Lucy L Jones PhD LLC

Comfortable Beds for Veggies

Some plants seem to do well by moving the lava rocks, dumping in soil, and putting in a rooted cutting. For regular garden vegetables, however, this method doesn’t work.

The only way to have veggies is to build raised beds. There are many advantages to raised beds, and especially when you are dealing with a yard of lava. With the help of a friend, I built several small beds.

Local friends have a piggery nearby, and they have been helping me out with their dump truck full of cured “pig dirt.” Their real soil, added to the natural by-product of pigs, mixed in with my compost material, creates rich soil. I wish I could cover my whole acre with it! It doesn’t look as big in the picture as it really is (next picture). I’d already used a lot of it before I took this shot.

Gradually, I shoveled buckets of it into the beds with visions of fresh veggies floating through my brain. I’d been hungry for beets, so that was the first thing I planted. They looked so pretty growing in their rows.

The first picture above shows my first harvest of little beets (the other produce there is not from my garden). I cooked up the greens first, because they don’t last very long once they’re picked. I’ve eaten all the beets now, so it’s time to plant more.

I also picked a mess of collards and mustards from the small beds. For just one person, the small beds are ample.

This past week, the same friend helped me build a larger bed out by the shed. We bought 4X4 lumber on sale at Lowe’s and created this 8’X4′ bed. I put cedar mulch in the bottom to keep the soil from dropping down into the lava too quickly, and now I’ve started to shovel in more “pig dirt.” As soon as it’s full of soil, I’ll plant more veggies.

I’ll build a few more of these larger beds. As you can see, it will take a lot of buckets before I fill this bed! This represents only three buckets of “pig dirt.”

I can hardly wait to show you pictures of the new veggies that will be growing here. So far, the wild local mouflin sheep haven’t decided to eat my produce before I do.

What in the world is lilikoi?

If you read this blog and you are not a resident of Hawai`i, that’s probably what you’ve been wondering. Lilikoi is the Hawai`ian name for Passion Fruit. It has a very distinctive flavor and not everyone likes it the first time they taste it. I think it’s definitely an acquired taste, although it was love at first bite for me.

You can cut it in half, and spoon out the insides with a spoon and eat it, seeds and all. Sometimes I cut up a whole bag of them, scoop out the flesh into a colander and let them drain into a bowl overnight. The juice that results is perfect for making salad dressings, ice cream, jams, or anything else you can think of.

A friend gave me an already established purple lilikoi vine along with some of the yellow lilikoi fruits. I planted the purple vine, ate a few of the yellow ones, and kept the seeds from the rest to plant. The picture above shows the seedlings. I gave some to a friend in Kailua-Kona (where they have a little real soil) and hers are growing like crazy!

I put these seedlings out, poured soil in around them, but some still are not much larger than they are in the picture above. Some of the others are about 8″ tall. It will be a long time before I get enough lilikoi juice to make ice cream.

Another of my other early attempts at trying to grow something at 2300′ elevation in lava was this banana. I’m not quite sure it will make it. But you can see a few leaves trying to push through.

My greatest success has been with the plumeria or frangipani, as it is called in some areas. The smell is delicious and visitors to the island love the scent from their welcoming leis. I have white, pink and yellow right now, and I’m looking for some of the deep reds. They are the simplest to grow. I just move enough rocks to put in some soil, stick in the cuttings, and they take off. This picture shows one of my early plants, flowering in the first season. http://sd1new.net/GardenPages/plumeria.htm

I was given several protea plants. The picture below shows them before I put them in the ground. Unfortunately, the sulfur dioxide got to them and they probably aren’t going to make it.

In each pot of protea was a very tiny bit of green growth. The nurseryman who sold them to my friend said that I could plant them. They were from jacaranda seeds that had fallen into the soil around the protea. I carefully put them into little pots and you can see the results here. Again, I gave some away, and I have two in my yard that seem to be growing nicely. It’s hard to imagine these tiny seedlings becoming one of the huge beautiful jacaranda trees. http://www.floridata.com/ref/J/jaca_acu.cfm

I won’t bore you this time with more of my early attempts at getting things to grow. I plan on doing mostly raised beds for veggies, and a lot of container gardening. (See Janice Crowl’s Container Gardening in Hawaii in the Amazon link on the right.)

Aloha!

Lucy

But will it grow in lava?

Janice Crowl did such a beautiful job of covering the 6^th Annual Seed Exchange at the Amy B.H. Greenwell Gardens that I won’t try to top it! http://hawaiigardening.blogspot.com/2008/06/seeding-hawaiis-future.html

I did bring home seeds that will probably go into big containers, rather than into my lava yard! Please do read her post on this wonderful event. She covers it professionally and with good close-ups of some of the seeds and plants available.

I do want to comment on it, however, and show a few of the pictures I took while there. The Theme of “Ignite the Fire Within” was illustrated by two fire bowls.

The gathered fruit offerings brought by the community of gardeners.

So many of us lost plants to the sulfur dioxide. A friend brought blooms from her two protea that survived, saying that it was Pele’s way of weeding out and that the survivors were to be blessed.

Signs from a couple tables with seeds and plants for the taking

Care for a refreshing drink of coconut water?

Next year I plan to wear boots and carry a bigger bag for seeds and plants.

Aloha,

Lucy

Protea Heaven

One of the plants that seems to grow well here is protea. Some of the local folks call it pro-TAY-ah, but the official pronunciation is PRO-tee-ah. However you want to say it, protea is one of the magnificent tropical blooms that mainland people spend a lot of money to have. You’ll see huge tropical arrangements in the big hotels with the many colors and shapes of protea. Often tourists think they are plastic because they look fake.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proteus explains the name, which comes from the Greek god, Proteus, who could change shape. The protea blossoms take on many shapes and varieties, as you can see from the links in this post.

Protea is native to South Africa and Australia, but grows extremely well here in Hawai`i. It doesn’t do well in wet areas, and we are in a dry part. A little peat moss mixed with perlite makes a good planting medium. You make a hole, put the rooted cutting in, and let it grow!

I had big dreams of converting the back half-acre of my property into a protea farm. The a`a lava around here provides the perfect conditions for successfully growing protea. The problem is that some of the a`a hides what we call “blue rock,” which roots cannot penetrate. I’ve planted many different kinds of protea, but so far none have done well at all.

It’s not only the blue rock that keeps protea from growing. Our friendly Madam Pele sends out her sulfur dioxide from the Kilauea volcano, which gets into our lungs as well as burns the tops of the protea. Those levels have been extremely high in the past several weeks and the protea farmers fear a loss of income. There is a black chemical burn at the top of each of my plants. http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2008/Apr/02/br/hawaii80402022.html

This article http://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/oc/freepubs/pdf/NPH-11.pdf is about the Leucospermum, more commonly called “pincushion.” Dr. Leonhardt, one of the authors of the article, came to talk with a group of us who either are protea farmers, or who hoped to become protea farmers (that included me). He was interested in getting us to help him in a research project. The group was too loosely organized to get that project going.

In this link from another Big Island grower http://pacflor.com/protea.html, you’ll see several pincushions, then the minks, and the bottom row shows my favorite, the banksia. This interesting article from the Honolulu Star Bulletin tells how one woman got started growing protea. http://starbulletin.com/1999/11/19/features/garden.html

Here is a picture of a pink mink protea from a farm in Kula, Maui http://www.flowersofmaui.com/eng/mink-protea.html

I managed to get one pincushion bloom before the volcano got them. It’s a sad looking specimen – nothing like the beauties in the links above, but it was my bloom (see above photo).

Next week, I’ll tell you about some of my other “disasters” in trying to start plants here.

Aloha,

Lucy

Shades of Gray

There is dramatic starkness in an acre of lava. The huge ancient swooping ohia trees provide more shades of black and gray against the stony landscape. Another early growth out of new lava is the bit of green fern that gives a spot of color amidst the somber monotone.

The legend told to every newcomer to Hawaii is that Madam Pele will turn you upside down and give you a good shaking. If you can survive that, she allows you to stay, but on her terms. Learning how to handle her and accommodate her moodiness is part of gardening here.

Walking across the a`a lava can be tricky, and I developed a better sense of balance in the process, along with nicks and bruises. Picking up the lava rocks can do some real damage to your skin. I tried using gloves at first, but found it was faster to simply pick them up to move them. My skin toughened up at last.

But skin wasn’t the only thing that suffered. The tires on my car were getting shredded from driving over the rough stones. I needed to cover up the driveway to protect my tires. I bought the cinder, and a friend called in a favor from a dump truck owner. Once the cinder was on the driveway, he used his little Bobcat and smoothed it out. What a difference it made!

I also wanted a place to park near the house, so a base was put down and cinder dumped on that, as well. Here are pictures of that process. Never would I have thought I could be that excited over a load of cinder!