November 25, 2013

Today the garden is in the full glory of seasonal transition. The summer/fall plants have died off or have slowed down. The winter plants are starting slowly and are not yet taking off. The last 2 weeks of November and the first 2 weeks of December are the most depressing because things seem to have paused. But it's a good time to clean out the garden, to remove weeds, to realign the garden rows. Time to repair or erect trellises, make raised beds, expand the garden size. Its an excellent time to sow seeds in the greenhouse and put transplants out up into the garden. So there is plenty to do, but not much harvesting going on. 

We've gotten a fairly good handle on the weeds. There are still a couple of sections that need digging and de-grassing, but we are catching up. Missy and Sue harvested one of the sweet potato patches, with very poor yields, thus a giant patch of invasive grass was eliminated. Why did the sweet potatoes yield so poorly? Was it the variety? Perchance not suited to Hawaii? Was it the invading grass? Was it the time of year? We really don't have the answer. The variety was a new one for us, but we won't bother trying it again, we already have a few nice producing varieties that we will now stick with. 

Walking around and inspecting the garden we saw that many seedlings have disappeared. We know that we have a cutworms problem, but the losses are pretty heavy. Could it be our ducks? Possibly but they have been observe rejecting those potential nibblies in the past. Could it be turkeys? A more likely culprit. In the past they have been caught in the act pulling out beets and onion plants, eating peas and beans, ripping lettuce and spinach. Controlling turkeys is going to be tough. They use to avoid our scarecrows and bird chasers, but now they ignore them. Turkeys might be a challenge! 

Missy, Linda and Alice pulled and planted lots of strawberry plants today, potting them up for future sale. Lots of sweet potato cuttings also were potted up since we have recently been getting requests for them. 

Sweet potatoes can be propagated in a couple of ways. The quickest and easiest way for us is to take tip cuttings and simply plant them into soil. They readily root. Simple and quick. Another way to propagate sweets is by planting a tuber and allowing it to sprout. As it sprouts, the slips are snapped off and planted into a pot (or directly into the ground). This method is good for creating new plants when someone gives us a tuber of a new variety. We usually get 6-12 slips off a tuber. Sometimes more. 

The keyhole garden #2 is now ready for its soil cap. We added a bit more biotrash (sugar cane leaves, old veggie plants, weeds) and stomped it down good. Finally, we get to top it off! 

Sharon, Vicky, Marta, and Babette worked on the main section of garden, cleaning it up, removing old growth, planting new rows. Steps were taken to prevent the cutworms from eating the seedlings. We use both toilet paper rolls and plastic milk jug bottoms. They help. 

There are still yacon tubers in the ground, but we didn't harvest any today. Maybe next week volunteers will want some. There are also plenty of bok choy that can be taken. The daikon is growing well but it is still small. It's been sprayed with dipel in hopes of preventing maggot damage. We lost the precious crop to maggots in the roots. The frying peppers are producing again and we harvested today. Lots of oranges were picked. A few avocados came down and are ready for eating. Sprouting broccoli is producing. The florets are small on sprouting broccoli but they are good eating. Zucchini, green beans, and yard long beans were harvested for lunch. 

The sugar cane is producing massive canes. Some canes are 3 inches across! It makes it difficult to harvest them. Sharon struggled and successfully harvested a number of canes. Today seemed like a good day to get the sugar cane press working, so we juiced a 3 foot section of cane. I was surprised to see just how much juice got produced. 2 whole quarts! That's impressive. The rest of the harvested cane will be pressed later today with the juice going into the freezer for future lunches. 

With so many oranges being harvested today we opted to juice a bunch. Yum, fresh orange juice. Last year the oranges were disappointing, but this year they are yummy. Another crop that was poor quality last year is the avocados. This year they are quite respectable. We're not sure why these two crops were so disappointing last year but just fine this year. We still have much to learn about gardening! 

Lunch today included stewed local grass fed beef with snow peas (snow peas donated from Sue J's garden), fried potatoes, steamed zucchini (our own, amazing isn't it!), sautéed green beans and yard long beans (both fresh right out of the garden today). Fresh orange juice and sugar cane juice for dessert. 

Garden Kittens

Ah, the deed is done. The garden kittens have all been neutered, vaccinated, microchipped, dewormed, treated for parasites ........ And now released. These 5 kittens have proven to be very feral in nature. So we are not sure if we'll be seeing them around during the daytime. But as long as the food disappears each evening, we will know that they are hanging around. 

Why have garden cats? Mice, rats, and mongooses. And there are plenty here! We are hoping that these little guys will become effective biological controls for those vermin. Being that they are very feral in their personal natures, the chances are good that they will develop good hunting skills. 

This little orange fluffy girl is very pretty to look at, but don't be fooled into trying to pet her. You'll end up being bitten and scratched for sure. Just after taking the photo she lunged right for me. She says that she can take care of herself. 

This is the only boy. He's one tough, mean hombre. He tried to hook the camera when I was taking the photo. 

Pretty and petite. Not as nasty as her brother, but she's a mean chick. But more scared than downright mean. She tends to hide, but when out in the open, she's quick to use her claws. 

This grey and white fluffy girl is the friendliest of the bunch. Yes, she hisses and scratches, but down inside there is something that wants to be friendly. She came close to becoming a house cat, but she just couldn't keep herself from biting the hand that fed her. So she'll become a farm cat instead. 

This torbie colored girl is flighty more so than mean. She'd rather run away. But box her into a corner and she'll take your fingers off. She hates having her body touched and strongly resisted any attempts at petting. So she will forever be a feral. 

Second Anniversary

November 15th marked the garden's second anniversary! Hard to believe its been two years already. Oh how time flies when your elbow deep in dirt and down on your knees! 

In some ways it's amazing how far we've progressed. In other ways, we thought we would have been further along. We dreamed of having a larger area in garden by now, but along the way we got distracted with other projects ..... Chickens, keyhole gardens, experiments. But then we think, wow, we have got a lot of nifty experiments going. Not bad. 

This past year we learned that direct planting with little soil preparation doesn't work for us. You can read lots of glowing testimonials on the web about no-till gardening. We gave it a try. Not so good for us. None of the plants thrived - sunflowers, cabbage, lettuce, tomatoes, cosmos. So we won't try that again. 

We gave growing boxes a try. The big ones worked fine for the sweet potatoes. So we'll try them again and maybe try other kinds of crops. The smaller ones were destroyed by the aggressive grass plus were difficult to keep moist. 

We built an experimental tabletop garden, so far it has been successful. So we will add a few more and try other crops in them, too.

We now have two different kinds of keyhole gardens started. They're new so we don't know results yet, but it's been fun creating them. 

The hottub tilapia project is still in the making. We're slow on getting this project off the ground. 

The chickens have been successful, although we discovered that we can't let them run around the garden all day. They see it as their own personal salad bar. But the chickens have proven valuable for fertilizer, and they are a great way to convert garden waste into eggs and meat. To improve the set up we are building another enclosed pen for them. Then we will design runs for them so that they can enjoy grass and bugs while at the same time de-grass and fertilize new garden space for us. 

The ducks has been fun. They are good bug and slug eaters although there are some varieties they won't touch. So we learned that contrary to reports, they're not the ultimate slug control. We attempted to raise ducklings but sadly learned that in our environment the moms need our assistance. But we will be prepared to jump in to help next time around. 

We finally got the bananas under control. Maintaining the patch has become easier as we learn about how bananas grow and what their needs are. 

We've been experimenting with trellises of all sorts. Some have been successes, others failures. But we are learning. 

Now that we have more volunteers we've learned that we need to be more organized. Luckily we have a couple of people who are good in that department and will whip the rest of us into shape. 

So for two years we have focused primarily upon development, making the basic garden and growing food. Recently it appears that we've shifted into the next phase -- learning and experimenting. 

So where will the coming year take us? We're not sure yet. Many volunteers would like to try new crops : corn, amaranth, quinoa, squashes, new herbs. Some would like to add rabbits. Others want to experiment with vertical gardening. Others would like to see more workshops and training seminars. As a group, we are willing to try them all. 

If you've enjoyed following our journey these past two years, please come along for the next 12 months too. As usual, your support is most welcome. Your suggestions are inspiring. Mahalo! 

November 18, 2013

Good day for gardening! No rain. 

Babbette and Missy dove right in, organizing the work details. With a jobs list being posted each week, allowing for volunteers to pick a job to focus upon. This new system seems to work for us.

So even with a small crew (many of the volunteers are out of town) we got plenty of things done. Wow, marvelous, isn't it! 

Meliha jumped right in to harvesting, tackling the rampant pipinola. She found lots and lots. Those few vines seem to really like growing here. Harvest today also included peppers, bok choy, yacon. Volunteers helped themselves to bananas, oranges, herbs, and assorted greens. And sharing included limes, lemons, and grapefruits. Plus little bits of this and that were harvested for lunch -- green beans, yard long beans, beets. 

Our supply of seedlings and plants is in dire need of replenishing. Today a number of trays got sown and many cuttings made their way into pots. Plus we had more pineapple tops donated to us for adding to our pineapple patch. Alice seems to have flowed into the post of Pineapple Mama, so we tend to bring it to her attention whenever more starts arrive. 

The tabletop garden needed weeding and replanting again, so Sharon patiently separated the wee tiny arugula seedlings, carefully planting each one. Within 2-3 weeks we'll be able to start eating the thinnings. It grows fast! 

The first keyhole garden has taken root and is looking good.

 The second keyhole got tramped down well and to our surprise had composted down over a foot. That's more than we had anticipated. So volunteers gathered more weeds and garden castoffs to refill the keyhole garden. Now we are hoping that this will be the last refilling. We're getting impatient to plant this garden with tomatoes. Oh, we are so looking forward to tomatoes! 

The main garden is getting organized. More white pipe has been laid out, delineating the aisleways.  It's getting easier to see where the garden beds are. Plus we can now better see which areas will be prepared for the seed potatoes and onion plants when they arrive. 

It's been raining lightly just about every day. This is resulting in some rot and fungus problems. It also means that we cannot effectively keep things sprayed with dipel to control caterpillars. Since today was dry, Sue gave everything a dipel spray, hoping for the best. The fruit fly feeding stations also got recharged since the male traps are indicating that we still have a very active population. 

Rain is making the grass grow.....moan, moan. And with the grass being constantly wet, we can't get it mowed this past week. Thus we are hoping for at least two dry days this coming week. Wish us luck. 

Lunch:

Local pork and Hamakua Springs mushrooms

Brown rice

Steamed beets from the garden with a little coconut oil

Sautéed green beans and yard long beans

Pipinola in homemade marinara sauce

Norman's dark chocolate devils food cake

Kauaha'ao Church Bazaar

"The Garden" happily participated in the church bazaar in Waiohinu today. What a beautiful day for a local event! Sun, mild, and not too windy. Plus it turned out to be a successful fundraiser for the garden. We'll be able to pay for both the onion and potato orders plus have extra for a seeds. Super! 

Our booth this year was manned by Diane, Missy, and Sue B. -- or to be politically correct (although we don't give a dang about that at our age!), it was "womaned" by that trio. And ya know, it seemed that they were having way too much fun doing it, feasting on hot, fresh malasadas & coffee, dancing to the music, entertaining potential supporters passing by. I don't think Missy ever sat down once and Sue surely didn't warm a seat very often either. 

We discovered that plants were a hot item this year. You never know what's going to go, but it surely was plants this time. Every strawberry and taro plant was snarfed up, as were most of the basil, jicama, broccoli, and moon flowers. Last year's big mover was cotton, but this time around it hardly made a splash. And while last year the gourds practically marched to people's cars, only one went to a new home today. See? Ya never know. 

One of our scarecrows got its face today. Wayne K. took the bold plunge of drawing a colorful, non-traditional face. It was lots of fun seeing his creation develop. Pink hair! Different colored ears! Lip ring! Yikes!  * * * A big mahalo to Wayne * * *

Later, Dr. W. came along to name the scarecrow, and it was dutifully dubbed Sir Boo Da Byrds.  Sir Boo for short.  Thanks ever so much, Dr W! 

A number of the garden volunteers were part of the hula entertainment. What a nice dance group....colorful, graceful, so enjoyable. I've had the pleasure of watching them several times and have thoroughly enjoyed them each time. 

Beautiful hula dancers! 

Looks like our next market event will be in December. So it's time to head back to the garden now to pot up more plants, start cuttings, and plant more seeds. 

November 11,2013

Today proved to be a pleasant day to play in the garden. Not too hot. No rain yet. Not windy. What more can we ask for? Well, 6 Tahitian wwoofers might be nice, but I suspect that we wouldn't be that lucky!

We made good progress on cleaning up the garden and opening up spaces for the pending onions and seed potatoes. Babette tackled the wild overgrown, and rather non-productive tomato vines. Good riddance. A bit of soil amendments and rototillering and we'll be good to go. 

Connie brought a truckload of newspapers today. They all got toted into the shed. This is great! We always seem to be in need of newspapers for mulching, never ever having enough. It's a relief to see such a great pile. 

Norma stopped by and didn't plan to stay, but guess what? She stayed! It's always nice to have another friend to chat with in the garden. Dick and Judith also stopped by for a brief chat. They didn't stay for lunch since Dick is on a special diet now, but their visit was most welcome. 

The garden is hosting a litter of puppies this week, just giving them temporary shelter until they can be moved to Kona for transfer. Boy, are they cute! Missy got tempted to adopt one and took one home to see if Tripawed would accept it. To tell you the truth, I was very tempted to do that myself. Puppies are hard to resist. 

Puppy meets the garden ducks. 

Speaking of dogs.....we are going to have a farm watchdog. There is a 7 year old dog that needs a home and we could use a dog to ward off intruders. Sometimes in the past people have come snooping around and we just want them to know that this place isn't empty. So today Sue J got a place set up in the backyard for Skipper, the dog. He will have a 50' ground runner going from the avocado tree towards the back of the property. This should give him a comfortable space while keeping him out of volunteers' way. 

Back to the garden news..... 

The keyhole garden got planted today. Good. Peas around the perimeter which should nicely cascade down the sides, and assorted green stuff in the rest of the bed. Looks nice so far. 

Missy arranged a nice assortment of plants for the upcoming church bazaar, plus she made more business cards for the garden. The business cards were real handy at the spring fling. 

Keyhole garden #2 received more fill today, including numerous buckets of dirt/sod. Next week it might be ready for the soil cap, but I'm not sure. It all depends what the bed is like when we give it one more tramping down. 

Harvest today included pipinola, peppers, tomatoes, kale, and herbs. There's a little broccoli ready but not enough to go around, so we'll save it for lunch next week. Same with the zucchini. The bananas are turning yellow and just about ready to eat. Plenty of eggs this week, with several dozen available for volunteers to purchase. 

Lunch:

Steamed beets

Sautéed zucchini

Veggie medley (eggplant, herbs, pipinola, jicama in a sweet oriental sauce)

Kale omelet

Rice and quinoa

November 4, 2013

Today turned out to be a busy day. There was lots that needed to get done that couldn't be put off. Normally that's not how this garden project works. We usually come together as a group to enjoy gardening while socially interacting. It's a garden party!     :)  But today had a bit of serious work about it.

Greenhouse .... We have a church bazaar coming up (we sell plants there) so we needed to get seeds planted and cuttings potted. Missy was great and spent the day seeding and potting. We've got a nice variety of seeds in so now we pray for warm weather. One never knows when it comes to the weather, even here in Hawaii. 

Tabletop and keyhole update..... Alice got the rest of the bok choy was harvested and the tabletop weeded. And we've got itty bitty baby carrot plants! Cute when they're this small. Arugula has been transplanted into the tabletop. As for the keyholes, nothing planted today but keyhole #2 had more biomaterial added. 

Main garden .... Many seedlings got transplanted out into empty spaces. Sharon and Connie opened up a nice area for peas, erecting a trellis and all. A bit of an experiment is being conducted with one half of the pea planting having been dressed with compost. 

Another section of the old sweet potato bed got dug, grass and rocks removed. Not many tatters, but we expected that. 

The pineapple patch is growing nicely. The early plants are getting large and look robust. We keep adding a few more tops each week, so the plants range from tiny, newly planted to large, well established. This hopefully will translate into a staggered pineapple crop. 

Checking the fruit for traps, we saw that the lures were still working. The traps had lots of male fruit flies in them, which is both good and bad news. Good - the traps are working. Bad - there's an awful lot of flies around. So the other feeding baited traps were renewed to help get a handle on this fruit fly problem. 

(Photo: looking down on the trap and up close, you can see several newly trapped males crawling on the inside of the trap while dozens and dozens in dead males lay on the bottom.)

The orange tree is covered in oranges, but regretfully many are very high up. We get what we can. 

A nice bunch of bananas were harvested. Still green, but they ripen up with time. They are now protected from rats and birds up at the clubhouse. 

The avocado tree by the clubhouse is starting to produce. We harvested 2 and there are more just about ready. It's a tall tree so most of the harvest will be from drops because we can't reach them. Last year the avocados were watery and disappointing. Possibly this year they will be better? Last year we couldn't market them because the competition's avos were much better quality. We shall see what happens this year. It's a shame that the chickens don't like them, otherwise they would be a great source of food for the hens.

The kale, as usual, is growing well. We eat this every week. The chard is doing fine too. And we won't even mention the pipinola! Boy, that's one crop that keeps going and going and going! The daikon was a failure. Some sort of root maggot got into them. We tried allowing the grass to protect them but the moth/fly (or whatever) still found them. I guess we'll have to give daikon and radishes a rest until the root maggot goes elsewhere looking for a meal. The beans are being attacked by aphids, so they got a bath in safer soap. 

Babbette is posting a work list for us each week now. This is greatly helping us to stay organized and focused. Otherwise we tend to go helterskelter. 

Our future focus will be on getting ready for the anticipated arrival of the seed potatoes and onion seedlings. 

Lunch:

Chicken soup (yes, our own chicken, veggies, and herbs were in it)

Purple sweet potatoes with fresh coconut and fresh pineapple

Sautéed green beans and yacon

Stir fry veggie medley