Our farm is fully fenced and gated (locked), but we still had to run double strands of barbed wire atop the field fencing in order to keep people from climbing over the fence. And that effort didn’t completely work either. The next step was to have signs made stating "Loose livestock and dogs can be dangerous. Farms are dangerous. Keep out." We posted them along the street plus on places where people had jumped the fencing in the past. We installed trail cams at the two gates just so we could identify any trespassers opening the gates. But since the signage went up, much of the problem has gone away.

Keeping Volunteers Happy

We are using two greenhouses now, one of which has a poly film roof which keeps out the rain, the other of which has a screen mesh covering. Due to frequent light showers, we tend to set up our work station in the dry greenhouse. But the sun can be brutal, so we set up a pop up tent over the work station. This is where the volunteers sow seeds into pots for germination, and transplant infant seedlings into growing cells or pots. This arrangement makes working, and chatting, more comfortable and enjoyable.

I don’t bother to take down the tent between work days. Due to our strong tropical sun, we don’t lose much plant growth due to short term shading.

Tereza…..
The spot that we have this garden is openly exposed to the wind coming right off the ocean. There is no windbreak. Not a tree, bush, house, now even tall grass. This wind is something we have to factor in as we plant. And since windbreaks take a number of years to grow, we just have to suck it up for now when we get wind damage. The forking you are seeing is due to wind damage. We had a significant wind blowing a while back, which damaged the growing tips on some of the trees. A few trees were completely snapped off 2 foot above the ground. Others were damaged and grew a second primary crown.

You’re really observant to notice that! Most people don’t even give it a thought.

Douglas…
Thank you for the complement. I’ve long since given up trying to chalk up kudos for myself. My reward is in seeing others learning to be more self reliant.

Weedblock cloth

In the above photo of the gourd plant, you can see that we have resorted to using commercial grade weedblock. And if you look beyond the area of weedblock, you will see that the garden area is covered in thick weed growth. Those tropical weeds are why we have resorted to using weedblock cloth. We simply can’t keep up. There is only so much we can physically and financially do.

Weedblock is not a good solution. BUT it works as a temporary solution, giving us time to come up with a better solution. We are making baby steps strides in doing better.

We have had a number of "hippy" volunteers quit because we use some less that perfect methods. We don’t fit their image of their ideal world. As a result, they leave and never learn the basic knowledge of how to grow food. Several of these young people still live in our community, and sad to say, none have accomplished anything in the way of growing their own food. They continue to live off the corporate food system, thus supporting the very methods they abhor. How ironic. How sad.

I do not apologize for using weedblock. That would be like a child apologizing for using training wheels while learning to ride a bicycle. As this food project matures, the weedblock will be retired. But in the meantime, we will be feeding hundreds of our community residents.

Just adding my thoughts….. I’d really wish I had access to lots of waste wool. I’d like to make crude felt and try using it as weedblock/mulch.

New Crop

A local gourd artist asked if she could grow some gourds on our farm. She intended to harvest what she needed and give us the rest to sell. Sounded good to us , so we gave her permission. Unfortunately she transplanted her dozen seedlings during the week that we had a big windstorm. All but one seedling was destroyed. A discouraged artist never returned to the farm.

Last week I checked on this last surviving seedling and found that it was thriving. It sits in a corner of the garden I seldom go to, so I was surprised to see a robust plant loaded with more than a dozen baby gourds. I texted the artist who was as surprised as I. She came down to check it out and was enthralled to find so many healthy looking gourds. After caring for this plant, she dated all the gourds. And now she plans to visit weekly to tend her crop. As a side note, it’s a good thing I visited this plant because one of the harvest team thought it was some sort of weird pumpkin and planned to pick several. Yikes!

I’m tickled with delight to see her project be a success……at least so far. Those baby gourds need several months before they are ready for harvesting.

Tomorrow is our market day. Our pickers, including myself, harvested quite an assortment.

Spearmint
Chocolate mint
Stick oregano
Genoese basil
Thai basil
Chinese celery
Cilantro
Sweet Bay leaves
Kaffer Lime leaves
Mamaki
Papaya
Dragon fruit (from the garden of one of the OKK members)
Tangelos
Limes
Lemons (Meyers and Ponderosa)
Fresh beans (a yellow, a green, a yellow & purple stripped variety)
Yard long beans
Winged beans (our first harvest)
Dry Lima beans (this is the first time we are offering them)
Beets
Salad tomatoes
Okra
Daikon
Radishes
Carrots
Soybean
Taro
Pumpkin
Edible gourd
Greens —
  Mustards
  Boy choys
  Chinese cabbage
  Lettuce
  Moringa
  Amaranth
Leeks
Onion greens
Eggplants
Sweet peppers
Pipinola (aka: chayote)

We are between harvests on some of the crops, so they will be missing from our tables. Things like sweet corn, sweet potatoes, potatoes, snow peas, bananas, pineapples, Greek oregano, sage, cucumbers, tomatillos, coconuts. And some seasonal crops won’t be ready for awhile, such as turmeric and yacon.

Yes, we have been expanding what we are growing. Today we were really happy to be adding horseradish. A local gardener came and planted several horseradish plants in the garden to start our bed. We were also gifted a Vietnamese cilantro plant. Another nice addition. And call us crazy, but we planted some watermelon. This will be a challenging crop for us. In the greenhouse I started two new varieties of amaranth(a burgundy and a white), since it is a good seller for us.

There are still plenty of veggies that we plan to add to the garden. But they will have to wait a bit longer. We have our hands full just trying to keep up with what we already have.

I also plan to take along 3 trays of starter plants. One tray will be flowers (marigold, cosmos, and zinnia). The other two trays will be a wide assortment of veggies.

I feed the chopped up trunks to our pigs. And the leaves. So when it comes to pigs, the entire plant is usable as feed.

It’s been awhile since we chatted, I know. I’m so into growing food for my community, that between this and my own farm, I have very little empty time on my hands for blogging.

My own farming time has gradually become less and less, but I still produce a wide range of goods, but on a smaller scale. This is when I am finding that I turn to my food forest more for harvests…. bananas, pineapples, guavas, lilikoi, pipinola (chayote), chaya, various herbs and spices, mamaki, cholesterol spinach, sweet potato greens, landrace pumpkin, avocado, papaya, taro are on the harvest list at the moment. My pest protected greenhouses are producing a bit of basil, zucchini, slicing tomatoes, and peppers. The rest of the veggies that we eat are coming from the OKK farm garden.

Wayne, Christine, I, and a handful of volunteers have been expanding the variety of foods growing there. We have added (or expanded) several varieties of eggplant, peanuts, soybean, 3 new taro varieties, edible gourds, winged beans, different types of bush beans,  Malabar spinach, pigeon peas. We added an old heirloom pole bean that was extremely popular in the area during World War II. We just planted horseradish and Vietnamese cilantro. And while our small salad tomatoes have proven to be extremely popular and successful, we are trying another larger variety to see how that goes. In the greenhouses we are again trying sweet peppers and will be adding some hot varieties too due to popular requests.

Non-food —— we are growing sunflowers and zinnias for cut flowers. Their sales help keep the cash flowing so we can continue with this project. Yes, it takes cash.  We also sell plant starts at the farmers market, again to help the cash flow.

After two years into this project, we all agree that thick choking weeds are our main problem. Yes we have pests and diseases to deal with, but the thick population of weeds are our main crop killers. They can quickly choke out our veggies. Weeds in the tropics can be brutal. We simply do not have enough man hours to keep this massive garden hoed or tilled to keep the weeds down. Nor do we have the machinery necessary to harvest enough mulch material to effectively mulch the garden. While acres of lush guinea grass are available to us for chopping, we don’t have a silage chopper to harvest it. This grass is too thick and tall for a standard riding lawn mower. My dream is to import a silage chopper with a blower for effective harvesting of truckloads of mulch………..dream on. So the only solution to date that is working for us is to use heavy duty weed block. We thus use homemade liquid fertilizers much of the time. Depending upon the crop, we can pull back the weed block cloth and till in compost before tacking the cloth back into place. This option is not ideal for good soil practices, but it seems to be working for us. But if anyone wants to donate a silage chopper, I’ll rip out the weedblock in a flash!

A popular item has become the moringa. The farm has two moringa trees. Each week we can harvest a brown shopping bag full of leaves….and we sell every bit. People are starting to discover it. We are just now planning on starting 4-5  more trees.

Pigs……. the two piglets are now past piglet stage. I’m guessing they are 100 to 130 pounds now. We are thinking about selling them to help with our cash situation. If we don’t sell them, we will most likely slaughter them for the town’s Christmas/New Year holiday festival. OKK often stages free shave ice and food during a festival. BBQ pork over rice sounds good. Those two pigs could feed a lot of people. That’s really cool, knowing that their main feed was garden waste.

Cows….. we have harvested several of our cows already. The meat is donated to our local Food Hub which serves free meals a couple days a week to our community residents. We aren’t raising cattle—it takes too long. So we solicit donated cattle. We willingly take the trouble makers, the cattle too damaged in some way to be effectively sold,  the ones too old to sell commercially. We do not take sick cattle, but that steer with a broken leg or unresponsive hoof rot is just fine with us. We occasionally get the opportunity to round up a stray loose cow that the owner doesn’t want to bother with. We have access to plenty of acres of pasture to hold cattle until we need one, though of course one with a broken keg or hoof rot wouldn’t be added to a pasture.

Chickens…. Feral chickens are a problem in Hawaii in many places. Country folk don’t see them as a problem, but mainlanders moving here highly object to them. So we offer to trap and remove them. These are dressed out and the meat donated to our Food Hub for meals. This system is better for us than having to build a chicken coop and feeding the birds. We have talked about raising some egg layers, using compost and restaurant waste to feed them, but none of us have the time to build anything at the moment. Maybe it’s an idea for the future.

The OKK community food project has been a success so far. It’s working. We would like to expand more. We would like to change our methods to be more permaculture oriented. But it will take time and more manhours. One step at a time.

I clip the one wing heavily, and one half the tail feathers in the same side. This seems to do better for me than clipping just one wing.  But some of the lighter birds learn that if they flap aggressively while climbing the fence, they can get over. Cured that problem by running two tight strands of fishing line offset atop the fence.

Sean, my sow had free run of 20 acres, so she had her favorite spots. Thus she tended to root up the soil around the same trees over and over again. Why did she choose those particular trees? She opted for those that had mulch and compost covering the ground around them. As I mentioned, I suspect she was hunting the worms. She rooted in plenty of other spots on the farm, but definitely favored wherever I had mulched the areas of my food forest/orchard. There were plenty of areas that were not being mulched and that she never touched, I assume because there was no food for her there.

If she had been rotated through pastures, never staying too long in one, I most likely wouldn’t have seen as much damage. Managed pastures also are seeded with forage, giving the pigs plenty of varied fresh grazing. This helps keep the pigs from damaging the land as badly. My 20 acres is not managed as livestock pasture.

Just to add my vote———— under some circumstances, they can kill trees.

I was amazed at the destruction one adult sow did to my farm. She was a pet and had run of the 20 acres, minus the 1 acre veggie garden I had at the time. Over to course of 2 years she…
… stripped the bark from a 50+ year old mango tree, killing it.
… killed several young guava saplings and a mulberry tree.
… she surface rooted here and there, especially around trees. I suppose she was harvesting the worms that inhabited the mulch. Initially I thought "how cool, she’s tilling in the mulch and compost". 5-7 years later I started seeing those trees starting to fade away. Now I have dozens of dead and dying trees.  
… she aggressively rooted on a hillside, resulting in significant erosion when we had a big storm. That hill required major repairs.

I still raise pigs, but now they are confined. They get to run free for about an hour about 4 times a week during guava season in order to eat the dropped guavas, but then I entice them back into their pens using tasty treats such as mangos, bread, cracked corn, spam slices. No more aggressive rooting.

Joylynn, I plan to go check out his list. But one of the mistakes I see gardeners do over and over is to grow things that they don’t eat.  It’s fine to grow a row of beans, but if no one in the family wants to eat them, then I’ve seen those beans fail to get picked, end up in the trash pile. At least in my area, those beans could be picked and donated to our local food Hub. But I’m not sure other areas have food Hubs like we do here. Our own food Hub in Naalehu makes free meals for residents and participates in food giveaways, such as the Kau Kau For Keikis program.

I suggest my students keep track of what they eat for a month, then look to see what of those foods they could grow for themselves.  Thus no two gardeners would be growing exactly the same crops taken from somebody’s list. They could add more exotic veggies, such as baby beets or snow peas, when they are ready for them.

As a side story, we have a retired agronomist here who is having an enjoyable retirement growing food on a half acre. He gives it all away to neighbors and our food Hub. So his case is different. He grows what he finds is interesting to learn about. He tries crops that are challenging, figuring out how to get beyond the difficulties. Right now he is collecting the various banana varieties we have here. And trying his hand at trellised crops.

Looking at the topic description……trees for sustenance…… let me consider. How many trees do we have? Well, first if all, I would hate to have to live on only the food our trees provide. It would be a horrible diet, to be sure. But let me inventory our trees.

Avocado….we have perhaps 10 producing trees right now, 99% of the avos go to feed the pigs. We eat one a week, at most, and sell a dozen at the market each week. Avocados are seasonal here.
Citrus…I think we have a dozen or so assorted citrus trees. We use perhaps a dozen pieces of citrus a week for ourselves. The rest either gets sold or fed to the livestock. Some of the trees are seasonal, some are not.
Papaya…I keep a few growing to provide food for the pigs. The fruits are poor quality when grown at my elevation, so we do not eat them. But they help make good pork. ‘
Cinnamon, allspice, clove, sweet bay, kaffer lime … one each. Gives us all that we need.
Macadamia…7 trees. We could use just 4 to meet our needs.
Guava…dozens. They grow wild. The sheep and pigs eat the fruit.
Jabotacoba … one. Provides for our needs.
Mulberry… 2. Gives us enough fruit for our desire.
Banana… not a tree technically. We maintain dozens of clumps. This gives us plenty for our own use, plus plenty to sell. Plus plenty of trunks for feeding the pigs and running the imu (underground oven).

Many food trees will not produce at our elevation and climate zone. I am glad that I do not have to rely upon trees as my primary food source. One tree that I would love to be able to grow is breadfruit, but alas it won’t produce on my farm.

<<< If you wanted the smallest footprint to provide your own diet perpetually, what would you plant? How many acres would it require? >>>

That all depends upon your location and the resources available to you, of course. And by the use of "you", do you mean me personally or people in general? Lots of questions come to my mind, because soil, sun, water, soil, climate, etc all play significant parts. And the skill and experience of the grower also plays a major role.

I have already demonstrated that I personally can provide for 100% of hubby and my food needs via growing our own and using our excess to trade or sell to provide us with items we could not grow ourselves. In that I am located in a location that it very good for food production, plus can grow food year around, we have a garden plus orchard area of 3 acres plus additional space for chickens, sheep, and pigs. I could surely accomplish the goal with less garden space, but some disaster could result in starvation…….in the past we have had extreme storms that wiped out the garden, a neighbor’s loose cattle eat or otherwise destroy the entire garden, and waves of insect pests and fungal disease wipe out vast sections of the garden. Rather than growing just the minimum needed, I prefer to grow in abundance. The abundance assures that I won’t go hungry should a disaster strike and that there is plenty to provide me with feed for the livestock and cash for my other expenses.

What would I grow? Everything that we like to eat, plus items that sell well and for good cash at the farmers market. Snow peas are one of my big money producers, so I grow them in abundance.

John, you got me laughing on #5.  I’m still chuckling!

Around here, lots of women are into yoga in an attempt to stay young. In addition to regular classes, they offer senior yogi, also called chair yoga. One sits in a chair while one flings their arms about and strike poses. These are the women who are beyond crouching dog. I seriously doubt any of them have been down on their floors in years.

While I’m not into yoga myself, I do taichi each morning for the stretching, strength building, and balance. As a senior myself, I feel that taichi is the way to go. Oh, I don’t follow any particular taichi program anymore. I just do whatever moves I feel that I want to, in whatever order it strikes my fancy that morning. I believe it makes a real difference.

I’ve been using non-ruminant/equine manures for crops where there is no splash problem when it rains, thus any problem with the manure doesn’t end up on the food. I don’t bother trying to compost it since we don’t have much volume of such manure. I simply use a shovel and scoop up a shovelful of dirt to make the hole, put in the manure, then cover back over with the dirt. Quick and easy. We dispose of dog, cat, and pig manure this way.

Crops we use this method on are flowers, orchard trees, pigeon peas, trellised pipinola, pole beans and peas, corn. Honestly, most of this manure gets used in the orchard. And since trees are primarily surface feeders, we don’t dig a deep hole. And the hole goes along the drip line. It’s only if we happen to get an excess that we then fertilize the flower beds. To date we haven’t had extra to use on the other crops, though they are on our list for use if perchance we get a windfall of such manures.

Veggie Washing Station


We finally built a washing station at the garden. Up until now we had to box up the veggies and transport them someplace to hose them down. By having a washing station right at the garden, we can eliminate that awkward extra task. So now the pickers can bring their box or crate to the station, where someone else can give the veggies a good rinsing to remove pests and dirt. Once rinsed, they can go directly into the truck bed for transport.

We transport the veggies usually in open plastic crates. This prevents them from heating up. Once wet from being rinsed, they actually cool down in the night air. The more sensitive veggies go into large coolers, get covered with a towel, then covered with crushed ice. A bag of ice costs us $3. Since nobody has freezer space to make the amount of ice we need, we simply buy a bag and accept it as a "cost of doing business".

The washing station is simply built. The table itself costs nothing but our labor and a few screws. We used salvaged plastic pallets, some old previously used 2 by 4 lumber, 2 free aluminum sinks, a sheet of old plywood, some discarded bread trays, and a weird tray found at the dump. We opted to buy a new "safe" hose because it would be soft and flexible, cutting it into two hoses. And we purchased two new hose nozzles since we had no used ones sitting around.

The water came down from the main irrigation pipe. Installing a "t" into that pipe was our main problem and expense. But once done, we were able to install a faucet. We then ran pcv pipe from that faucet down to the washing station.

Our expenses were the 25 foot hose and 2 nozzles, the pcv piping and connectors, and the "t" & faucet. We plan to add a water pressure valve, but at the moment we don’t have one.

Market Today


Today’s market was our most successful to date, and we didn’t even get everything to market that was ready. But we did have an abundance of veggies and enthusiastic buyers. It is really heartwarming to see such a good response to our volunteers’ efforts. Little by little, each week sees more residents discovering us. It helps that we have good quality chemical-free produce and a wide selection of it. I try to put a bit of extra into the customer’s bag when I have an abundance. Today’s abundance was eggplant, green beans, limes, and salad tomatoes. So many buyers were offered complimentary eggplant or green beans. Most were happy to accept them.

The offerings today included the excess amounts of eggplants, tomatoes, green beans ( 3 varieties), and limes. Plus lemons, papaya, bananas, taro, radishes, daikon, edible gourds, pumpkins, snow peas, beets, leafy greens, cucumbers, Malabar spinach, basil, moringa (both dried and fresh), kaffer lime leaves, sweet bay leaves, sunflowers. New today were sweet globe onions and a fruit called jaboticaba (often called tree grapes here). We also brought 4 dozen fresh eggs from my neighbor across the street, and 2 live hens. We failed to get some things harvested in time: carrots, cilantro, lettuce, the mints, oregano, mamaki. And forgot to bring the plants : assorted veggie starts, rooted sweet potato cuttings, Norfolk Island pine seedlings, coffee seedlings, comfrey roots. In spite of not getting everything to market, we did real good. It felt wonderful.

Our leftover veggies went to various places. We sold some to a small local store. The leftover leafy greens went to a new local start up lunch business. One of the market vendors got the limes. We gave away some of the excess tomatoes and green beans to other market vendors. After the market, I dropped off tomatoes to our local food Hub. And finally the little bit still leftover went to feed the pigs we are raising.

Looking at reality, I can say that I’m in the group of “permies with health issues". Part of that is due to my age. Yup, I take naps! And I work more slowly than I did 10 years ago. But I surely ain’t ready to quit! I can still swing a 100 lb sack of grain, but it’s a strain now. And I fizzle out after hauling ten 50 pound sacks of feed, or whatever,  into the barn.

Came down with vertigo about 15 years ago, and it has never quite left me. So I’m mindful of where my body parts are in relation to the earth. Sometimes I need to stop for a moment so that my mind can catch up with reality so that I don’t spin out of control, flopping like a fish out of water. Yup, scared people a few times with that act! I’m wise enough not to get atop a horse anymore. Nor climb a ladder that isn’t braced or tied to something solid. I’m now watchful of where those rungs are located.

My hearing is starting downhill, but I actually find it somewhat pleasing. I don’t much hear those annoying coqui frogs at night.

Of course body parts ache after a work day. But it’s a great excuse for a body massage. Every Wednesday I treat myself to a wonderful massage under the guise of medically needing it. Nobody questions my extravagance.

The one thing that annoys me is that kneeling now is painful. But I lately discovered some high quality knee pads that are allowing me to kneel again. Of course they don’t come with built in boosters for getting up off the ground. Wish they did…. I would have paid extra for that feature.

I have lots of other annoying health issues, but I live with them. If I listened to the doctors, I’d be doing nothing but sitting in a rocking chair. Heck, I’d rather die working in my garden. Eventually something will get me, but in the meantime I’ll keep producing food and passing my wisdom onto new gardeners.

Oh, did I mention that I have tinnitus, idiopathic mouth twitch, crooked fingers and locking joints in my hands, spinal arthritis, hiatal hernia with half my stomach in my chest along with reflux issues, a gall bladder that acts up if I eat something naughty? Oh, I didn’t? Well, I do. Plus a heart that opts to beat kind of wacky, but never when I go to a doctor or wear a heart monitor.

I consider myself healthy. The doctors laugh at that one. But for real, I don’t see any reason not to work at farming.

Here on permies.com I read posts about Paul and his workers using a nifty small saw mill to make dimensional lumber. It looked to work simply and easily. I’m not sure which forum I read the posts, but you could try searching around. They made some easy adaptations to made the mill work easier.

Leigh Tate, one of the permies.com helpers has a small sawmill that they used on their farm. They cut their own trees to make dimensional lumber for a building project she and her husband worked on. You could try sending her a pm. She posted info and pictures on her own blog.

I had one of those chainsaw mills. Used it to cut tree trunks into slabs for making furniture. When we bought the rig, we needed to buy a bigger chainsaw than we normally used, plus a bigger bar. Plus a ripping chain. We watched a few YouTube videos before starting, so we knew to make a simply jig guide for especially the first cut. The mill worked fine for our use. We went slowly and touched up the blade after each  cut, keeping it really sharp. We cut 8 foot long slabs, 2 inches thick from trunks up to 18 inches in diameter. We cut up several tree trunks, making most of our household furniture, workshop tables, plus many extra slabs for selling.  When done, we sold the set up and recouped some of our initial investment. Having all those slabs made the adventure financially well worth it.

Rez, you brought forth a good point. ….. not biodegradable in the first place. Can that be? Well, in a sense. If the proper microbes/fungi are not there in the first place, then the wood chips don’t decompose.

This point was revealed to me when I moved to hawaii. Back in New Jersey I used chopped wood bark, most likely pine, for my flower beds. Every year I had to replenish the beds a bit because the chunks gradually rotted away. Then I moved to Hawaii and promptly purchased bags of pine bark chunks for my new flower beds. 20 years later most of the chunks are still readily discernible !
They haven’t rotted away. So, what’s different? While Home Depot shipped in bags of pine bark, the bark did not have the species specific microbes/fungi capable of decomposing pine bark.  OR, if it did carry them, those microbes/fungi were not able to survive my Hawaiian soil conditions. Therefore, the microbes, probably a fungi, are not here and thus the pine bark does not rapidly decompose. I find this to be quite interesting. I had naively thought that any microbes/fungi would do, but in the case of these landscaping pine chunks, it hasn’t proven to be the case.  So in effect, the pine chunks are not biodegradable here. Interesting case.

William, I love using comfrey in the garden and grow lots of it. I have it growing around the perimeters of the compost bins and chicken pens. Plus in patches here and there around the farm. I suspect that it does indeed capture the errant nitrogen. I harvest the leaves by chopping off the entire plant an inch above the soil. It readily grows back. The leaves make a wonderful seed free mulch for around the base of veggie plants.

Thank you, Jay. Yes, lessons are best taught from multiple angles. Not everyone learns or understands in the sane way.  Repetition is good. ……….. And weeds can be good. It is simply a case of too much of something that becomes a problem.

Piglet Update


The piglets arrived on April 20th in a medium dog crate. As of today, there is no way they could fit into that cage and shut the door. These guys are growing incredibly fast. I’m use to raising feral piglets, who grow slowly and don’t get as large as domestic pigs. So I am rather amazed to see the rapid growth on these two.

The black and white one is the bully. He pushes the other one away from the best food. Luckily there is always plenty of food present, so the little guy never goes hungry. I have to make a point of making sure the red one gets the goodies. And because the black and white one is such a food monger, he is growing the fastest. He’s a real hog! Eats like a pig!

They are learning to eat a variety of foods. Some they relish more than others. Fruits and meats are high on their list. So are corn, rice, and bread. Fresh greens are always welcomed. They had 5 gallons of freezer burnt spaghetti with sauce the other day. Though not deemed as delicious as fruit and meat, it got chowed down fairly rapidly. Lower on the list is eggplant, cooked or raw. They like it better raw. And radishes and daikon are way, way down on the list. But they will eat if cooked and jazzed up with salad dressing or salsa. Pumpkin leaves are at the bottom of their list. Cooked or raw, they get eaten last. Funny thing though, my two feral pigs at my farm love them cooked and will fish them out of the swill to eat first.

Several people are now contributing their kitchen waste to the feed-the-piglets effort. So these two guys are seeing quite a buffet. Never a boring diet!

Donning my teacher’s hat ……………….sorry but you’ll have to put up with me.  I just returned from conducting an evening beginners gardening class in town. I haven’t returned to "normal mode" yet.


"My mulch just disappears" is a very common statement I hear from novice gardeners. And my standard response is "you better hope it does or you’ll never get soil to garden in."

I live in the tropics, so we have year around decomposition going on. As a result, beginning gardeners are struck by just how fast their mulch or compost disappears. Some novices give up in disgust when they see their $300 truckload of mulch mostly vanish in a year or two. Others have enough curiosity to try figuring out what’s going on and what changes they see.

As mentioned already, coarse organic material has a lot, lot, lot of air space. As that fluffy mulch or compost decomposes, it loses a lot of the air spaces. So that’s one reason for the mulch layer getting thinner and the bare ground starting to show——or hopefully, the weeds growing up through the mulch. That’s far better than bare ground, believe me, though novices don’t think so.

Fresh organic material often has internal structures (think scaffolding) in leaves and stem, plus "water" in between those structures. As the scaffolding collapses, the leaves and stems flatten out. I use banana trunks as a visual example. People can readily see the scaffolding in the cross section of trunk and see the liquid running out of a freshly cut banana trunk. So…pile up a ten foot deep mound of banana trunks (covered up so that the rain cannot wash the material into the lava below) and you will end up with a couple inches of wet, blackish material after a year or two of decomposition. This is normal.

Losing air spaces isn’t the whole story. As long as the right microbes are present,  plus the soil stays moist much of the time, the microbes and fungi will be eating away at the organic material. The microbe "poop" gets eaten by other soil life, with eventually the plants benefiting along the way. The microbes include all sorts of soil life, and the more organic material present, this soil life increases, thus decomposition increases. But microbes alone don’t make your mulch disappear. There are a multitude of soil critters also at the mulch buffet. Not just worms, but also plenty of "soil bugs" and slime molds that novice gardeners fail to realize are actually beneficial and necessary for fertile soil. Millipedes, sow bugs, certain beetles, and plenty more. Dung beetles, earthworms, and ants actually transport lots of organic material underground. I’ve watched a wet pile of sheep dung totally disappear in 5 days! Just gone!  By disappear, of course we mean that it was transported underground.

As mentioned already, during the decomposition process, gasses are released, some of which end up in the air. CO2 and nitrogen are major ones that can gas off. So think about it, if you don’t have enough soil life and plant roots, you could be losing some of your precious nitrogen. Thus my comment about weeds……plant roots help capture that valuable nitrogen, plus provide a stage for decomposition by the soil life. In my opinion, a light growth of weeds is beneficial. Far better than bare soil. But weeds should not so thick as to hog the moisture and nutrients, thus crowding out your veggie plants.

If your mulch and compost don’t gradually disappear, your soil is in trouble. It doesn’t have the microbes, slime molds, fungi, soil critters, and moisture that it needs. Sometimes the soil pH can be way wacky and needs adjusting. Sometimes the mineral content is wacky. This is where a full chemical soil analysis becomes important.

Rejoice if your compost and mulches disappear! It means that you are improving your soil. But it is an ongoing task, one that can take at least 3 years to see significant visual improvement. Every year I apply generous amounts of compost and mulch to my soil. My soil keeps getting better and better.  And yes, it all eventually "disappears’ into the top several inches of my garden soil.

Getting Really for Market Day


Once again, it’s market time. I haven’t given it much thought, but the day before market is rather busy. I wonder how many wanna-bee marketers consider prep day.

To make my life easier, I have a box in which I keep all the small stuff that I will need. When I return from a market, I replenish any items used so that the box is ready for the next time. It eliminates that mad dash grabbing, and forgetting, items to take to market. This box contains a marking pen, a scissors, some card stock paper, and clothes pins — all for making signs for the produce display trays. The weighing scale. A receipt pad and pen. Rags for clean ups. A canister of Clorox wipes(makes the health inspector happy). A large, visible bottle of hand sanitizer (customers expect to see it on the table). Rolls of plastic bags to hold purchased veggies (veggies are often wet, so paper bags simply don’t work. But I do encourage people to bring their own cloth bags or a basket. About 10% do.) 2 gallons of water, used to sprinkle on veggies to help keep them fresh. And my cash bag. I keep assorted bills in there for making change….ones, fives, tens.

In another box I store the aluminum display trays. They get washed after each market and stowed into the box.

I have a location on the porch where I store these two boxes, plus the chairs I take for sitting. The two cooler chests are also stored there, having been washed after each market. Plus 4 sturdy trays that I use to carry the limes and lemons to the market. By keeping everything in one location, it has saved me from forgetting something. Yup, in the past I have forgotten the chairs. Another time I forgot the scale! That made for an interesting guessing game.

Because I need to arise an hour before my normal wake up time, I pack and lay out things the night before. I have been known to walk around in the early dark in a bit of a stupor, not too coherent. So I pack the truck the night before, plus I layout my clothes. Don’t want to forget my special market shirt and baseball cap!

The produce gets picked the day before the market, except for some last minute stuff. In the main outdoor garden, 4 to 6 OKK members spend the morning picking and rinsing the veggies and papayas. I work at the greenhouses by myself picking the leafy greens. Once the two coolers are full, I head to the orchard to pick whatever is ready. Today it was lemons and limes plus a few oranges. Harvesting and packing the produce takes me about 5 hours.

The morning of the market I need to do a little harvesting of the fragile stuff—- mamaki leaves, spearmint, chocolate mint. Although I do also dehydrate these, I have customers who request them fresh. Speaking of dehydrated, I keep a note taped to one of the coolers to remind myself to grab the jars of dried moringa, mamaki, mints, and sweet bay out of the freezer, and pop them into one of the coolers. The coolers contain crushed ice, so everything stays cool. The coolers also hold the leafy greens plus any cucumbers and zucchini I was lucky to harvest from our new greenhouse plants.

On my way back from the farm, I check the gas gauge on the truck. One morning I was close to running out and it was high anxiety heading to the market! So I’ll pick up some gas if I’m running low.

I can fit into my truck the two coolers, two boxes, 4 chairs, 4 crates of fruits. This week I will also have two crates of young chickens for selling. The rest of the produce arrives in Wayne’s truck. On my way to the market I swing by the farm to check on the piglets, and replenish their food and water if needed. By the time I arrive at the market, it’s usually 7:15. OKK volunteers already have the tent and tables up and in place for me. This is a bit of luxury having this done for me because it takes a bit of effort hauling those items out of the storage container, carting them to my designated booth spot, and assembling them. Saves me 15 minutes and a lot of effort.

This particular market opens at 8 a.m.  The early bird customers start dribbling in at 7:30.

Our Marketing Approach


To sell food at a farmers market here, there are a number of State and county rules that we need to follow. Quite frankly, vendors seldom follow all the rules because some don’t seem to make much sense, except to benefit the officials who ultimately have domination over the public. Based upon this, one sees quite a bit of flexibility and variations at our farmers markets.

In our own endeavor, we adhere to most of the rules, or at least, make the effort to. And we use methods to step aside of some of the cumbersome ones. One case in point……we let buyers know that the veggies are field direct. They have not been taken through a processing shed to be sanitized, sorted, processed, exposed to other crops, exposed to crops from other farms, etc. The veggies get picked "as is", go directly into their transport bags or boxes. From there, those that need rinsing to remove dirt and spiders get a rinse, still in their transport boxes. They then go on display on the market tables. No processing. Buyers are informed that they need to wash the veggies themselves. This method saves us a lot of volunteer’s time. And greatly reduces the need for special equipment and county approved water/sewer systems.

We sell veggies unprocessed. That means the tops are still on the carrots, beets, and  radishes. Some buyers actually want the tops. For those that don’t, they can remove them and dump them into a bucket that we provide at the booth so that the greens can go to feed the piglets.

We don’t have refrigeration. Most veggies are picked the evening before the market, hosed down, and allowed to cool in the night air. Most sensitive ones are stowed into large coolers, covered in a towel, and then covered in chipped ice to cool them rapidly.

To avoid needing the use of a certified commercial kitchen, we avoid growing certain vegetables to jumbo size. Cabbages and cauliflowers are harvested before jumbo size. Thus we avoid requests to cut heads in half. Cutting in half requires the certified kitchen. We also grow landrace pumpkin varieties that do not grow to jumbo sizes. Edible gourds get harvested while still small, except via special order for the large sushi size (sold whole).

To date we haven’t had any issues with this strategy. We may have lost a few sales here and there because of dirt on the carrots or whatever, but since I sell out every day, I guess it’s not all that much of an issue. And we have had buyers expressly thank us for not processing the veggies in bleach water or other sanitizing solutions just to make them pretty for sale.

I guess the trick is to let buyers know that the veggies are field direct, unprocessed, not washed.

Another strategy is reasonable pricing.  We keep up to date on what veggies are selling for at Costco and the various local supermarkets. We price accordingly. We either match or, in some cases, are somewhat lower. We are lower when we are overstocked. Right now we have an abundance of eggplants and radishes. Thus they get sold for cheaper than what is in the stores. But popular veggies, like snow peas, get priced at supermarket price, which right now is $8 a pound. They sell out within an hour.

Another strategy is avoiding competing with adjacent vendors. If I happen to arrive at the market with a ripe stalk of bananas, I will offer it to my next door vendor at a wholesale price,  because she sells fruits. But if I have a green stalk of bananas and she doesn’t want it, then I will sell it for ourselves since she seldom sells green bananas. Other veggie and food vendors will often show up as I unload my truck, purchasing the entire box of some kind of veggie. I don’t object, because OKK’s goal is to supply local food to local residents. And by the vendor buying my entire supply, then we don’t compete. Of course this means that sometimes a customer doesn’t get their little bag of veggies for dirt cheap, having to buy the veggie from some other vendor at a slightly higher price. But I cannot focus upon those few dollars because I have far more produce than I can fit upon my tables, and have to get it to the people in one way or another. Heck…..if a customer wants to buy the entire box of veggies, I am just as willing to give them a wholesale price as I do the other resale vendors. So I don’t feel bad if the customer doesn’t want to buy in bulk. It is the customer’s choice.

Another strategy is selfish. I want to be able to be done at noon. The market is officially open until 2 pm. But if a vendor sells out before 2, they may pack up and leave. So as noon rolls around, I pack up whatever is going to be donated  to our local food Hub into The Hub transport boxes and set them under the tables. Then at noon, when the entertainment shuts down, I offer whatever I have left upon the tables to the adjacent vendors for free. It often isn’t much…..a pound of beans, some radishes, some limes and lemons, perhaps a bit of mixed greens. With my display trays now empty, I can pack up. I’m out of their by 12:30, packing the truck and heading to the Hub for delivery.

Market Day


A beautiful morning for a farmers market!  Today I had decent selection, though not all the different things that we have been growing. Some of the crops simply aren’t ready yet.

Today’s offering:
Salad tomatoes
Mixed leafy greens
Malabar spinach
Green beans
Yellow wax beans
Snow peas
Red beets
Carrots
Genovese basil
Thai basil
Cilantro
Parsley
Chinese celery leaves
Spearmint (dried and fresh)
Chocolate mint (dried and fresh)
Moringa leaves, dried and powdered
Mamaki leaves, fresh
Red globe radishes
Chinese daikon
Korean daikon
Japanese eggplant
Italian eggplant
Edible gourds
Taro
Pumpkins
Butternut squash
Zucchini squash
Cucumbers
Lemons
Limes
Papayas

Outside of the eggplant and the radishes, there wasn’t an over abundance of anything. As a result, I was pretty much sold out by noon. Just some radishes and eggplants left over.

The green beans are a vining type. Thick flat pods, but not as broad as a romano. I don’t know the name of this variety, but it was abundantly grown here in the 40s, early 50s, to feed the local military groups. A local man had saved the seed and grown some each year since then. He gifted seed to our project, and we are very happy to grow it and offer it to our Ka’u residents. Ah-ha, an interesting bit of local food history. So tonight I got to eat a bean variety that was popular here before I was even born!

Local Sustainability / Food Independence

Our state and county government is all up on their soapboxes about promoting food independence. And they throw around the word sustainability and permaculture while they are talking about Hawaii growing more of its own food. Face it, Hawaii imports a significant chunk of its food, some of which we could grow locally. Farmers already produce food, but due to State and county regulations & taxes, it is expensive to do so. Land is highly expensive. Water for irrigation is expensive. There is little incentive for farmers to expand nor for new farmers to start up.

I’ve been to some meetings about this issue, and officials …………..
…skip over the farmers’ requests for financial relief when doing business.
…skip over the request to lower the rent on state and county owned agricultural lands.
…skip over the need to drastically reduce the high cost of agricultural water.
…skip over the hassle and cost of collecting "sales tax" for the state. Yes, food is taxed in Hawaii!
…skip over the need to change the regulations for bringing in overseas workers.
…skip over the need for on-farm housing for ag workers.
…skip over the need of having centralized ag auction houses for the sale of farm products.
…skip over the need for sensible regulations for selling from the farm, selling farm produce direct to customers be it farmers markets or restaurants.
…skip over the impeding regulations for requiring expensive permitted commercial kitchens for processing veggies and fish into sellable sized packaging (it’s illegal to cut a large cauliflower or cabbage into two and sell each half if the cutting is not done in a certified commercial kitchen).
…skip over the expense and difficulty of abiding by the USDA farm bill.

The officials don’t seem to be aware, or perhaps wish to ignore, the fact that most of the foods sold in Hawaii are not fresh veggies, fruits, and meat. Walk into any grocery store and watch what people buy. It surely isn’t fresh farm produce! Fresh farm produce is expensive here, so people primarily buy cheaper processed and imported foods, just what our officials don’t want people to rely upon.

Ok, my rant is done. But this issue is the very reason that OKK is growing food for the people of Ka’u and selling or providing it at cheap prices or even free. We are showing that fresh farm production can be done. But without volunteer labor, free land and irrigation water, it could not be done. But ya know———the officials won’t look at us, nor help us financially. We were blocked from applying for grant money to help produce more food. It was an eye opener for some of the OKK members. I’m old, so I’m more cynical. It didn’t surprise me at all. ………. Ok, I agree that I’m still ranting a bit. I’ll take some deep breathes and calm down.

I’m proud to see our group producing so much food and getting it to Ka’u residents. We are walking the walk, not just talking the talk!

Fish Giveaway


Though not a farm endeavor, the fish giveaways are a part of OKK’s food project. Whenever there is time and the weather is right, Wayne heads out to catch fish. The other day he returned with 2 ahi (yellowfin tuna), 6 ono, and 21 red fish. OKK maintains a list of local kupuna (elderly) that are in need of fresh foods. So I’m one of the people who offer to help Wayne clean  the fish and hand it out.  

Wayne gets no compensation for his effort, except for the knowledge and good feeling that he is giving back to his community. But then, this is what OKK is all about.  And this is what our farm project is all about — helping our community, sharing, supporting one another.

Rehab a Greenhouse Planter for the Next Crop

I’ve talked about this before, but I wanted to add photos and be more specific.

Between each crop, I rehab the growing bed. After 3 months, the plants have had it. Many have died by that time, others have shrunk down to shadows of their former selves. Harvesting all the major leaves once a week takes its toll of the plants.

The first thing I do is check the soil. I look for the presence of earthworms and other soil denizens. Living critters are a good sign, I check the soil pH and note if it needs attention. As I remove old plants, I will check the amount of rootknot nematode. I will note which varieties are affected severely and which are not. Rootknot nematode exists just about everywhere in Ka’u, but we can deal with it much of the time. I find that using good quality homemade compost works wonders.

Next, I will remove three 5 gallon buckets of soil. This is done do that I have room to mix the soil without it spilling onto the greenhouse floor,  Then I will add pulverized lime if needed. In today’s situation, the pH was close to where I wanted it. This is the 4th time I’ve rehabbed this bed, adding lime each time. But I keep in mind that lime is slow acting, so there most likely is enough lime already in the soil, so I just give the bed a light dusting this time around. Next I top the soil with 1 inch depth of sifted good quality compost. Now I go down the length of the bed churning the soil. I want to get it all mixed up again and thoroughly aerated. Yes, this is tilling and works really well for this kind of greens production.  Finally I will return the 3 bucketfuls of soil that I initially removed, mixing the soil a bit.

Finally I will replant the bed with an assortment of various greens. Give it a watering to dampen the bed without soaking it.

Comparing to commercial greens production, my system in incorporating permaculture aspects along with frugality. The soil is constantly re-used, and rehabbed by adding homemade organic style compost, homemade pulverized lime, and as needed, good garden soil which has been under improvement for the past 20 years on my own farm. All components used, such as greenhouse trays, tray liners, pots, hand tools, including the livestock troughs, have been either donated to this project or snatched from trash streams before the items landed in the dump. The only component (other than seeds) purchased was the initial bags of promix, some of which we haven’t even opened yet. The seeds are our biggest expense that still needs to be addressed. We use no commercial fertilizer nor pesticides. Weeds are simply cut off at soil level with a scissors as I harvest weekly. No herbicides.

Like others, I am a seed saver…..up to a point. I face obstacles, some of which I have gotten around, others that I haven’t. Why do I go to the effort?
… to save money
… to retain open pollinated varieties that I like
… to develop landrace varieties

Obstacles:
… too humid on my own farm. In some cases, seeds rot or mold. In others I’ve watched peas and beans sprout right inside the pods way before the pods dry down.
… difficulty finding a good location where it isn’t as humid but I also have access to water for growing the plants
… difficulty finding the required location where people passing by, or feral pigs, don’t harvest (steal) the veggies before the seeds mature.
… some veggie varieties won’t go to seed without significant outside intervention. In Hawaii, I’ve never seen kale, parsly, or chard go to flower.  My favorite collard never flowers, thus I have to keep it going via stem cuttings.
… with no cold winters here, getting carrots, parsnips, and other biennials to flower would take intervention and a refrigerator.

Pig Trough

I needed a sturdy trough to feed these piggies. The aluminum roasting pan wouldn’t last more than a couple days. Of course, one could just go out spend the bucks for a commercial trough, but……that costs money…..that supports more unnecessary use of resources …. and it encourages big commercial business. In addition, please understand that I live in a poverty area, and that I am teaching people how to grow food without spending much hard cash. Keeping this in mind, I once again looked to our local trash stream.

I keep a bone yard on my farm where I store useful items either given to me or snatched before they landed in the dump. So from this storage I picked out a salvaged aluminum double sink to turn into a piglet trough.

The sink needed a few modifications for successful use. The two drainage holes needed to be plugged. I use Hawaiian cement. Normally I have the time to let the cement set, but today I didn’t. So to prevent the piglets from eating the cement, I temporarily covered it with tape, which I will remove tomorrow.

Next, the sink needs to be installed so that piglets don’t overturn it and toss it around the pen. So I drive a piece of old metal pipe down into the ground through one of the holes. Experience has taught me that I need to lash the pipe to the pen wall. I can usually use old electric fencing tape. Occasionally I will have a pig chew through that, so then I get more aggressive by securing the pipe with chain.

The piglets instantly took to the new feeding trough.
.

Piglets on the Farm

We just added 2 domestic piglets to our farming project. So our farm now has about 30 head of cattle (all donated from various ranchers or private owners, and for various reasons) plus 2 pigs. We are surely turning into a farm project rather than just a market garden project. The piglets were donated by a local person who raises domestic pigs.

The cattle are 100% grass fed on this farm. We don’t finish them with grain. Just grass.

We aim to have these piglets be vegetarians….mostly. They need iron and good protein, so a strictly non-corn, non-soy diet won’t be enough. Therefore they will also get the broken eggs (to be cooked), sour milk, out of date meat (to be cooked) from the local stores. If they had run of a good quality pasture with good grass, then they would be fine. Young grasses, plus earthworms, grubs, beetles, lizards, grasshoppers, centipedes, mice, and geckos provide plenty of protein in pasture situations. But these piglets will not be pastured. We are not in a position to pasture them plus have to keep in mind that there are feral pigs here. I will be bringing fresh grass clippings to them every day, primarily for bedding reasons. Hopefully they will consume some of it.

Our aim is to utilize much of the reject veggies from the garden, plus some of the spent plants. Pigs will eat pea vines, bean plants, sweet potato plants, corn plants, etc. And of course the veggies themselves. Along with the banana tree trunks and the sugar cane, there will be plenty of food here for them.

Oh….I hear you…..won’t this cut into the amount of compost we are making? Not at all. There will be far more garden waste than the piglets can consume. Plus there are acres and acres of grass that needs to be mowed around here. Plenty of grass clippings for compost piles.

Thinking about permaculture………
… The garden waste is cycled through piglets and compost bins, turning it into useful end products (meat and compost).
… The piglets get raised without commercial feed, thus bypassing that aspect, and thus not supporting big ag and all their non-permie methods.
… bedding will be local grass clippings, as opposed to imported straw or pine shavings.
… The piglets’ used bedding and bodily wastes get recycled into useful soil amendments.
… and although not permaculture per se, the piglets will lead a stress free life with pleasurable human interaction. Unlimited interesting and tasty food. They won’t be subjected to overcrowding, aggression,  or food competition. They will have toys to play with. They won’t get stressed by being shipped to a slaughterhouse. They won’t be roughly handled. Their death will be humane, becoming unconscious instantly. Yes, they will eventually die in order to provide food for our community.

Their pen is not made along permaculture lines. The farm owner does not want us bringing in logs to make a permaculture type pig pen. So we opted to check the local waste stream for building materials. We opted for pallets - heavy duty plastic ones. We rejected the wood ones because of the feral pigs. Feral pigs can bust right through them when they want to. So in order not to lose our piglets, we built the pen with the plastic pallets. Easy to build with, easy to keep clean, strong enough to survive feral pigs and Hawaiian Kona storms. The pallets will last my lifetime, and it will be simple to deconstruct & remove when needed. A piece of cattle panel covers the ground. The piece came from the old orchid nursery. Cost? A box of galvanized screws. Four recycled 2 by 4s for bracing the sides. A small tarp to rainproof the sleeping area. Everything else was free.

Farmers Market in the Rain

Today was market day and I had our usual harvest to sell. But it was pouring rain!  Not fun.  Not drizzling, but pouring!

Before the market, Wayne took about half the harvest to a little local food store and successfully sold it. Of course, we don’t get much cash for such a sale, but at least the food does not go to waste. This whole project is about growing good quality, clean food for our community, not making the most money we can. So selling wholesale is acceptable, though it’s not our number one priority.

At the market I ended up with what the store did not want —- radishes, daikon, limes, lemons, pumpkins, edible gourds, eggplant, snow peas, green beans, basil, parsley, Chinese celery, and mixed leafy greens. What few buyers arrived, braving the steady rain, they found extremely low prices. I priced everything about 75% off and threw in extra free stuff with every sale. Within 4 hours I was practically sold out. I was thoroughly soaked even though I had a canopy tent for protection.

This was the most miserable market I’ve had to date. But if one is dealing with a perishable product, then one has to accept the bad weather market days from time to time….or else throw the truckload of veggies into the compost bin—-which I refuse to do.

Dwarf Bok Choy Experimemt

One project where we plan to use the pots given to us by the defunct orchid nursery is the growing of dwarf bok choy. We plan to also try mini romaine lettuce using this method. The pots are 3 inch square pots and have trays designed to hold them with about 1/4 inch of separation between the pots. Apparently this is a good set up for growing young orchids.

My thinking is……
…By growing the plants this way, we figure the plant shape will be more upright rather than flat and spreading out.
…We could pick and choose which plants to harvest, thus leaving the smaller plants behind to grow another week or two.
…We could offer to sell a few plants in their pots to interested buyers, of course at a higher price to compensate for the loss of the pot and soil.
…And it’s simply another fun way to grow veggies.

I plan to use promix as the potting soil because dwarf bok choys are very susceptible to rootknot nematode. Around here, rootknot nematode is just about everywhere in the soil, even improved garden soils. Once the bok choys are harvested,  both the pot and the potting soil can be recycled.

I was browsing Johnny’s seed catalog and saw that they offer several types of mini romaines. I’ll be ordering some to give them a try. I don’t know if a 3 inch pot will be too confining for mini romaine, but we shall soon find out.

Zucchini Experiment

One of the crops which is difficult to grow outdoors in Hawaii is squash. If pickleworm doesn’t get it, then powdery mildew does. After trying a few different methods out in the main garden, we decided to try growing this inside the greenhouse, the screened sides and roof of the greenhouse will effectively keep out the pickleworm moth. Then we only had powdery mildew to battle. I opted to first try varieties with some resistant.

This strategy for growing zucchini eliminates the need for chemical pesticides and fungicides. But it relies upon a hybrid variety rather than an open pollinated one. So….one point for permaculture and one point for not.  Another point for permaculture is that I will be using homemade fertilizer and soil amendments. And to address powdery mildew, I will be spraying the foliage twice a week, or more, with a compost tea which has active microbes. Controlling powder mildew is an ongoing experiment for me, trying to figure out methods that work in various situations and with different crops.

An issue when growing zucchini squash inside a greenhouse is pollination. A screened greenhouse effectively blocks the insects needed for pollination in most cases. A solution would be to hand pollinate, but because of my time schedule, this would only be hit and miss for me.  On the other hand,  I learned that there exists some degree of parthenocarpic tendencies in some zucchini varieties. Golden Glory seems to have the trait the strongest. Plus it exhibits some resistance to powdery mildew, a real plus.

Using half barrels as growing containers (acquired from the trash stream), I sowed 2 Golden Glory zucchinis. I can’t recall the date I sowed the seeds, but they popped up quickly and the plants grew strongly. By 7 days ago, the plants were ready to produce flowers. I was mildly surprised to see that although the first two flowers were males, the females quickly followed. One week later I checked and saw that the plants are indeed setting fruit without pollination. Wow! Delightful!

These two plants are test plants. Eventually I will set up a better container system for the zucchini.

Cucumbers Started Again

A couple of weeks ago I jumped the gun and sowed some cucumber seeds into large pots. See, I’m not as methodical and sensible as some people think I am! Before I even had the space set up for them, I got them growing. Anyway, they are here and are growing. If you recall, I have successfully grown a bush type cucumber in the greenhouse before. That variety had no resistance to powdery mildew, so the plants died after producing one or two cucumbers. I’m ready to try again with different varieties.

Because the donated greenhouse benches are not an efficient fit for this greenhouse, there is wasted space around them. Think of this space as the "margins” that permaculture talks about. So I plan to grow cucumbers along the outer margins of the greenhouse. Since I cannot grow right into the ground, I will try growing them in pots or containers of some sort. Being a frugal minded person, I am first going to see if they will produce while growing in pots of various sizes. If the pots do not work, I can always build a long growing bed for them out of plywood or duraboard.

So the few pots that are already started are now in place along one wall. I stretched a string that I had, along the length of the greenhouse in order to start trellising the vines up the wall. Using strips of old denim, I started tying the vines to the string. I find that denim works good for tying, and I have access to free denim down at the local thrift store.

Now for the permaculture aspects ——
… my potting soil is recycled promix mixed with good garden soil and homemade compost. I’m getting a free 1/2-pickup load of used promix each month from a person growing baby greens. It’s clean—no pesticides or fertilizer added. The promix improves our local volcanic ash soil, providing organic material and drainage much like my homemade compost does.
… the fertilizer for the cucumbers will be my homemade brews.
… by using a barrier to exclude pests (that is, the greenhouse screening), no herbicides or pesticides will be used.
… the trellis string is natural material. The denim ties are from old jeans that have long since had much of their industrial chemicals washed away.

The pots are plastic. They cost me nothing, so the frugal side of me uses them since I intercepted them from the waste stream. Surely I could go manufacture pots out of large coconuts, but why? I would be using more petrochemicals by driving my truck to places to harvest such coconuts, and using electricity to cut these coconuts to the proper shape. Naw. Snatching those plastic pots from the trash stream uses less of the world’s finite resources than trying to use coconut pots. Or I could use pottery pots, but those would have to be imported—-more petrochemicals being used to make and ship them. Or make metal pots from old aluminum beer cans. Again, I’d have to use a heat source to melt the aluminum. A simple open wood fire wouldn’t work. So in the end, the salvaged plastic pots are kinder on the environment.

Back to the cucumbers ——
A couple of the plants are already producing their first flowers. They are males, as is expected. I am using parthenocarpic varieties this time, rather than attempting hand pollination. Hand pollination surely isn’t difficult, but I don’t always have the time each day to do it. In addition, I am using varieties noted for resistance to powdery mildew. No, they are not open pollinated heirlooms. While I had great success using those in New Jersey, they simply don’t work for Hawaii. I know — I already tried. Both pickleworm and powdery mildew are wicked here. A gardener can get away with growing regular cucumbers their first year, but then the bugs and diseases find you. Your second year will be a major flop. Been there, done that. And while I don’t expect my new cucumber experiment to be a resounding success, I do anticipate getting more than one cucumber from each plant.

Benches for the Second Greenhouse

As I mentioned, a locale defunct orchid farm donated a few of their greenhouse benches to our project. The benches are 6 foot by 12 foot, a bit large for our use, but we shall adapt. Not having a flat bed truck or trailer readily available, we managed to transport them one at a time to the farm via a pick up truck with a bed rack. We would hoist one atop the rack and securely lash it down with ropes. A 10 mile trip to the greenhouse….repeat the trip 5 more times. Then one at a time, lash 8 more atop the truck for a 3 mile trip to my own farm in order to store the extras. Took us all day.

Yesterday 3 of us spent half a day setting up the 6 benches up at the greenhouse. While I spent my time moving plants out of the way, installing weedblock on the ground and being the general go-for person, David and Bob manhandled each bench into place, built legs onto them, then flipped them over and into place. We are all in our 70s, so I don’t think we did bad for a bunch of oldsters!

The plan at the moment is to use one bench for seed starting, another for growing young seedlings. The third bench will be for growing baby Bok choy in 3 inch pots. Fourth bench —- we don’t know yet. Bench 5 and 6 will get plywood sides for making them into 6’ by 12pm growing beds for zucchini squash in one, and sweet peppers in the other.

We also plan to try growing cucumbers in this greenhouse. They will be in containers, such as large pots and old coolers, placed along the outer walls with trellises to grow up. And leftover spaces will host large pots or tubs for more food plants, possibly peppers and herbs.

This is going to be fun !!  I’m looking forward to many hours of enjoyment working here.

Permie ideas used —-  
…using weedblock instead of using poison for slug control and herbicide for weeds. While the weedblock itself is not truely permaculture, it will surely outlast my lifetime while not causing annual harm. It thus will prevent a heck of a lot of toxic ick from going into the environment and eventually seeping into our water supply, and thus ending up on the reef around our island. Yes, eventually this weedblock will end up in the dump, but over the next  20 year (or more) period, I feel that it is a better choice. On top of that, this weedblock was snatched from the waste stream. It was already being discarded and headed for the dump. By using it, no new weedblock has been added to our trash stream. As you know, I am a big advocate of intercepting items heading for the dump and using them instead of buying new. So,….with care, this weedblock will last long after I am dead.
… growing insect susceptible vegetables in a screened greenhouse. In Hawaii, some pests are so aggressive and successful that one cannot grow certain vegetables without either repetitively dousing them in toxic pesticides or using barriers to keep out the pests. Using the barrier tactic is a better choice for me. These greenhouses I’m using are screened. One also has poly across the top.  Ok, not totally permaculture but at least the materiel is heavy duty commercial grade and will last for years. Using such greenhouses prevents the use of a lot of herbicides and pesticides one would otherwise need for outdoor production of these vegetables. Every week I am producing pounds of beautiful greens without the use of any commercial fertilizer nor chemical pesticides. The greens look gorgeous and taste incredible.
… using techniques to re-use the potting soil indefinitely. I will discuss this further in another post. As already mentioned, I use homemade fertilizer from items mostly found on this farm.