Dirt Road Gardens

Community Contributed

By Joe Kennedy

I’d like to tell you a little story that may be of interest. About nine months ago, I tried to take a shortcut and make a vegetable garden. I used a dirt road at the edge of my farm because there was just bare dirt there, no grass or trees. I stretched a couple of irrigation tapes the length of the area I wanted (70 or 80 feet and 10 feet wide), turned it on, and let the water drip for a day and a night. Then made two ditches only three inches deep and three inches wide with a pick right at the edge of the drip tape the whole length. The ground was hard Ho`olehua clay dirt, compacted with over 30 years of our traffic.

The sun hemp grew almost 11 feet in seven months. Kale grew fast also. So there you go. Vegetables can grow really well in a compacted dirt road without any trouble.

Could dirt roads all over Molokai be managed with using the right vegetation with hardly any money? You know the answer. This would stop the ongoing erosion that’s continuing to kill marine life.