Gardens at Kalamazoo College

11/02/2023

Repost from :
This week Spanish senior majors participated in a blessing of the corn ceremony as part of the senior seminar, Representations of Nature in Latin American Culture. Thanks to Professor García-Wedyandt, the CES Department, and the Hoophouse for welcoming us!

10/24/2023

Hoop House relatives, friends, and community members-
join us for our third annual Gardens at K Harvest Celebration, on October 26th, from 4:30-6:30 pm at the Hoop House. We are honored to have guests from the Wixárika community in Mexico joining us for this special event. We have been growing their Tatéi Niwetsika (Our Mother Corn) yellow Yuri’Ikú (Native Corn) this past season and have learned so much from this special plant relative. This year, we want to harvest and set our intentions hoping that next year we can cultivate Our Mother Corn again. We ask everyone to bring good intentions for an afternoon of ceremony to honor our ancestors. Hope to see you there!

10/04/2023

Come join us for our 5-year anniversary celebration this Friday at the Hoop House from 4:30-6:30 pm! We will have good food, good music, and good people. We would love to see you there!

09/26/2023

What’s been going on the past two weeks at and around the Hoop House?
Slide 1: Aerin making her way through the tunnel of loofahs and bottle gourds.
Slides 2 and 3: First Year students at our rock painting event during Orientation! The rocks can be found scattered around the Hoop House.
Slide 4: Students working the Environmental Stewardship Center table at K-fest. Lots of emails collected and information spread!
Slide 5: Aiding Our Mother Corn in the pollination process by collecting pollen in the red basket and distributing to the silks.
Slides 6 and 7: Newly planted radishes, and their growth just a week later.
Slide 8: Greta and her beet harvest.
Slide 9: Snapshot from our first open hours on Monday of Week 1.
Slide 10: A special visitor who found a comfortable place to lay in the dirt.

09/21/2023

K students- join us next Wednesday 9/27 from 4:30-6pm for our Dip Event hosted at the Hoop House! We will make and enjoy dips using ingredients found in the Hoop House. Hope to see you there!

09/11/2023

Happy first week everyone! If you are looking to stop into the Hoop House our open hours are Mondays, Wednesday, and Fridays from 4:30-6pm. There are lots of yummy snacks to be harvested, weeding to be done, and flowers to be picked. Hope to see you there!

09/06/2023

Tomato hornworms! They are the primary insect pest of tomatoes in our region. Last Thursday I noticed that hornworms were starting to munch on the potted tomatoes outside of the Hoop House. I could have hand-picked them and squished them or sprayed Bt to kill them. But I didn't because I was waiting to see whether parasitic wasps would show up. And just a few days later, they did! The white protrusions on these hornworms are the cocoons of a braconid wasp whose larvae have been feeding on the hornworm's insides. Every single hornworm on our tomato plants has been heavily parasitized, disabling the hornworms and eliminating our pest problem!

The lesson here is to learn enough about your garden's ecology to know when you need to intervene in a pest problem and when another member of your garden ecosystem is likely to take care of things for you if you just give them a chance. We grow perennial flowers near the Hoop House to lure and feed predatory insects like this wasp.

08/22/2023

Our Mother Corn is teaching us how to nourish ourselves through collaborative cross-species relationships! This maize creates a habitat for nitrogen-fixing bacteria on her aerial roots by exuding a gel-like liquid in which the bacteria can live. In exchange, the bacteria supply the corn with some of the nitrogen they retrieve from the air. Many agronomists are excited about the possibility of incorporating this trait into "modern" field corn. But this is a quality that Indigenous farmers across Mexico have nurtured for generations. Who should hold the patents and receive the profits from this trait? Can anyone "own the rights" to this inter-species relationship? Or might there be a different way of thinking about cultural stewardship and relationship to plants?

https://e360.yale.edu/features/indigenous-maize-who-owns-the-rights-to-mexicos-wonder-plant

07/28/2023

07/20/2023

Bring your own lunch and join Hoop House garden staff and student leaders for a picnic at the Hoop House on Tuesday, July 25 between 11:30am-12:30pm!

Learn about our different garden projects, share gardening tips, and harvest herbs, cucumbers, and maybe a few peaches!

The Hoop House is located in the field behind the Fitness & Wellness Center and is supported by the Center for Civic Engagement and Environmental Stewardship Center.

07/18/2023

Views from the Hoop House gardens this week! Harvesting beets, watching peaches and cucumbers ripen, and sharing the space with our native pollinators.