Welcome to Our Garden

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Aloha and welcome to our Little Red Dirt Garden!

I don't know that any of us knew what 2020 had in store for us. We didn't know that people would seek refuge in their gardens, needing to connect with all things green and growing. We just wanted to do something with the small plot in front of our house. For years it had been neglected, filled with knee-high weeds, and we thought it would be a perfect place for a vegetable and flower garden.

My sister and I made plans on how we would lay everything out but most of that went out the window and we just started clearing an area. Then we plopped in a sunflower or a zucchini or a sweet potato that started sprouting. We each chose things we wanted to grow - beets for me, poblano peppers for her, cucumbers for me, sunflowers for her - and somehow it's working together.

Along the way we've battled garden snails and slugs that, for all intents and purposes, killed our zucchini. We've deterred mice and birds from our tomatoes using a cheap inflatable snake (to this day my favorite form of pest control). And we have a love/hate relationship with bird netting (a necessary but frustrating tool).

We have definitely made mistakes and had our failures. But our garden has been one of the best parts of a less than stellar year (slight understatement).

We invite you to come along on our journey as we share what we learn in this experiment we call the Little Red Dirt Garden. Oh, and how did we come up with the name? Kaimuki, the area where we live, is known for its red dirt. It's as simple as that ...

Red dirt stained gloves


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