Service Learning Reflection

This week in the Castanea garden, I worked on a variety of things. I started out by pulling weeds to make room for vegetables that we would grow in that area later. After that, me and a few other people planted some garlic. We had to go get compost from the compost pile and bring it over to the area we wanted to grow the garlic and lay the compost down. We dug three inch holes six inches apart, put the garlic in the holes and then covered the holes with dirt. The garden coordinator Page gave us all some passion fruit to try. It tasted a lot different than the passion fruit juice I drank as a kid. After taking a little break, we went to harvest fruits and vegetables. First, we harvested some tomatoes that looked different than any tomato I had seen before. Instead of being perfectly circular, they were shaped like pears or eggplants. Finally, we began to harvest grapes. These were seeded grapes, unlike the grapes you get in the grocery store, and to my surprise, they were very sour.
Working in the garden this week was definitely a much different experience than the past few weeks. While I have been doing some research on permaculture and sustainable agriculture for a little bit, I've never had any experience planting or harvesting anything. The past two weeks at the garden I've mostly been moving dirt and pulling weeds but this week showed me that the hard work of gardening pays off. Harvesting tomatoes and planting garlic showed me the "result" of the work that goes into gardening. This week I also learned that most of the food that is harvested in the Castanea garden goes directly to the community. I thought this was really interesting to see how students at UNCA could have an impact on the community of Asheville.
I would love to continue working at the Castanea garden even after I get my twenty service hours. I'm a very impatient person and I would like to become more patient and I think that gardening can help me with that. since theres a lot of waiting involved in gardening.