Come let we plant it, plant it, plant it.

I said the Homegrown, Homegrown Come let we plant it, plant it, plant it.

I said, we food , we food, come let we plant it, plant it, plant it.

From the earth to the dirt, come let we till up the soil, till up the soil, from the earth to the dirt, come let we keep planting on a while.

You see the homegrown I said it come from earth.

I say the good food come make me plant me we own.

I say the good food, good food Come let we plant it, plant it, plant it.

I said I food, I food Come let we plant it, plant it, plant it.

I said, Your food, your food.

Today we're on the big island of Saint Croix in Frederick.

Stayed at the Boys and Girls Club.

And I'd like to introduce to you kind of.

You hurt out.

Connie, welcome to Home Grown.

Thank you.

And today we're going to be looking at their garden, Connie, but we first of all, let me say thank you for the Department of Agriculture and trying to try for having this as a partnership and today's homegrown project.

And we're here today with my unit here in Frederick Stead.

And we have started, as you can see with our project here, we have planted tomatoes, peppers and basia beets and lettuce, and we have quite a bit and stuff.

You guys are busy?

Yes, we've been busy.

Very busy.

But we had a little a few challenges with what we call the iguanas here at Frederick said, Okay, well, then let's just go ahead and take a look at the garden, and then we could point out some.

I noticed here that you have wait, there's a huge space here and a drip irrigation system, right?

As well.

Our pepper trees right here.

And you could see they got it up by the way you go, Oh, this is it.

Didn't make it up.

Yes.

That's what's left of it.

All right.

Oh, there's another one.

Yeah.

So that box, those are some of the challenges that we in the Virgin Islands have to face on with dealing with gardens.

And you run right into one generally where where the wine is coming from, because as you can see, we have a tree way up above right here.

So they could jump down from that tree and they come they crawl to jump over.

So there's really no way unless if we really put some covering on here for them, I notice that you trade some other trade, having some plexiglass, but I'll talk about that a little bit later.

I notice that your pepper, your tomato plants are doing very, very well.

Well, let's get to that.

Take a look.

Have you had any this is our first crops that we have not harvested any at all.

They're just starting to and they're looking fairly clean.

You haven't had any pest problems with it?

Not at all.

Not at all.

And iguanas haven't bothered me.

Not at all.

I'm surprised that.

Okay, that's good background.

This is the first crop.

Good.

This is the first crop, this flower.

And they have little ones on there, as you can see.

One right here, two of them right here.

Okay, good little ones here.

And then they're doing fairly well.

How have the children reacted so far?

Oh, they're very excited.

They can't get their hands off every one wants to do something.

They're very excited.

They all take part in planting and cleaning and weeding and all that water and and stuff.

Good.

And they've they've used a six.

You got to do six of them around here.

No Department of Agriculture had class with that.

Okay, good.

All right, then let's go ahead and take a look at the next chair.

Well, you had a space here.

You have chives?

Yes.

Oh, the chives.

These are supposed to be the chives.

And they didn't make it at all.

So what we did, we planted some seeds.

Okay, So that's why you have not seen anything happening here at all.

Okay.

The seeds are still trying to germinate.

Good.

And here we have the basil really to be supplies.

But I notice we have some worms or something happening here.

Okay.

Which we called this basil.

Okay.

These are aphids babies.

And what aphids are are piercing, sucking insects.

They have a beak that they stick there.

They stick that beak into the leaf and suck the juices.

So it really it doesn't get a chance to open up the blades.

And we learn a little bit about that more when we get to our pest entomology section.

But it has pretty much taken over the young portions of the leaves, right?

Yeah.

And they all they do is just suck the juices out of the leaves and to the juices too.

The leaves actually never get a chance to open up, just like the large ones that you see here.

It's interesting.

And I see a lot of them, every one of the plants beginning to affect now.

In some instances, the most you could do is come back on the top half of them or cut back the infected ones.

Okay.

And and get rid of them off the front.

As you can see, the iguana has a pack like couple of these also.

Okay.

Yes.

All right.

Yeah.

You could see that they they took the top off of.

Yeah.

Half of these.

Let me show you one other particular pest that you might you will encounter.

See this?

Yeah.

This is called Leaf Miner.

It's a little worm that Burrows lays its egg in between the skin of the leaf.

Right.

And then it hatches out and it just eats its way until it gets too big to to stay in between.

And if you can spread anything on the top or on the bottom.

So it just pretty much leaves in there.

You could just remove this and get rid of it to take off the leaf and take the leaf off.

Right.

Because in some instances it can get pretty bad.

The the infestation can get pretty bad in the beginning.

To see.

Right.

Actually, this is one where the the worm, you could see it was tunneling through and it eventually got too big to live in here.

And some place underneath here, there's a hole where it came out and started is life circled back all over again.

And you notice there's nothing on the bottom.

It's all on the top, correct?

Okay.

Yeah, I could see something going that was right there.

And again, some more if it if it damage to the crops.

I notice you have the plexiglass on it.

I would say I would say that was your attempt to try to control iguanas actually wasn't at all.

It was just an idea of just beginning.

And it's a good idea as a means of helping to keep the iguanas out.

Because one of the things that in order for the iguana to crawl up, it has to have some traction.

That's right.

And because it's smooth, it can't get traction.

But one of the downsides to what has been done here is that you put the block right on the outside to get 20 D climb over the blocks or try to jump over.

Right.

So if you didn't fall out of the tree, they use that to crawl up in.

So one possible thing and you stumble on something here that is a possibility that the other homeowners, home gardeners can use.

Mm hmm.

If you can find Plexiglas, that's at least two feet high.

That way the iguana can crawl up.

You can't get his head over it and get his his arm or his claws up to the top of it because it's too tall.

And he would just walk away and run.

And as long as you don't put anything for him to climb up on, that is one possible way of keeping iguanas away from out of the water.

Regarding.

All right.

Okay, Over here.

We have the bait we're waiting on.

Haven't harvested any of these, and they're doing pretty fine.

They're doing good.

They're doing what you are receiving.

You have any pest problems with Na na na na, Arlene?

None of that, unsurprisingly, which I thought the iguanas would have attacked.

The lettuce would be the first ones, but they didn't ever touch the lettuce and we're glad we had that is to let them know so what happened here wasn't the iguana added.

The kids have tested the lettuce.

They all grew and they did fine.

And they had have they harvested them?

And it made what it did.

They made salads and every one of them ate and it was good.

What had been the children's reaction to eating the lettuce fresh?

It was just exciting for them.

They were just amazed that they could, because kids don't normally eat vegetables, many of them on their own.

But being that they are in a group, I guess is of many of them.

So I give them that encouragement to sit down and being that they're prepared, they're washed their they've cut it out, they put a little dressing on there and that encourages them to really ID the lettuce.

And we brought some tomatoes and I just started to mix with it also.

So they wouldn't just feel that they're just eating leaf or would you consider put them back on another crop?

Yes, we are really looking forward to going back to Department of Agriculture to get us some more seedlings so we could have some more lettuce.

Okay, that's planted it.

And and so by that time, I think in the next cycle there should be because as you notice, they grew fairly quickly.

They do.

They do.

And they are ready to eat.

You should be having on your next cycle, you should be able to have beets like this again.

Basil, we're not sure how that's going to work out.

Actually, you could pick some of the leaves that haven't been damaged.

Yeah, we're going to go with the and tomatoes already.

We're going to have to find a solution for those iguanas.

We definitely need to do that.

Okay, So what has been overall when you look at this project from start to finish, what has been your personal overall experience with this?

As you can see where it was the challenge of having to figure out how to control the iguanas, which we have not really do anything about it yet.

Okay, But overall, everything else was kind of really good.

It was not too bad at all.

Okay.

Yeah.

Was there a garden here before?

No, Actually, this is our first project that we make use of right here since we started here with the kids.

And we have a future planned for the other two blocks to plant some flowers.

Okay, that's good.

You give them a wider variety of things, right?

So that they can grow irrigation, the drip irrigation system, all that work perfectly.

Okay.

What?

What?

No, I don't.

Irrigation before this.

Yes, I have.

But I thought some time I find they could be a little more pressure to the water coming out.

Okay.

And stuff.

I don't know if that's you know, that's the way it's supposed to be, but if we could at least get a little more water coming out, that is going to be depending on how much pressure we turn, I can turn on the faucet and you don't want too much pressure because then you end up with the emitters popping up.

And that's generally why it's called a drip irrigation, so that it drips right to the root system, right.

And the plants take it up.

Right, Right then and there, you don't have water splashing all over the place.

Correct.

And but it's it's it's a it's a good system.

It's one of the best systems.

And again, it's one of the systems that we recommend that you work with terms of ease of management and being able to do water and reducing the amount of time that you have to stand and watering.

Have the children being exposed to drip irrigation.

Yes, they have been there and they're the one of us to turn them on and they helped in putting on those little what do you call that they made.

As I said, they have the experience.

They had every little bit of pot in this place.

In this age group.

We have three blocks on each block, has three different groups.

We have the first and second graders who's taking care of tomatoes and supposedly the peppers.

We have the third and fourth graders who are taking care of the chives and the basil and all The group would be from fifth grade and up taking care of the beach and the lettuce.

That's all we do with.

Yeah, yeah.

That is that is excellent.

Even though you have some challenges here, you're still pressing on for some of the children.

Has this been their first experience with some of them?

Yes, it is.

Okay.

I'm sure their reaction has been yes, so very involved.

And there's you know, there are lot little things that new to them.

They're learning.

And right now they're working on the journals.

They actually do journals on days.

So you always see some journals in the near future.

Excellent.

Them.

All right.

Well, Connie, thank you for all the hard work that you've put in and for, even though the challenges are there, we know that it's been a rewarding experience both for you and the children here at the Boys and Girls Club.

And we will continue to the university, to Mr. Crossman and the Department of Agriculture and some of the other folks to continue to help you make this as as fruitful and as beneficial in a lot of ways to you and to the children.

And we want to thank you for looking at home grown today.

Again, we were at the Boys and Girls Club here in Saint Croix.

We hope that you got something out of this today and we look forward to you coming with us to our next site as we continue with home grown here on WTMJ today.

We're on the big island of Saint Croix here at the Salvation Army, just about midway in the middle of the Big Island sanctuary.

And with me today is Kenan.

Kenan.

Welcome to home grown gay.

And Thomas, welcome to Home Grown.

All right.

Thank you.

All right.

Today, we're going to look at the box garden that's worth growing here at the Boys, the Salvation Army site.

And we're going to talk to these two young gentlemen because based on what we've been hearing from the folks here, these two young men have been integrally involved with the raising of the plants that we see here.

Thomas, tell me what we have.

Well, is our area of different fruits and vegetables for the bush to KUKLA Basil.

Basil.

Okay.

Um, this is beet good.

Okay.

And this is yeah, this is tomato.

Okay.

And we have some pepper down here.

I think that's Kenan Celery.

Celery.

Let's see, We are trying to get an extra crop in here.

Yeah, we went and get those after we had a dinner ready.

Crepe some crap that was there.

I think more meat was there.

Okay.

Did you get lettuce?

Yeah, we had lettuce.

We already harvested.

Okay, you obviously the lettuce.

Did you get to eat it yet?

Not yet.

We have it put up.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

To you.

Have you eaten anything out of the garden as yet?

Well, we drink some.

Push this?

No.

Okay, that's good.

Well, Kenan, tell me what your experience has been like with this garden.

Well, you're making a hard and, well, easy way.

I lose.

Plants grow.

Mm hmm.

And did you ever have a garden before?

Do any gardening before?

Yeah, we had one before it.

And refinement.

Here.

You can see the beds.

Okay.

Okay.

Was it raised like this?

Oh, it was down.

Oh, it was regular Rose, not in a box.

Oh, okay.

So this is the first time you're doing it in a box?

Yeah, first time doing a box.

Okay.

And what are you.

I see you said you had a garden before.

What was the experience with the things that you've grown that came out of the garden?

How did they grow?

They did well.

The water, the boxwood in it wouldn't hold the water as.

But are as good as the boxwood.

Okay, so this was this your first experience with using the drip irrigation as well?

Yeah.

So how did you water the plant before?

Well, watering can.

Okay.

And now that you've had a chance to see the drip irrigation, what do you think about it?

Much more easy, much easier.

And it saves time out.

Time as well.

Save time as well.

Right.

And that's one of the benefits of having the drip irrigation system.

And as you noted as well, it puts the water right where the plant needed right over with it.

You know, it is that.

Yes.

And not so the plastic.

Okay, after it, then we forget it and then like overnight and then in the morning, like the ground was saturated.

Right.

Well, the plastic allows the water to stay in there.

And then the next day and the following day we just see some water in it until like, skip one day.

We did.

Okay, good.

So you are learning on the job some things that you pick up.

And those are good tips.

If you ever find yourself in a situation where you over what I thought instinctively this gentleman realized, okay, we probably have too much water in here, let's just keep idea of water.

And and that was a good thing to do because some of these plants don't like to sit in water for too long.

They'll begin to show signs of of fruit rotting and things like that.

But so far, the plants look, they look very, very good.

And you I said our lettuce.

Our lettuce was we actually picked them.

Rip them too late.

Oh, okay.

I see.

Yeah, I know a bit about it because.

Well, a friend of mine told me that is lettuce should be better because that means is more nutrition for, uh, not quite really.

I, I mean, if you like better go ahead and have at it.

But that particular type of lettuce is not better at all.

And so usually it's about this big and about this way, depending on how much water you given it is when it's time to pick and it once you plant it, it's within a couple of days maybe, maybe no more than two or three weeks before it's actually ready to harvest.

So the next of the lettuce, you will watch and see how that goes.

Yeah.

And it wouldn't believe me, it wouldn't be better.

No time, as you were talking about the beeps and you call them the award winning beats.

Our winning beats because our guy from I think what, agriculture.

Yeah.

Tell us that we have the best beets grow in any home grown competition so far.

Okay, that's good.

I've seen.

And yeah, they look very clean.

And the beets.

Have either of you've seen beets go before?

No.

Did you know that they grow like this?

Okay, so that's part of your education process as well.

These are.

These are lovely.

They're very clean.

Something did take a bite out of them, but they still they still look very good.

All right.

And you've got some nice people come in here as well.

Some really smart ones, plenty flowers, that one go.

And then celery.

Okay.

So you experimented.

Was there pepper plant here today?

Yeah, I think it was down.

There were pepper.

Okay.

And you said that you had the lettuce in there, but you already harvested it.

Yeah.

Okay, look, some.

We have some right here.

Okay.

These.

Yeah, These might still be a little bit better because they've already pushed up the.

Okay, They're the seed head.

You could see the seed had already begun to come up.

So these probably might still taste okay, but the rest of them, if not all of them, might still be a bit better.

And if you like better, fine.

But I don't know of any nutritional value in beta, but.

But this is the same.

This is generally the same color that you would get from this particular variety of lettuce.

And it just looks looks good.

Look through.

And this here was in the fridge for about maybe two weeks now and they have them with it.

No preservatives either.

Okay, Go ahead, chef.

All right, let's continue walking.

Let's see what else you got.

Gave you.

Give your base best looked very good in your eyes.

You had a cup of tea already from this many capacity.

Many capacity.

Okay, good.

And the tomatoes are looking great.

Nice.

A nice color.

But I've noticed that you've gone from growing in the box to growing in buckets or container gardening.

But you have actually tried some some tomatoes out here.

Yes.

Okay.

What was the reasoning for trying the tomatoes out on this?

Go?

I want to see the reason which I suppose to go back this experiment and think make it big enough.

Okay, So is it so what have you seen in comparison?

Does this is this going any faster than this based on what you've seen?

Okay.

All right.

And you guys decided to grow some stuff in.

Well, this is contain a guide and you don't have to worry about the soil or what do you have here?

Okay.

Okay.

And you're trying some celery.

Actually, that bok choy looks like it's ready to harvest.

It's a good size, and I think before something comes and gobbles it up, I think you need to consider consider harvesting it and eating it.

I've eaten a piece off of it already.

I've seen people already let the one that made it.

Not that the lettuce.

Yeah the lettuce or that is he was the one that created the whole.

Okay, fine.

No, no, that's all right.

Yeah.

Generally I grasshopper, but yeah, those look good.

Those look excellent.

Was that something that you started after the boxes?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

What made you decide just to even do this?

Because you didn't have space inside it, so.

Yeah, it.

This was cool.

Bucket.

Okay.

And one way I see, like, this one was growing fast and, like, we're thinking about food, We eat our own food, healthy things.

And so we, I needed space and we didn't think of utilizing this thing like I referred by another box over on that side.

Yeah, because we recently did this maybe two weeks ago.

This was our like a miniature golf, like some clipper mechanism.

The apparatus, however, and we just utilize that and fill it with dirt and see, we would plant these slips, these pepper slips we have grow in.

You go to a ceiling yourself and we pop them off.

Okay.

And and I thought it's onions and onions and these are just peppers.

All right.

It'd be interesting to see how they come, because you may not have have inquired about this when you were looking for the onions.

They'll grow tall, but generally onions are short.

They plants like on onions come in three categories short, medium and long.

The onions.

You did you know that?

I didn't know.

Okay, but that's your lesson for today.

So if you're going to grow onions, onions grow.

In short, they medium and long they onions on generally because and that refers to the amount of daylight that we get exposed to here.

So the most of the onions that will grow best in the Virgin Islands are short the onions.

So if you're looking in a seed catalog for seeds or onions sets, look for short the onions.

But since we don't know what these are, let's just see how they grow and see what happens.

Maybe if God are looking out for us, then we like a shot, our one not conducive to grow in here.

So.

But then we'll see what this is.

This is just part of the learning that if growing, all of that is part of the learning experience as you all have have demonstrated and learned here.

So you are growing your own boxes, attempting now you know that you notice a difference in the height of your boxes.

Yes.

Okay.

That one was about eight inches.

This is about four.

So it'd be good to compare and see how well the plants do in that box versus this box in terms of the way they grow and the height we think that we could plant, like maybe the taller trees in there too.

I was thinking was thinking the root might be too short for the arm, maybe two inches, and then it reached a hard ground.

Okay, so what were you thinking and planning to just to put it in this one, These and we were planning to find like other things, like maybe more pop toys and other things.

Okay.

Generally, more plants prefer it to get eight inches of good soil, 6 to 8 inches of good workable soil.

But plants are adaptable.

So if they only have a good depth of maybe four inches, as you have here, they will work.

It will work, the plants will grow.

They may not grow as tall as they are growing in that box, but they'll still grow.

And as long as you are providing them with the things that they need, they'll still continue to grow because you don't have a bottom on it.

Do you know, goes right into the earth.

We just didn't like how this one was done.

The Department of Agriculture did that.

Okay.

And we just use plastic on the outside too, on the inside to line the inside of the wood.

And again, they were using the inside the plastic, the lining inside of wood, because some people are concerned about the pressure treated lumber and the the chemicals that it emits.

And so that's one of the reasons why we use a plastic in there.

All right.

Now that we've talked about the ceilings, a little bit, let's look at the soil and look at the quality of the soil you're using, the soil that is basically growing around this area.

Correct.

This is the soil from here on this land where you brought this in.

This is soil.

I was here.

Okay.

All right.

It's kind of loose, but it's dusty.

And that's primarily because it's wet.

Have you added anything to it, Any manure or any kind of dry grass?

You've added manure to it already.

Okay.

All right.

It's going to need to add some manure every so often because the soil just looking at it, you generally can't tell all the time that it's good quality soil.

But one rule of thumb is that the darker it is generally to better soil because it has some organic matter or things like dry leaves and called manure that have died and broken down and if you notice the soil in that box, it's a little bit darker than the soil here generally, probably because it comes from an area that has darker soil, which is soil.

But this soil eventually would have to improve to get to the point where it looks like this on a on a natural basis.

See, the color is this.

It's a much darker soil.

So what you would do for the soil is you just every year you would add some manure.

Okay.

You might even after this experiment, put on another four inches and raise it and continue to add some more soil to it again, to give it some depth and to make the the soil in the root environment as fertile as possible.

And you do that by just adding the manure and all the other rotten materials and put that in it.

And that would eventually improve the quality and the quality of the soil and overall health of the plant.

As you go on, how do you plan to wash it is by hand or you think you might consider getting an irrigation system by hand.

Okay.

Even the irrigation system down there.

All right, that's fine.

As long as you have the water to do it.

That's good.

So know that you guys have experienced this.

This great for me from start when you had your original garden.

And now watching this garden, what has been your feelings?

What are some of the things that have made you say, wow, this is this is this is something new for me.

Yeah, it's nice.

And there's repin and lettuce and then there's cutting up the bush G. I share them with some friends and and making some every morning and every night you feel better.

And still.

What?

I took care of this I with the garden.

I mean, no more than you say you spend it for it.

You spend maybe money with water and maybe a bag of manure.

Okay.

What going to be worth it?

Because this a better feeling than just purchasing something without putting some work into it for us.

Okay, good.

Good work.

I think on Keenan, I guess the same for you.

Okay.

All right, gentlemen.

I am so glad I had the opportunity to meet you guys.

I hope that you continue this.

We will be checking in on you periodically.

Even after this is over.

We will come by and check on.

Make sure that you continue to succeed at that.

Believe me, gentlemen, there's a lot more to learn.

I made a book about the different things that you are saying about the plants and the long term.

Short term.

Okay, I'll get you that information because I want you all to succeed in this and to be able to share with other people as well.

And that's our homegrown show for today.

We thank you for joining us at the Salvation Army here in Saint Croix.

And until the next time, remember, homegrown is best, right it.

All right, Good.

Thank you.

And we'll see you next time on Homegrown.

Come let we plant it, plant it, plant it.

I said the Homegrown, Homegrown Come let we plant it, plant it, plant it.

I said, we food , we food, come let we plant it, plant it, plant it.I said, Your food, your food Come let we plant it, plant it, plant it.

From the earth to the dirt, come let we till up the soil, till up the soil, from the earth to the dirt,