Mid July -- The Garden is Growing Up

We've been getting plenty of rain, maybe too much because the ground us getting soggy, but everything is growing really fast and robustly. It's amazing how well things are growing. 

The young tomato plants are already starting to flower. Some already have tiny little tomatoes. 

We got more pineapples planted, plus lots of other veggies. Leone found a bed where the seeds had not germinated well, so she is redoing the bed. That sometimes happens because some of our seed is donated rather than purchased. Not all the donated seed does as well as we hoped. 

The baby peas are starting to vine.

And the tiny little basil plants actually survived! We weren't too sure they were going to make it. 

The squash plants are doing well. We are trying to grow zucchini. With luck we may get a few before the pickleworm moth finds them. 

One of the zucchini beds is further along than the other, even though they were planted at the same time. We had gotten this bed (above) mulched before they other, so possibly that's the reason for the difference. Or perhaps one bed got more rabbit manure than the other. 

The cucumbers are growing quickly, it seems like we just sowed the seed yesterday, but I guess it must have been longer ago. We've mulch them to keep the weeds down. 

One thing that really grows well here is the taro. It's loving all the rain we are getting. 

The potatoes are all starting to seriously flower. Some have white blooms, some have purple. So it won't be long before we start checking for taters. 

Harvests are becoming better. 

Lots of cucumbers are on the vines along with an abundance of flowers. So pretty. 

The first strawberry has turned red! 

Good natural food. 

Early In July - The Garden is Hopping

We planted the first completed pallet box with sweet potato cuttings. They all survived and are thriving. We have our second box ready for planting with another sweet potato variety. And in the next couple weeks will be assembling and filling three more boxes. All the weeds, paper plates from lunches, and other organic materials goes into the boxes. Things like chicken pen litter, rabbit manure, excess grass clippings. 

Doug has been busily working on our future carrot bed. He's been digging out the rocks. 

In the foreground you can see a super jumbo rock he found. We also discovered a concrete foundation crossing the bed. A remnant of times of yore when this land once was part of Kahuku Ranch. Neighborhood mumblings say that this land once was used for the ranch horses where they came for shoeing and treatment. There are at least two other shallow concrete-like foundations on the land that indicate sheds of some sort. 

As Doug prepared the beds, others sifted the soil. This is the only bed that we plan so far to be finely sifted. We will use it to grow carrots. All the sifted soil was returned to the bed and a couple varieties of carrots sown. 

The onions are growing well and starting to get thicker stems. No signs of bulbing yet. 

All the potato varieties are growing strongly. They're quite lush. 

Everywhere we planted daikon, radishes, and turnips is doing great. They are enjoying the daily light rains too. We're harvesting these three veggies very week now.

The daikons, above, are still producing but we're seeing some bolting. So I suspect this variety is not a good summer variety for here. We need to keep that in mind.

So far the turnips, above, have been healthy. No pests have found them yet, 

We had transplanted some little garlic chive plants from the old garden site. At first they didn't look so hot, but now they've finally taken root. They're doing fine. 

The pineapples are showing signs of transplanting successfully. They are growing bigger and adding lots of new leaves. We still don't know how badly stunted they were by the uprooting. Time will tell. 

The pea vines are taking off and growing very rapidly. They should be flowering shortly. 

We seeded more radishes in between the broccoli. They will be ready to harvest before the broccoli gets too big. 

Late June - It's A Garden!

Finally, finally the garden is looking like a garden! We are harvesting real veggies again. By late June we saw the harvest of radishes, daikon, turnips, and a few herbs. 

Not much but we're on the verge of getting more real soon. July we should be tasting potatoes, cukes, squashes, and more. Can't wait! 

The French Breakfast radishes are real successful for us. 

Above is one seriously crazy daikon! 

We're still digging out rocks and making more beds. 

Here you can see Laurie and Missy raking in the wood ash and coral dust into the next garden beds. 

And we are planting more tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, carrots, taro, broccoli, Chinese kale, lettuce, and herbs. Above, Julia is busy transplanting baby starts into the next bed. 

As we are growing starts, we need more fine soil for the pots. Above, Linda and Carl sifted about a cubic yard of nice compost/soil, getting all the stones out. We then mixed this half and half with promix. It made a nice potting soil for starting seeds. 

Sue J continued setting up trellises. It's a slow job, but an important one. She's our master trellis maker. 

And Doug never runs out of places to dig! Since only half the area had been previously used as a garden, that means that we are finding lots of good sized rocks. By getting to rocks out, we are able to till in soil amendments and grow root crops. 

We made a couple of pallet boxes to make compost and to use for sweet potatoes. We lined the boxes with whatever we had on hand. In this case it was an old tarp and a dogfood bag. 

Out in the garden lots of the seeds we've sown are sprouting. Above is the baby peas. 

The onions that we transplanted are growing again. Not much to look at yet but they are coming along. We don't know how big they will get, but it looks like we will harvest something at least. We've mulched them which should help keep the weeds down. 

The tomato plants are all starting to grow. These are Roma tomatoes. 

And the potatoes are doing great! 

As soon as the beans sprouted we applied some mulch for weed control. We are seeing some weeds starting to sprout and a bit of grass returning in places. The grass was such a major problem in the previous garden there we are taking extra steps to avoid it here. 

The first planting of carrots is coming along. These Matt grew as starts and we transplanted them into the garden. The other bed we direct seeded. 

We've tried direct seeding some onions. Since they will be slow growing, we interplanted some radishes. 

Early June - Diggin' N Plantin' Maddness

All of June we worked digging, chopping weeds, removing grass, sowing seeds. One bed after the other was created and planted. There wasn't much to harvest but some radishes and turnips. But we added more and more veggies as the weeks went by.

One bed after the other got dug, derocked, rototilled. We dug in all sorts of soil amendments including wood ash, crushed coral, crush bones, rabbit and chicken manure, compost, and grass clippings. And we used lots of grass clippings on the soil surface as a protective mulch. 

Diana really put her heart into getting things planted. Down on her knees she planted seeds for beets, onions, squashes, and various herbs. 

As we got more and more beds planted, the volunteers expanded out creating even more. More measurements......more pipe......then more digging. Everybody helped....Laurie, Linda, Leone, Missy, Julia, Doug, Matt, Norma, Sue, Diane, Carl, et al. 

Alice worked on planting the pineapples. We brought these from the previous garden. We're not too sure how they will fare, but it's worth a try. 

Sue J worked on getting trellises up. These old Costco tent frames make excellent trellis scaffolding. 

Matt is growing lots of different starts for the garden. Above are baby cabbages and broccoli. They are still too young to set out in the garden yet, but it won't take long for them to be ready. Matt is our main man for producing starts. 

Late May

All of May we have been busy making the garden beds and getting as much planted as possible. It's difficult working so much without getting to harvest anything, so we want to get things growing as quick as possible. 

We got the tomato plants all in. Plus rows and rows of potatoes. In order to help conserve moisture and keep the weeds down, we spread mulch over everything that we could. We know that some of the grass will regrow, but if we can keep in to a minimum with mulch, it will be tolerable. 

Now that we have a number off garden beds made and the white pipe laid down, it's starting to look like a real garden. We're now concentrating on sowing radishes, daikon, and turnips. They mature rapidly. Being able to get some food for our efforts will be rewarding. 

The young taro we planted in early May is growing remarkably fast. Boy, it feels good to see that. 

And the young potato plants are all sprouting. 

Doug and Laurie are our main diggers and rock removers. Just using shovels they are able to remove most of the rocks. When Doug finds a big one he gets real determined to remove it. And believe me, he's got some giant ones out of the garden! We are also using a mattock for rock removal. It's one if my own personal favorite digging tools.  I'm using a mattock in the new gardens I'm creating for myself. 

May - Starting Over....Successfully!

So here we are at our new location. We have a bit over an acre of level ground with the potential of using more. And it has dirt! About a 100' x 50' area was previously derocked and used as a garden although right now it is pasture. The rest has rocks mixed in with the soil, so that's gonna be work.

The first thing we did was set up our picnic area. We all agreed that under a very large ohia tree was a great location. So we moved in the outdoor chairs. At least now we had a place to eat lunch, chat, and dream about a garden again. That's high priority stuff!

Afterward we all agreed that we needed to move to big tables over to under the tree.

As for the garden, first steps included mowing everything down real close to the soil. And as grass and weeds started to regrow, we sprayed them with repeated sprays of ag vinegar and lemon juice. The stubborn weeds were cooked with a propane torch. It didn't take long to get the weeds subdued although we knew the grass roots wouldn't all get killed by this method. But we were adverse to using  a chemical herbicide.

We needed to protect the garden from the sheep that were grazing this land. Not having the money to invest in expensive fencing, combined with the fact that we weren't exactly sure where the fencing should be, we opted to build a temporary pallet fence. This was something that cost very little, was easy and quick to erect, and could be readily dismantled and moved. 

(The pallet fence can be seen in the background. The pots hold baby tomato plants that we were getting ready to plant.) 

Next step: layout the first few rows and aisleways. We opted for about 3 foot paths and 3 foot wide beds. We had the beds 23' foot long with a 4 foot wide cross path. 23' was no special number. It was just that we could fit three beds this length across the width of the new garden area.

(Missy is busily preparing the garden beds and setting out the white pipe rows borders. A pile of grass mulch is in the foreground which we used around freshly planted yacon, tomatoes, and herbs.) 

Now that we had our general layout, we started rototilling the derocked area and planting our first new crop - potatoes. We had several bags of seed potatoes sprouting and ready to sow. So in they went. Ta-da!  The new garden officially is growing! And by the end of the month we also sowed seeds for radishes, daikon, and turnips. It's a start.

Rocks! 

And more rocks! 

May - The Restart

May 1st saw the garden shutting down at the old location and everything being moved from the old site. Quite a job, to say the least. Not only did all the tools need moving, but we also dismantled the greenhouse, packed up all sorts of supplies, rolled up rugs and plastic sheeting, moved wood pallets, buckets, etc. The whole shebang.

While some of us moved the physical possessions, others began transplanting the herbs and perennial type plants. Plus whatever could be transplanted got moved. Things like the yacon, leeks, onions, stevia, taro, etc. We also harvested everything that was close enough to take -- the potatoes primarily.

On top of all the garden, we also moved everything from our clubhouse. Volunteers packed everything into boxes and bags -- kitchen ware, chairs, garden books, everything.

Moving was quite a job. And the decision to move was not a light one to take on our part. But the garden had become not as productive as we had anticipated, so a change was in order. We needed to find a better, secure location for the garden. But we found a spot to try, so off we went to the new location. Not a perfect location, but an ok one that we could work with. 

So what we do with all the stuff we moved? Well, mostly it's in piles here and there. What could get rain damaged was piled into a small barn. What could get wet went into big piles staged around the new garden area. Surely not the ideal solution, but you do what ya have to do.