Are you a home gardener with a green thumb, thinking about starting a garden or even a non-gardener?
The University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa’s College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resilience, or CTAHR, wants your insight.
CTAHR is conducting a home gardening survey through the end of the year that aims to help researchers develop “essential support programs.”
According to UH, “Researchers are looking to document everything from the types of crops grown and water usage to educational resources and support for home gardeners.”
“This survey will help us develop residential landscaping designs for herbs and food crops,” CTAHR Associate Researcher Orville Baldos told Aloha State Daily in an emailed response to questions. “The designs will be tailored for home spaces like container gardening or planter beds, themes such as herb or vegetable garden, and other needs from the survey.”
Baldos says, too, that demonstration gardens will eventually be set up at the UH Urban Garden Center in Pearl City.
“These test sites will be for research and data collection to improve garden design and garden upkeep as well as for public outreach, like workshops on how to garden, how to design and maintain an edible landscape,” he continued. “Survey results will also help develop more programs to support home gardeners.”
According to Baldos, CTAHR has not done a statewide survey of this nature recently and there may be a follow-up survey, depending on the results. The survey is funded by a CARES Initiative Grant Program from CTAHR.
The anonymous survey, which takes about 20 minutes to complete, can be found here.
A CTAHR spokesperson says the college supports home gardeners with its three-part mission: teaching, evidence-based research and community outreach.
“A major part of our work is done through the Master Gardener program, which trains volunteers in every county to help educate their neighbors to create and tend to home gardens,” the spokesperson noted. “Master gardeners also hold many gardening workshops and classes for the community that are free or have a small fee for materials.”
On O‘ahu, for example, a workshop on starting a garden with pots, baskets and other containers will be held on Jan. 26 at the UH Urban Garden Center. (Interested? Sign up here). And On Kaua‘i, community members can “Ask a Plant Doctor” from the Master Gardener program on Saturday mornings at the Puhi Grove Farm Farmers Market, the spokesperson says. Meanwhile, master gardeners on the west side of Hawai‘i Island provide seedlings for school gardens, which support “youth education programs that teach children about seeding, transplanting and soil health.”
Additionally, the spokesperson says that the fruit and vegetables these Master Gardeners grow at CTAHR facilities also help those struggling with food insecurity. The Maui County team, for instance, has donated nearly 1,000 pounds of produce to the Maui Food Bank, they said.
Other programs that aim to support home gardeners includes CTAHR’s Seed to Harvest on Molokai, which the spokesperson says helps families lower grocery costs by teaching them how to grow fruits and veggies at home; the “Grow Smart” Seed Sharing Workshop, which distributed 1,000 packets of disease-resistant seeds on O‘ahu; and Plumeria Field Day in Waimānalo, which provided hands-on training in the care of plumeria trees as well as 1,000 cuttings to community members.
“Our goal is to teach home gardeners of all ages how to build a more resilient and self-sufficient future.”
For the latest news of Hawai‘i, sign up here for our free Daily Edition newsletter.
Stephanie Salmons can be reached at stephanie@alohastatedaily.com.
Comments are closed.