make a lot of sense (especially since we’ve hit peak oil and can expect energy costs to continue to climb!).

We took a tour of the various gardens that are already in production at the college, and even had an opportunity to check out a newly installed aquaponics system. Stay tuned in the coming weeks as Nick and I are currently designing an aquaponics system we plan to build at Common Ground in Kilauea, Kauai. We’ll be sure to film some instructions in case anyone wants to know how it’s done!

As usual, we finished the day with an epic vegan feast. Our friend Erika was house sitting and invited us over to enjoy dinner as a family. Pictures and recipes below.

-Matt

Fresh saffron, tomato, and spinach lasagnette from Hanalei pasta. Sautee sliced onion in olive oil, add quartered cherry tomatoes, reduce balsamic vinegar (for 3 minutes), add salt and pepper. Finish with fresh parsley.

Vegetable bouillon, soy milk, celery, carrots, purple sweet potato, cilantro, parsley, salt & pepper to taste.