February 13, 2011

It was supposed to be rainy all weekend but yesterday was just overcast and today is actually quite nice. A little humid, but nice.

Because I thought it was going to rain all weekend I harvested the ginger and set the tubers out on the lawn to get washed. Since it didn't rain I washed them up as best I could and set them out to dry a bit. I'll set some aside to replant and grow more, but use the rest. I chopped some up into my saute last night.

Yesterday I did some yard work in the morning and harvested in the afternoon. I harvested some more okra, eggplant, bunching onions, yard-long beans, kale, and collards. I also thinned out some lettuce and Chinese cabbage and the thinnings are usable at this stage. The bok choy and lettuce I planted last weekend are coming up and will need their first thinning in a week or so.

Today I planted the following:

Okra - Clemson Spineless #80
Green beans - Contender (a bush type)
Watermelon - Sugar Baby
Cantaloupe - Top Mark
Squash - Kabocha

I also started the following in pots for later transplanting:

Sweet Pepper - Fushimi
Tomato - Roma VFN
Tomatillo - Purple de Milpa

The yakon tubers I potted up last week are just beginning to start growing and I should be able to transplant them into the garden in a month or so. The papaya seedling will need separating soon into individual pots.

February 7, 2011

It started raining on Sunday and has rained off and on through today (it's raining right now). So, far, in the last two days, I've had about 2.75 inches. It's been a nice steady rain so it's soaking in.

Before the rain I got the lawn mowed and weeds pulled. In between rainfalls I harvested some carrots, kale, turnips, okra, bunching onions, papaya, Swiss chard, long beans, lettuce, fennel bulbs and some herbs (sage, basil, dill, shiso, rosemary and cilantro).

I pulled up the yakon I planted a few months ago. I had started it from cuttings and only one produced tubers for further propagation. It didn't produce any of the edible tubers this time but since you aren't really supposed to start yakon from cuttings, the tubers I got from this harvest are a good start I shouldn't really have counted on. I separated the propagation tubers and planted them in pots to get them started. I'll put them in the garden once they've started growing a bit.

The rain slowed enough today for me to get some seeds into the ground. I planted the following:

Collards - Georgia
Kale - Toscano
Bok Choy - White Stem Pechay
Lettuce - Anuenue
Lettuce - Natividad
Spinach - Bloomsdale Long-standing
Cilantro

Yesterday I planted some seedlings of  Swiss Chard - Rainbow around the one Swiss chard plant I have in the garden. The one I have has white stems and veins so I planted some red and orange-stemmed plants just to mix it up a bit.

The collards and kale I planted about a year ago are still growing just fine and producing enough for my needs, but I put in the new seeds because they are bound to get too tall or stop producing sooner or later and I want to have a steady supply.

January 31, 2011

On Saturday I harvested some Okinawan sweet potatoes. I planted some tuber segments about 3 months ago in various beds of the garden and I dug up a couple of them and harvested some young tubers. I prefer to eat them young and each one I harvested was about 4 to 5 inches long and about 5 or 6 ounces. Not farm fair show stoppers but perfect for what I do with them. I used about half of what I harvested and set the others aside for later.

January ended having received about 4.21 inches of rain. The wind never got very strong this month and except for the watering of my seedlings from rain barrel water, I didn't have to water the garden. About 3 inches of that rain fell in one night (January 12) so it wan't a nice soaking rain but after December's downpours the 4 inches was just fine.

Other than harvesting a little, I mostly weeded in the garden. I've kept on top of the weeds and it doesn't take long to remove most of my weed problems. It is mostly grass coming in under the edging, but there is the occasional nut sedge, amaranth and oxalis. As time goes by I have to weed less and less, which is nice.

I emptied one of my compost bins onto a bed that hasn't had compost for while and needed some fluffing of the soil. I also threw some compost on the disturbed sweet potato vines to get them the root some more and produce more tubers. I have two other compost bins that are "cooking" right now so after I had emptied out the one I threw in a bag of shredded paper (bills, junk mail and the like) to get that bin ready for veggie waste and garden trimmings.

I thinned the lettuce, cauliflower, broccoli and Chinese cabbage seedlings. They are all doing quite nicely and growing well. The daikon and turnips will need some thinning in a few days. The onion and carrot seeds are germinating already and I think at least one of my winged bean seeds is germinating. I haven't grown that before so I'm not positive what the seedlings look like. I'm keeping my fingers crossed because it took me a while to get the seeds and they were fairly expensive (by my standards).

My tomatoes are starting to flower and a few have small tomatoes on them and the eggplants ate starting to flower again, as are the pepper plants. The long squash I'm trying along the side fence are growing. They are just starting to vine out and produce tendrils. Once they hit that stage they grow like crazy. I'm hoping that by growing these on the fence I'll be able to get a few more fruit than I've been able to get in my small garden beds. If this works, I'm going to try the next batch of Kabocha squash that way as well.

January 27, 2011

The daikon and turnips started germinating three days ago and are continuing to germinate. The green beans are also continuing to come up. Some are starting to get their first true leaves but some are just today peaking out from the soil. We haven't gotten any rain this week so I'm using the water from the rain barrels to keep the seed beds moist but I haven't had to water any of the rest of the garden.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

I spent the morning planting root crops including the following:

• Carrots
• Scarlet Nantes
• Mixed colors (Cosmic Purple, Lunar White, Solar Yellow and Atomic Red)
• Turnip -- Tokyo Cross
• Parsnip -- Harris Model
• Daikon -- Minowase
• Beet -- Ruby Queen
• Leek - American Flag
• Onions
• Granex Hybrid
• Red Burgundy
• Tokyo Long White

The green beens I planted last week are starting to come up, though nothing else is starting to come up yet.

I've been harvesting kale fairly regularly and the okra has been producing every so often but I'm still trying to get the two plants to bush out a bit and produce a more usable amount. The few I am harvesting are being put to good use, though. The leeks are doing very well and I've been harvesting them every once in a while. I harvested the second to last bok choy and had it for dinner last night. Time to plant some more.

The turnips are still doing well and giving me a good harvest. They seem to being storing well enough by keeping them in the ground.

My tangerine tree in the front yard is still producing. I harvested a basketful of them yesterday and will be using them for juice over the next week or so. The orange tree is also still producing, but not as prolifically.

I was out getting ready to harvest the evening crop and saw a Chinese dwarf banana leaf all curled up. I had heard of caterpillars that did this but hadn't seen one yet.

This is what the leaf looked like:

I separated it from the main leaf blade and I must say, the workmanship of the little bugger is impressive. The rolled up portion of the leaf was about 7 inches long:

The caterpillar seals the top edge. I haven't researched how just yet, but it does a good job of things. Almost like origami:

I unrolled the leaf and found a big, fat, white caterpillar. It was ghostly white with a dark head and soft and squishy and covered with a white powder. Looks like a big, fat, powdery grub.

It is a banana skipper (Erionota thrax) and though its main host is banana it is also found on bamboo, Manila hemp, coconut, and other palms. Additional hosts recorded in Hawaii are Canna, Strelitzia, and Heliconia species.

Luckily, there are some predators found in Hawaii. The egg parasite, Ooencyrtus erionatae, from Guam and the larval parasite, Apanteles erionatae, from Thailand, were introduced to Hawaii to biologically control the banana skipper. Four additional parasites have been found in Hawaii. They are the egg parasites, Anastatus spp. (Euphelmidae) and Trichogramma spp. (Trichogrammatidae), and the larvae and pupal parasites, Ecthromorpha fuscator (Ichneumonidae) and Brachymeria obscurata (Chalcididae), respectively. These four parasites contribute to the biological control of the banana skipper but exhibit less control than the first two introduced parasites.

These predators keep populations down and keep banana plantations safe. I just squished the things.

After playing biological control agent, I went around and harvested for dinner and this week's lunch. For dinner I harvested my first large batch of yard long beans from the most recent planting and a few snow peas. Both are just now coming into production, but the yard long beans are more productive at the moment. Rounding out the dinner collection was my last bok choy and few okra.

I pulled a carrot and a turnip, harvested a bunch of lettuce and herbs (basil, sage, rosemary, shiso and red rumex) for this week's lunch salads. I also gathered some collards and kale to bring to someone at work. I picked a bunch of green tomatilla but since I have a bunch of salsa verde already in the freezer I'll probably bring those into to work as well.

Sunday, January 16, 2011

This blog is going to be a record of my garden in my yard in Kalihi on Oahu in Hawaii. I've been gardening here for about a year now and I've decided it's time to record what is happing and how things are going. I will be updating on a random schedule, as I get around to it and as things I want to record happen.

As I get better with this blogging thing I'll add photos and whatever else I feel like entering.

Last week I planted transplants I purchased from Home Depot:

• Tomato, Anahu;
• Tomato, N-63;
• Kale, Red Bore;
• Kale, Winterbor.

I also put in two more mango trees, one in the back and one in the front:

• Mango, Pirie -- front yard
• Mango, White Pirie -- back yard

That makes for four mango trees, the other two (in the side yard) are Graham (front) and Kook Lom Krong (back).

The other fruit trees in the yard are:

• Tangerine - bearing fruit right now
• Orange, bearing fruit right now
• Lemon, Meyers
• Tangerine, Honey
• Orange, Navel
• Orange, Moro Blood
• Araca`-Boi (Eugenia stipitata)

Yesterday I put in five papaya plants along the front walk and two eggplants:

• Eggplant, Snowy -- Under back kale;
• Eggplant, Waimanalo Long -- by carrots and onions.

I also finished putting in the edging along the front and side yards. I'm using rubber edging that is about three inches wide and am using staples to keep it in place.

I pruned all the basil plants to keep them from flowering and keep them compact.

Seeds planted today, including the following:

• Cantaloupe, Top Mark -- Along the front fence;
• Watermelon, Sugar Baby -- Along the side fence;
• Wing Beans, in the bed by the guava tree;
• Green beans, bush -- in side from bed where potatoes were.
• Sweet Pepper, Fushimi;
• Tomatillo, Purple de Milpa, under the collards;
• Tomato, Roma VFN -- In the back basil bed;
• Passion fruit -- in community pot on concrete slab;
• Papaya, UH Solo -- in community pot on concrete slab.