05: Mala

Hi! Today we worked the the Mala, or the garden, in Hakipu’u. We meet some new people today, Brandon, and Brett. They are our supervisors and the boss is Anthoney, he wasn’t here today. I actually had more fun than I expected to, especially since its a friday and I was just waiting for the weekend. We first all did introductions, then we layed out weedmat pretty much all morning. Weedmat prevents the weeds from invading the soil and is placed on the soil surrounding the area you want to grow plants in. Now that was team work. We had to redo parts of it several times but we finally finished. (We had to stake in every 6 ft and make sure its straight, off the grass, and has no air bubbles) That was probably one of the most annoying tasks we had done so far, but we got it done and we got to have a long lunch break so that was good. After, we had a small task to wrap up pieces of weed mat and lay out a tarp. We want to let some of the plots "rest" so they aren't constantly producing. The purpose is to allow the ground to rest so all of the nutrients aren't depleted. It is important to lay out the tarp when the plot "rests" so the bare soil doesn't degrade, erode, or become covered in weeds. With the additional time we had left we weeded around the green onions.

It was fun learning about a different part of the ranch, everyone is nice and I can’t wait to learn more about gardening here. We will spend three more days here so lets make the best of it!

Us laying out weedmat!

More laying out weedmat!

Our plan for today