Dirty Fingernails 808

Aloha Twenty Eleven

2011-12-31T15:29:00.000-10:00

I make at least one resolution every New Year. Sometimes I nail it, sometimes not. I've got a few on my list this year, one of them being to post more often. I enjoy looking back over the year and seeing what i was up to. Here are a few things i didn't get around to talking about last year.

January
New plantings of kumquat, olive, white sapote, mango, egg fruit, pulasan and rollinia.

First tangerine! Early winter

February

March
Soissons Vert
Thin walled, full pods

Perona
Fleshy, thick walled pods. Shell beans? Really?

April

Popping chickpeas
They deserve their own post!

May is always my favorite month.

Those awkward teenage years ; )

These papayas are HUGE!

Early July
It grew!
We havested buckets of lilikoi this year.

These banana flowers look like little orchids, don't they?
This is an 'Ice Cream' banana, one of the tissue cultured plants UH is producing in response to Bunchy Top Virus.

Olena
(Turmeric). Dead easy to grow and a snap to harvest. Part of the tropical herb garden.

Galangal
(Thai ginger). Another plant from my tropical herb garden.

November
They were ready in time for Thanksgiving ; )

December
Cajun Belles-Sweet mini peppers with just a little kick. Recommended.

Husky Red cherry tomato.
Slow but steady producer which is OK in these cooler temps.

Happy New Year!

The rains will start soon

2011-10-22T09:38:00.000-10:00

Summers are a slow time in my garden. It's the rain, or more precisely, the lack of rain. There are a few plants like tomatoes or maybe cowpeas that will survive and even bear without supplemental water if they are already established but even these thrifty plants appreciate a good long drink every once in a while.

What i got on Craig's List...milking sheep!

I want more from my summer garden so i've been adding a variety of drip lines and emitters to my collection over the past few weeks. They are slowly starting to appear in the garden and should give me a jump start on the fall season. Not a big one, it's an La Nina year and the rains will start soon, pushing the real pay-off back to next summer. Which is fine because i plan to be busy with other things next summer.

Say hello to Big, Bossy Belle

As you can see, i was busy with other things this summer, too. I learned about fencing and feeding and fecal testing, yuck! I learned how to get sheep over the Alenuiha'ha Channel and into my back yard. I learned about dreching and hoof trimming and wool clipping. Yes, clipping because i really can't call what i did shearing and neither should you. I built a shed and a stanchion and bought a milk bucket. And i learned that sheep are clever and brave and naughty and overly fond of browsing rose bushes. No wonder i didn't have time to water my garden!

And cute but bratty Blossom!

Last week i started the fall garden. The Purple Podded Pole beans are back, planted alongside Emerite and Tarahumara Purple Pole beans. I direct sowed some arugula and a dozen Japanese salad turnips. The turnips should have gone in a few weeks ago in order to roast for the Thanksgiving feast but we'll enjoy them when they are ready. Seeds were started in tray, as well. Spigarello, fennel, bok choy, and three kinds of cauliflower. I haven't tried to grow cauliflower before so this will be a new experiment. It will be a small trial, just two plants each of Graffiti, Snow Crown, and Charming Snow which is just 60 days to maturity. I also started a few Variegated Collards, some Golden Chard and some kohlrabi. I tried kohlrabi for the first time last spring and really enjoyed it. I hope to have some successive kohlrabi harvests this winter. It looks like the Cripsy Blue gailaan and the Anuenue lettuce failed but the Syphos butter lettuce is up along with the Soloist chinese cabbage and the Burpee golden beets. I am still waiting for the Oriental Giant and Matador spinaches to sprout. The Gator perpetual spinach i grew this summer was the most spinach-like chard yet so I don't know why i keep banging my head against the spinach wall. I'll be starting a new tray this weekend with Romanesco cauliflower, Blankoma white beets, Touchstone Gold beets, leeks, scallions, and cilantro. I'll be laying down some horse manure this weekend or next and then the transplanting will begin! Hope i have time to post some garden tours this winter, it's really a great record keeping tool.

three little figs

2011-09-18T10:59:00.000-10:00

An old cane house perches on the edge of a windswept Haiku pineapple field. You might not notice it if you happened to drive by. The old house is timeworn but well maintained and boasts a tidy greenhouse and a great old fig tree. A few times a year the woman who lives there sets up a sign by the road and sells banana bread and fig tree starts and other once useful things she no longer needs. I drove by one day, on the advice of a friend, and left with a fig tree of my own.

Do you recognize these figs? White Kadota and Brown Turkey are kama'aina fig trees, grown here for well over a century. So my tree could be a White Kadota fig. Or it might be a Brown Turkey fig. I don't know a fig about fig trees so i'm just guessing. Lucky for me, there's Ken Love.

Ken Love is a farmer who live on the Big Island. He knows a lot about fig trees. He was involved in the 12 Trees demonstration project and was later awarded a three year grant to study the best fig varieties for Hawaii. I'm going to learn from him.

If you can't make it to Haiku you can still grow a fig tree of your own. Plant It Hawaii distributes 3 gallon figs through Lowes, Home Depot, and Kula Ace and Chung's distributes 6 inch figs through Walmart a few times a year. No yard? No worries! Figs are a good choice for a container, too.

(These figs were picked in early July~i'm a little behind...)

2011 Eat Local Challenge

2011-09-04T08:56:00.001-10:00

How often have i heard some bedraggled visitor grumbling about spending the day driving all the way to Hana and back? "The road was terrible and there was nothing to see when we got there" they complain and i feel sad. Hana is magical, it's true, but so can be the journey there. It is up to the traveler to make the discoveries along the way.

The Kanu Hawaii Eat Local Challenge is for the whole month of September but that doesn't mean you have to be all hard core and commit to eating only locally produced foods for the whole month. Try it for just one day. Or choose to include at least one locally grown/produced item with each meal for a week. Don't think you can do even that? Try anyway. This challenge is like driving to Hana, it's a great destination but there are plenty of discoveries to be made along the way.

Where does your food come from? What can you do without? Do your food choices nourish your community? Find out and sign up for your own challenge here.

Favas will grow

2011-05-01T07:27:00.001-10:00

Twelve plants, four months, fourteen pods. Eating fresh favas? Not exactly priceless.

I think i'll stick with limas.

Favas have their own charm, i'm sure, when you need a bean that will survive a chilly winter. Limas won't do that. Limas won't tint a hard boiled egg a soft, blushing pink either.

That's a job for Crimson Flowered Favas.

But can you grow favas in Hawaii? Can.

At 1000 feet or lower they might not grow very well.

Try planting limas instead.

Girl gets Greedy

2011-03-30T22:23:00.000-10:00

Baby chicks, fresh peas and asparagus. Even here that means Spring! We've been picking and eating asparagus for a few weeks now. I grow Purple Passion, a variety that is low in fibre and high in sugar.

Fresh from the garden it is an entirely new vegetable, one that demands new ways of preparation. It is too delicate to withstand the traditional blister and char treatment. Even oven roasting is too much. Mostly we eat it raw~ tossed in salads, sliced into a slaw or barely warmed in a mixed veg stir fry. It is so delicious that i become greedy, waiting to harvest the spears until the very last minute. My greediness leaves me with little margin for error. A miscalculation of a single day means the tightly furled tips will fling themselves open and the tender spears will begin to gird themselves in a woody sheath.

Last week was windy and cold and windy. Did i say windy? It put me in a bad mood which made me forget for two days that i was greedy for more asparagus. When i finally remembered and braved the ~~hurricane~~ gusty conditions, i found the tall soldier spears of asparagus were gone. In their place the row bristled with thick purple stalks of snaking asparagus on the verge of ferndom. What to do, what to do? I did the only sensible thing. I cut them down and put them in a vase on the counter. It was kind of scary looking but the stalks were too big to fit in the fridge. And then i set about wondering what a girl should do with two pounds of woody asparagus.

This is what i came up with.

Saute one sliced leek and maybe half a clove of garlic in butter or olive oil. When tender add chopped aparagus stalks and enough water to cover. You could use broth but i think it masks the taste of the vegetables. Simmer until asparagus is tender. Run contents of soup pan through a food mill. You could use an immersion blender but i don't like woody bits in my soup, even if they are very small. Reheat soup and stir in two or more big spoonfuls of whole milk yogurt. Adjust salt and pepper. Garnish with tender, well behaved stalks of asparagus, thinly sliced. Dust with grated Asiago cheese and serve.

Sorry, no picture. The soup was gone before i could find the camera. Good eating on a cold, windy day ; )

Asparagus is a perennial. After the initial bed preparations and planting are complete it can give you several harvests a year for very little effort. Steve Solomon writes about starting an asparagus bed from seed in his "Gardening When It Counts" that makes real sense for Hawaii gardeners due to the shorter time to harvest (and the high cost of shipping!). Asparagus is also fairly salt tolerant so it can be grown in coastal gardens. If you have been thinking about growing some asparagus for yourself check out the new 'Asparagus in Hawaii' link in the sidebar.

February's Garden

2011-03-04T21:19:00.002-10:00

Is it March? So soon? But i'm not ready! I've finally worked my way through the dull up and downloading of pictures and find myself loitering in February still. Join me for a quick stroll through last month's garden.

Roselle, grown from seeds from Jane's garden. Delicious simmered with lemongrass and ginger and sugar. Can't get enough of it. Love it, must plant more. Rose beetles are fond of it too, can you see the telltale lace?

Volunteer broccoli, sprouting along the rough border of the garden. It's unamended territory and i'm curious to see how things will turn out.

Oregon Peas

Two flowers per node promise a generous harvest.

More Oregon peas.

Vertically challenged?

Isar

Butter yellow and crooked neck, they are his favorite.

Rainbow Lacinato Kale

After the storm. Good for kale chips.

Golden Sweet

A tallish vine with tumbles of shy, violet shaded flowers followed by glowing yellow pods. The pods are thin walled and crispy, good in salads or briefly singed in a wok.

Golden Sweet

The first harvest was just in time for Valentine's Day ; )

Brown Popping Chickpea

So far just a few flowers and one pod, can you see it all out of focus and to the right? Maybe a later planting, in drier weather, would do better. On warm, dry days the leaves are dusted with fine drops of a clear liquid. My hand tastes sour after i brush it across the top of the plants.

Perona

'A bush bean' the catalog said, but these vines easily scaled the five foot trellis and then wanted more. I nibbled on a few raw pods when they were small and i think they would make fine eating at that stage. They were OK as fresh shellies but the thick skins puckered and wrinkled in an unappealing way. They are still a few weeks away from dry beans, i think.

Chaco Canyon

The first few showy sprays of white flowers produced these but then the flowering stopped. I hope it's just a hiccup because the one pod i sampled was really good!

Crimson Flowered Favas

They were the first beans to flower. Aren't they pretty? But no beans, not one, still yet. I found this great post that you can read if you'd like to learn more about their history. I wonder how much longer i should wait for beans?

Lacinato Kale

This is my much loved Lacinato Kale (in case you missed the caption). I chopped the original plants down with a machete a few months ago, around the time they started to get taller than me. These are the pups, blown over in a wind storm and now growing straight up from where they fell. We mostly eat ours raw, in salads. How do you do kale?

That's all for now. Ahui hou!

Harvest Monday~Kimchi

2011-02-21T09:51:00.003-10:00

I was going to publish this as a Wordless Wednesday post but after visiting the Harvest Monday bloggers today i decided to join in for the first time. I enjoyed seeing everyone's harvests but was especially inspired by the Kohlrabi Kimchi that A High Desert Garden is showing off today. Hope she shares her recipe ; )

This miniature bok choi volunteered in my garden last fall. It was so green and healthy that i let it grow probably longer that i should have. It was almost two and a half pounds when i finally harvested it! Normally i would have been wondering what to do with a two and a half pound bok choi but some of my blogger friends have been posting about kimchi lately. And i had some nice fat scallions to harvest. And FINALLY i was able to harvest ripe Aleppo peppers from the plants that grew from seeds from Michelle's garden. A little Hawaiian salt, garlic, ginger, fish sauce later and you can guess the happy ending of this pungent story.

Bloggers from around the country show off their harvests every Monday at Daphne's Dandelions, even in the middle of February! Stop by and say hello.

Zoned out

2011-02-08T23:38:00.001-10:00

Do you know what zone you garden in? For most of us in Hawaii the answer is USDA plant hardiness zone 11. But that answer is based on the minimum temperature recorded each year in a given zone. And the minimum temperature counting stops at forty degrees. So if you live in Hawaii knowing your plant hardiness zone is kind of like owning snow skis. Not entirely useless, but close.

A few years ago i discovered another, better zone map. This one is the AHS Heat Zone Map and it explains things the USDA map never could. Things like why Jane's tomatoes don't do so well in August (but not why i can't grow tomatoes much at all). The idea is that plants begin to experience damage from heat when temperatures exceed 86 degrees Fahrenheit (30 degrees Celsius). Heat zones measure the number of days that this occurs each year.

Viewing the map at 1600x i can see that tiny Maui, squeezed way down in the left hand corner, contains all twelve heat zones within its 720 square miles. Astonishing to be sure but no surprise to anyone that lives here. Factor in rainfall and soil variables and it's easy to understand the lack of regional gardening advice.

The AHS map has really helped expand my gardening borders. Before i knew about heat zones i mostly paid attention to what was working for gardeners in S. California, Texas and South Florida. Now i know my garden resides squarely in AHS Heat Zone 5 so i also get to pay attention to what works for gardeners in places like northern Illinois and most of Oregon. Sort of ; )

Click here if you'd like to see what heat zone you live in.

Growing up

2011-01-22T12:06:00.000-10:00

"What would you like to be when you grow up?" i asked the bean as she unfurled her leaves and raised her face to the sun. Being a bean she ignored me, leaving me alone to weave twine into trellis and wonder about the secret aspirations of a bean.

Trellis weaving is satisfying work and i'm glad for the miscalculation that has made this necessary. Can i tell you a secret? I grew only bush beans for years because i didn't know how to build a trellis. My puny attempts bowed, sagged, listed, and generally ended badly. The pole bean pages of my favorite seed catalogs stayed clean and shiny, free from dog ears and purple sharpie marker stains. I pretended that i didn't care about growing beans that measure two feet long or beans that curl and corkscrew like the tail of a pig. If it needed to be trellised i wasn't interested!

He offered to help, of course, but i demurred. I knew that his trellis would stand true and tall and bear even the weight of Jack's famous bean but i also knew that it would be a forever trellis. Forever is good in love and marriage but in gardens, not so much. I wanted my trellis to be as easy to take down as it would be to put up, a trellis that would stand firm for only as long as i wished it to. I'm not quite there yet but i'm pretty close.

And here i really should insert a disclaimer. This is not my design. It's an idea i borrowed from another, more structurally talented gardener, offered here with a few minor modifications of my own. It's simple and sturdy and the materials are easy for the average home gardener to find and to transport.

Click on photo to enlarge details

What you will need:

Two or more t-posts. I like to use galvanized posts but the green painted ones are a few dollars cheaper and work just as well. Maybe you can find them on Craig's list or at the Restore but i have had rotten luck with that. My second choice is Del's, a local farm and feed store. Lowe's or Home Depot are my back-up options. Avoid U-posts which are not as sturdy. T-posts come in different lengths. I went a little crazy and got seven footers and a sore neck. Be smarter than me and select five footers instead ; )
Enough 5/8" rebar to span the distance between your t-posts. You'll need one for the top and if you use twine you'll need another one for the bottom. Smaller diameters seem a little flimsy to me.
A PVC 'tee' for the top of each t-post, 1 1/4" diameter.
Your choice-a big spool of garden twine or a 4 x 6 precut panel of concrete reinforcing wire.

This goes together pretty easily. Bang the t-posts into the ground just to the top of the bottom flange. This is far enough to be secure but will still let you pull the post later without getting too sweaty. If you are using CRW you should space the posts to the width of the panel. Slip the PVC tees over the of the t-posts and thread the rebar through. If you are using twine then lash the second piece of rebar across the bottom of the posts. You won't need this second piece if you are using CRW.

If you are using twine then start by tying laterals between the posts. Begin your trellis weave by tying your verticals off to the top piece of rebar. Wrap the twine around each lateral as you travel down the trellis, reversing the direction of the wrap at each twist and maintaining even tension. Tie off to the bottom piece of rebar and repeat until complete.

CRW lashed to top bar

If you are using CRW lash the panel snugly to the top piece of rebar and tie the sides off to the t-posts. If you are using five foot t-posts this will give you a trellis that is six feet long and five feet high with about a foot of empty space at the bottom on the trellis. Your beans won't mind and you will be glad for the room when you are tending the soil between crops.

Beans tackle that open space at the bottom.

The CRW is a lot quicker than weaving and won't need to be restrung with each crop but you will have to peel the vine from the wire at the end of the season. The twine trellis can be clipped off and composted, vine and all. I've heard some gardeners claim that their beans don't like to climb the wire and if you live in a hot climate that might be true. I haven't noticed any problems.

I still prefer growing bush beans to pole beans but now it's not because i don't know how to build a trellis.

Oh Beans!

2010-12-28T14:59:00.000-10:00

Last Sunday I opted out of the mad holiday rush long enough to sow a few bean seeds. Hours later, it rained. It rained all through the night, at least a foot i think. That much rain usually blasts in sideways, riding in on the scouring trades. But this time the wind was paused for breath and the rain fell steadily in a long, lush, ground soaking curtain. I'll confess to you that the timing was more satellite than serendipity but the beans, they don't mind either way.

Maui Rain. Thank-you Teresa!

Most of the beans were purchased or traded last season and have been languishing in the refrigerator, waiting for the return of cooler weather. Warmth and humidity kill seeds. The refrigerator is the only dry, cool place in the house. Bean seeds are large which makes them easy to handle but bulky to store. Harboring those seeds has really been cramping my cheese habit.

I was glad to get them in the ground but as you can see, i have a ways to go.

We eat beans from the garden all year round but the varieties change with the seasons. Lima and wing beans can appear anytime of the year but long beans and cow peas are summertime treats. Snap and shelly beans are harvested from fall through spring. Winter brings us peas~sugar, snow, and pigeon peas which we enjoy through the springtime months. This winter i am trying out a few new cool season beans for the first time. Fava beans, pop beans, and runner beans. It probably won't get cool enough here for the beans to crop but i might get lucky. With so many micro zones in this state the best way to find out what will work in your area is to try it yourself.

Crimson Flowered Favas

A dozen Crimson Flowered fava beans will be beautiful even if they don't crop. And yes, i do have a lovely bottle of chianti on standby, just in case.

This is a bean?

The garbanzos don't look much like beans to me, it will be fun to watch them grow. They were ordered from the SSE yearbook last year and are a type of popping chickpea, something you might be familiar with if you've read Carol Deppe's books. I'm thinking more corn nuts than popcorn and hope i get a chance to try a few. Carol is planning to offer a popbean through her new company Fertile Valley Seeds this year. The site doesn't seem to be up and running yet. Sign up for her newsletter to receive updates if you like.

Chaco Canyon

Chaco Canyon is a white runner bean sourced from Baker's Creek. The Aztec Half Runner beans i tried last year never really produced but i'm hoping for better things from Chaco Canyon. Insuk's Wang Kong is a runner bean that will tolerate warmer temperatures. It's available from Sandhill Preservation. IWK is not an all white bean but the scarlet flowers are stunning and edible, to boot. Maybe i'll try them next year if CC is a bust.

Clem and Sara's Big Bean

Clem and Sara's Big Bean is supposed to be a bush bean that produces a large, white shelly bean. They were ordered last year through the SSE yearbook. I have high hopes for this bean! Almost all large white beans are pole beans. Many folks prefer to grow pole beans (once they get past the trellis issue) because they are easier to pick standing up and because they usually produce over a longer period of time. I prefer bush beans because the wind is hard on pole beans and because disease pressures in my garden usually mean the vines are finished after the first or maybe second flush. Of course with shell beans there is no second flush. And besides, how can you not love a name like Clem and Sara's Big Bean ; )

Isar

Isar is a bush bean that will produce slender yellow French filet beans. This bean will probably need to be picked every day which i am willing to overlook because i am a sucker for vegetables that come in unusual colors. I expect it will be delicious since it is the first bean the slugs have decided to dine on. If daily picking is not your thing try 'Masai'. It's green, not yellow, but it can go a few days between pickings and has a nice petite bush habit. Isar is available from Johnny's, Masai from Fedco.

Perona~Off to a fine start

Perona and Perona Verde are both bush shell beans purchased from Sandhill Preservation. They were originally sourced from Spain. Perona Verde is not green. That is all i know. I have no idea why i ordered these beans. Maybe i was in the mood for tapas?

Soissons Vert

I am so looking forward to trying this next bean, Soissons Vert. It's a large, pale green, pole flageolet. It garners the highest praise for flavor. These seeds were also ordered through the SSE yearbook last spring. By the time the seeds arrived my trellises were full and by the time they finally emptied it was summer. I didn't want to plant SV during the hot months so i waited. The beans just look delicious, all plump and shiny. This probably reflects the care and skill of the preservationist as much as the characteristics of the bean. Thank-you Chris.

And finally i have three different peas planted. Peas grow just OK here, even in the winter time, but are so well worth growing when compared to the tired, overpriced supermarket peas. All varieties from Pinetree.

Golden Sweet

Golden Sweet is a lemon podded snow pea originally from India. This is not a new fangled yellow podded pea, Mendel himself used it during his pea breeding experiments. I'm looking forward to the beautiful purple flowers as well as the yummy pods.

Cascadia is a newer sugar snap pea bred for the Northwest by Dr. Jim Baggett. It is shorter than my old standard Super Sugar Snap, a plus, and has been bred for resistance to powdery mildew and enation. Now i'm not sure enation resistance is useful in Hawaii but powdery mildew resistance sure will come in handy.

Oregon Sugar Pod or Cascadia? I forgot.

Oregon Sugar Pod II is another shorter, disease resistant vine out of Oregon State University. Wouldn't a better name be Oregon Sugar Snow Pod II? How else to avoid confusing this snow pea with a sugar snap pea? I always pick my first few sugar snaps a little too small. Waiting until the pods are almost bursting yields a sweeter pea in my garden. I wonder if these snow peas are like that, sweeter when they are old and puffy?

There's not much to look at yet but in a few weeks things should be filling in. In the meantime i'm curling up with a few new seed catalogs, trying not to order more beans. I need more space for cheese.

Spinach, by any other name

2010-11-14T23:27:00.003-10:00

He came home one day with a raggedy scrap of green and purple, swaddled in damp hardware receipts. "For you" he said as he kissed me hello, "Okinawan Spinach". This man knows that diamonds are not the way to my heart. I laughed in delight, kissed him back, and ran off to find a home for my new treasure.

If you know much about growing spinach you might be wondering about my excitement. Spinach prefers cool, damp weather. It can grow in Hawaii but in most areas the season is short and the plant is fickle, demanding special consideration from the gardener. Gardeners in Hawaii are encouraged to select from a variety of warm weather spinach substitutes instead, things like Malabar spinach, Lagos spinach, New Zealand spinach, water spinach and Sisso spinach. After being fooled by a few of these imposters i learned that 'spinach' only means that the plant will be leafy and green. Probably edible but not necessarily palatable. Do not be discouraged by this. Acceptable substitutes for Spinacia oleracea are available, according to your desired use, they are just not called spinach.

But wait, i am getting sidetracked. Let me get back to telling you about this plant, Gynura crepioides, that belongs in every island garden. Like the spinaches mentioned earlier, Okinawan spinach should not be thought of as a spinach substitute. It isn't. But unlike the others it is plenty palatable. In our house we strip the leaves off of the stem and add them to green salads where they flash sparkles of jeweled brilliance. Each thick, smooth leaf has a slightly succulent quality, like spinach, but with a faint piney taste and an affinity tropical fruits. We are exploring other ways to incorporate this plant into our diet because of its rumoured cholesterol lowering properties.

So this Okinawan spinach tastes good, looks good and is good for you. You're checking your seed catalogs already, aren't you? But wait, there's more. This unfussy plant is ridiculously easy to grow. It forms a low mat that would be easy to incorporate into an edible landscape and seems to have few pest issues. It will tolerate a moderate amount of drought and even full sun in my garden although it does appreciate regular moisture and a little shade. It strikes readily from tip cuttings in moist soil or in a glass of water on a kitchen countertop. The plant produces a typical asteraceae type flower during the shorter days of winter but the seeds do not grow true to type, producing all green leaves that lack the characteristic richly pigmented underleaf.

I took a few tip cuttings to a seed swap last year and was pleasantly surprised by the number of people who shared that they had a patch growing in their own or their Auntie's garden. The internet tells me that Okinawan spinach can be found at selected nurseries, swap meets and plant sales on other islands but i have never seen it for sale on Maui. I hope i have convinced you that it is worth seeking out.

Dawn Dewa, Gynura nepalensis, aka 'The Low Cholesterol Plant' is a related plant i would like to find . If you can help me out with that please leave a comment

Kitchen Garden

2010-10-30T11:43:00.002-10:00

Courtesy of Cooking Light Magazine

I wanted the garden to start at my kitchen door but the soil and the slope and the wind are all wrong. It grows a few minutes away instead, stretched across a flat part of our property where the topsoil wasn't long ago scraped or washed away. I enjoy strolling out there in the early morning sun and even in the early morning fog and rain but in the dark of night? Not so much. And you know that this is a problem when you cook from the garden, don't you? Because sometimes, right at the very last minute, what the soup really needs to make it sing is a scattering of scallion or a sprinkle of cilantro. And sometimes, when the day has had it's way with you, and you can barely drag yourself into the kitchen, all you really want for dinner is a freshly picked green salad and maybe a glass of chardonnay.

So with the shorter days leaving me with less and less light at the end of mine, i decided to take some action. Luckily not much would be required. Just to the right of the kitchen door and sheltered by the stairs is a sliver of a raised bed, eight square feet in all. He built it for me five or maybe seven years ago. I've lately been using it as a halfway house for new slips and starts, anything that needs a daily looking at really.

The old sides were bowed along two edges, spilling the backfilled clay out of the bed, but he repaired that for me in just a few minutes. The soil in that bed was never properly amended for growing vegetables so i sprinkled lime and dolomite and bonemeal as instructed by the soil test i paid UH for a few years ago. Since i know exactly where the soil in that bed came from there is no need to have it tested again. I spread a little azomite, too, because i had some and the plants seem to like it.

Our clay soil can be rock hard but the bed is tiny and it took me only a few sweaty minutes to turn. I added a wheelbarrow full of screened manure and turned it again, smashing the larger clods apart with satisfying thwacks from the back of my shovel. I wanted to plant some greens right away but instead i watered it well and let it rest.

It's been about two weeks now and there are a few young weeds greening the surface. Allowing these weeds to sprout reduces the seed bank and will save me some time in the next few weeks. I'll pull them later today and plant.

You might be thinking that eight square feet is not very big and yes, you would be right, it's small. But i have been practicing the time honored art of encroachment, layering woodchips, coffee grounds, lemongrass tops, and compost around the edges for a good while now. I have tucked in a young papaya tree, a chile pepper, and a few strawberry plants. There is room, still, for some basil and maybe a patch of mint or oregano. And soon my garden will start, as it should, at the kitchen door.

Late Summer Garden Update

2010-10-11T22:08:00.001-10:00

September was a slow time in my vegetable garden so i felt silly posting a tour. It should have been a busy month, full of sowing and transplanting and readying the earth as she tracks a slow pivot, returning us to cooler, wetter weather. What happened instead is that i was distracted, seeds failed, and slugs and birds grew fat on the few tender seedlings that did emerge. Grrr. But this blog is a record, my way to mark the rhythms of the garden through fat and other times, so i will see if i can record a few highlights.

Purslane. First time growing this. Predictably i couldn't resist it's easy reputation. Easy but virtuous, high in omega 3s. Felt weird eating a weed but it cropped quickly and wasn't bad mixed in with other greens and was pretty good with hummus in a veggie wrap. Have you ever tasted these?

Photo by Dr. John Meade, weed scientist emeritus
Rutgers NJAES Cooperative Extension

It's what purslane tastes like. The oxalic acid i think.

Juliet tomatoes are just starting to ripen. I hope these are the grape tomatoes i have been looking for. A few years ago i let a volunteer tomato plant grow. It sprouted from a seed that was either washed out of a tray from an earlier planting or grew from a composted hybird tomato. The plant produced lots of firm little grape tomatoes that held for a long time on the vine. These tomatoes tasted okay fresh. But roasted? Oh my, roasting absolutely transformed them into smoky, rich tasting morsels that pureed into a remarkable sauce. Earlier this year i tried to prepare Komohana grape tomatoes the same way, assuming that one grape tomato was pretty much like another. Let me tell you, they are not. I'm crossing my fingers this time.

This is a sad little naranjillo plant. It has been sitting here looking much the same for about a month. Stunted maybe, did i leave it in the pot too long? It's a pretty thing, covering itself in prickly, purple fuzz. I'm curious about this and the fruit that it will produce. Have you grown it?

A big surprise this month was my Hunan wing bean. It languished for the first three months while it's neighbor, Lorenzo's Wing Bean, pumped out an early harvest. Hunan decided to scramble up it's trellis just as Lorenzo's started to fade. At first there were only a few fat frilly pods here and there but this month Hunan has given me a skilletful once or twice a week.

In September the salad bowl was filled with rainbow and lacinato kales, mizuna and midnight chard, arugula and Okinawan spinach. The zucchini succumbed to powdery mildew and the melon flies had no trouble finding the cucumber but the cherry tomatoes were unstoppable. We are tired of broccoli but not cowpeas. The eggplants were small but delicious and we are looking forward to more. Oh, and then there were the gardenias. In September! Which, as it turns out, was a pretty fat month after all.

That's all for now.

A hui hou!

KCC Farmer's Market

2010-09-29T07:58:00.000-10:00

Most folks like to visit the beach, the mall or a fancy restaurant when they go out of town. Me, i like to check out the local farmer's market. Don't get me wrong, i go to those other places too, but a visit that doesn't include a trip to the market is just not as memorable. KCC farmer's market is just a stone's throw from the famous Waikiki Beach and i finally got a chance to check it out during a recent visit.

Waikiki Beach

Now i should tell you that i had an agenda. I've been hearing about a luscious little treat that is rumoured to be on offer there. It's a heartbreakingly fresh strawberry swaddled in mochi and dipped in chocolate. Sounds wonderful, doesn't it? I was determined to try one.

So we skipped breakfast Saturday morning and jumped on the number 23 bus for a short, nose to armpit crowded ride to the KCC Farmer's Market. The crowd was heavy with hip, young Japanese visitors which made these two old country mice feel very trendy.

It feeds a village

The decison to skip breakfast turned out to be a good one. Check out these groaning plate lunches! We made the tough call to pass these by, hoping for more treats ahead.

The market focus is on fresh, locally produced food but no market is complete without fresh flowers. There were lots of tropicals for sale, including fragrant gingers. Orchids were on offer at great prices. No strawberries here...

We saw chocolate from the Big Island along with local dairy products, freshly baked whole wheat fig bread and, of course, baskets and baskets of fresh produce. But where are the strawberries?

Colorful heirloom tomatoes on display

These tomatoes were gorgeous but they are not strawberries!

It was hard to resist taking one of everything but we were traveling light and had to answer to TSA so i limited myself to buying some Kona coffee, some chocolate, and all the prepared food we could eat.

Preparing beignets

We stuffed ourselves with grilled abalone farmed on the Big Island, grilled Kahuku corn slathered with shoyu/wasabi butter, and caprese salad skewers. For dessert we gobbled down hot beignets with lilikoi butter and washed it all down with steaming cups of Kona coffee.

Still no strawberries! If the strawberries were there that day we didn't find them. But we sure enjoyed looking for them ; )

Have you been to the Farmer's Market lately?

On cleaning and planting fish

2010-09-18T16:21:00.004-10:00

I know. Fishing (or more accurately~fish cleaning) is not gardening. But we eat a lot of fish. And i clean all of it. The fish is usually accompanied by vegetables. From the garden. And then holes are dug and the fish scraps are planted. In the garden. Talk about fish fertilizer! I'd show you a picture but who wants to see that?

What i do want you to see is this guy who is just crack with the knife. He is my new hero. Yes, my new hero is a fish cutter. Might be your hero too, after you watch this video.

The vegetable garden in August

2010-09-01T00:00:00.004-10:00

The sky is darkening outside as August breathes her last warm goodbyes. Join me as i take a final look back at the August vegetable garden.

It's not a large garden, as you can see. Just five beds, four feet wide by twenty long divided by narrow foot paths. But it is big enough to feed us something everyday, despite the hungry birds, and slugs, and the ineptitude of the gardener.

This was supposed to be my salad bed this summer. The wooden frame was first used as part of a hydroponic lettuce experiment last summer but it has been reinvented many times since then. My idea this time was to create a dark fluffy bed of super enriched soil that baby lettuces would just beg to grow in. I believed the nice hardware store man when he said this

would be just as good as the Happy Frog brand of soil they were out of. Don't you make the same mistake. Soil Building wood chips is more like it. Bok choy, chard, beets, mizuna and lettuce all just wither up and die in this bed. Now you know.

Lucky for me i tucked a few things right in the ground. Arugula, Summer Crisp lettuce and this pretty little mizuna plant are all thriving in the light shade of the papaya tree.

The Umpqua broccoli is done but the Arcadia and Fiesta plants are still producing small, tender side shoots. That is Okinawan spinach crowding in at the upper right corner. It's a nice little plant that really deserves a post of it's own one day.

The Edirne eggplant looks bad. My diagnosis is spider mites, do you agree? Attempting first line treatment now which is rinsing the undersides of the leaves with water . Despite looking bad it is managing to set a number of fruits. It's a pretty little eggplant but narrower than i imagined it would be.

The carrot harvest continues. This is a Red Cored Chantenay. I have to remember to get some new seeds started if i don't want a gap in my harvests.

Zucchini waits for no one as i was reminded last week when i harvested a couple of three pound bats. The zucchini hale is getting so crowded i couldn't fit my camera in to take a picture.

The Fagiolino Dolico Veneto Cowpeas are enjoying the dog days of August. Lavender frosted white flowers burst open from apricot blushed buds each morning. The flowers fade by early afternoon. This variety was described as petite but it is growing like a half runner in my garden. The beans are held above the foliage, four at a time. I've just gathered the first handful of narrow green pods to stir fry for lunch tomorrow.

I think this sword bean might make it! The first two beans mysteriously disappeared. This time the wire cage offers protection from the hungry birds and the plastic pot collar is a little insurance against the garden slugs.

My first Diva cucumber. This is planted in a self watering container as Jane describes here. I think this experiment just might work!

I am down to just 30 mangoes on this tree but they are sizing up nicely now. It is heartbreaking to watch the baby mangoes drop but 30 mangoes is still six more than last year!

That's all for now.

A hui hou!

A Passion for Lilikoi

2010-08-15T22:43:00.002-10:00

Late last summer a small, viney sprout appeared in the mulch layered at the feet of a long row of areca palms. It looked like it might be a lilkoi sprout. Now you are probably thinking to yourself that an areca palm hedge is not a very good place to grow a lilikoi vine. And you are probably right. But i love lilikoi so i decided to wait and see what would happen next. I know. Don't say it.

Things started off promisingly. Aren't the flowers lovely? They only last for a day (or night depending on the variety). Sometimes i bring them into the house, wrap the stem with florist's wire, and turn them into pretty little napkin rings. Yes, each napkin ring means one less lilikoi but they grow wildly, abundantly, even accidentally in nearby valleys ; ) Thank goodness because, did i mention? i love lilikoi.

Commercial orchards grow lilikoi on wire trellises, like grapes in a vineyard. I read this somewhere a few years back, i don't remember where. This idea of tidy vines all lined up on wire trellises appeals to me but the vines are not so fussy, happy to twine their way up anything they can get their tendrils on. In pastures, where there are no tall things to climb, the vines wind languorously along the ground, happily weaving in and out of the wild grasses. Strumpet vine, i think to myself affectionately, admiring it's wanton ways because, i think i already said, i love lilikoi.

So my viney sprout has grown now, as you guessed it would, into an exuberant specimen spanning 20 feet or more. It is still growing. This is not good for the arecas, sigh. Waiting for the burgeoning fruits to flare yellow and drop to the ground to ripen and wizen, i decide that i will pull the vine after the first harvest. Love has it's limits, after all, and there are plenty of other lilikoi in the sea.

And then the fruits began to blush. They took on a rosy hue before slipping from the vine and tumbling to the ground. Purple lilikoi! A little sweeter and far less common than the yellow lilikoi, at least on my part of the island. So now, a dilemna. Should it stay or should it go?

Lilikoi season lasts through December or January here so i have a few months to think it over. In the meantime i get to wallow in the harvest. Slice a few lilikoi open, scoop the pulp into a metal sieve or jelly bag and leave it overnight. A quick pulse in the blender beforehand will release more juice or you can press the remaining pulp against the sieve with a rubber spatula to get every last drop of golden goodness.

So just how much do i love lilikoi? Let me count the ways. There's lilikoi curd, lilikoi margaritas, lilikoi salad dressing, lilikoi butter for basting grilled lobster or drizzling over grilled fish, lilikoi bars, lilikoi cheesecake and lilikoi granita just to name a few.

Do you love lilikoi, too?

Zucchini Hale

2010-08-12T07:59:00.001-10:00

"The first zucchini I ever saw I killed it with a hoe."

John Gould, 'Monstrous Depravity' 1963.

It's how they treat zucchini in some parts of the country i suppose. Ditching it in doorways and unlocked cars. Not that i am judging, no. I might act the same way if i lived somewhere else. Somewhere zucchini grows effortlessly, accidentally even, with reckless blind abundance. I have heard that there are such places. But here, in the land of the melon fly and the pickle worm, zucchinis must be grown on purpose.

Last winter 'on purpose' meant growing parthenocarpic zucchini and building a house of PVC and tulle. The PVC and tulle are widely available and not too expensive. The zucchini seeds had to be sent for and arrived in the mail only after i promised a ridicuous sum for postage to a certain company doing business west of the Cascades. In time, zucchini were harvested. The house was not pretty but it was a success! Still, i felt i could do better.

I trolled the internet for ideas and then ordered some Agribon-15 from Johnny's and picked up a CRW panel from Home Depot. Agribon 15 is the lightest weight of row cover and lets in water and light without too much heat build-up. It also makes me feel very professional. CRW is wire mesh with 4x4 inch openings. It is used in concrete work and usually sold in rolls but you can also find handy 4x6 precut panels. It's common to see hoop houses framed with pvc or metal conduit formed into semicircular supports but it's windy here and CRW provides a better undersupport for the Agribon. The edges of the CRW panel are anchored by pushing a few lengths of rebar into the ground. The Agribon is draped over the top and rocks anchor the excess fabric at each end of the tunnel.

I like this design a lot but the wire stubs at the ends of the CRW panel have poked holes in the fragile Agribon. It doesn't look bad in this picture but after a few weeks of tugging wind the holes are much larger. Next time i will trim the wires flush with bolt cutters and mount some old drip line along the edge for protection.

I harvested my second zucchini of the season today. I'm dreaming of masa harina zucchini crepes with tomatillo salsa, cheese stuffed zucchini boats, zucchini tart, stuffed zucchini blossoms, zucchini galette and zucchini noodles. And after that? Well, you might want to start locking your car doors...

A vegetable garden on Maui in July

2010-07-26T22:23:00.002-10:00

Rant On.

Here on Maui we import 90% of our food. 90%. Wow. And we pay about 66% more for it than the U.S. national average. Do you know that we also live in one of the most isolated island chains on the globe? The nearest land mass is over two thousand miles away. Great for racking up those frequent flier miles. Not so great for food security. So yes, i've done it. Gone and pimped myself out to google with the post title. It's a small soapbox but i'll stand on it. People should grow more of their own food. Especially on an island. It's not that hard.

Rant Off.

This month has been mostly dry and windy but last week we were blessed with about four inches of rain. Come, let's take a walk through the July vegetable garden.

Rainbow Lacinato Kale.

I don't really get the name. Maybe the plants come in five or even six colors, like Rainbow Chard. I'm growing just two plants~how much kale can two people eat, after all~so i can't say for sure. Maybe a whole row of them would look like a rainbow. Maybe.

A pampered Cavili zucchini. Looks like about two or three weeks to fruit!

Plaza Latina Giant tomatillos. They are short. They attract pests. They drop their fruits prematurely and they crack after picking. Ah, but they also make a mean Salsa Verde! We'll keep them for now.

Holy Frass! Larvae of the Three Line Potato beetle. On the tomatillo, of course.

Snow White cherry tomato.

This is not my favorite cherry tomato but the plant is vigorous and productive. That tomato cage is 6 feet tall!

The Snow White cherries are the pale yellow ones. You can also see Gardener's Delight, Sun Sugar and Green Grape. I LOVE Green Grape!

The Hawaiian Chile pepper is ubiquitous in island gardens and packs quite a punch. This little plant seems to have more peppers than leaves!

So far 4 of my six broccoli plants have produced a central head. After harvesting the main head i noticed that most of the broccoli plants keep producing nice little side sprouts. Bonus!

The Piracicaba broccoli is doing great, can you see all the shoots that need to be picked? Much larger than i expected, three feet tall and at least as wide!

Diva cucumber sprouts (Thanks Jane!). Hopefully the start of a successful experiment.

The Masai beans are still giving me pods but production has really slowed. Almost time for them to come out. With our two hottest months ahead the weather is perfect for...

...cowpeas! Say hello to Fagiolino Dolico Veneto, a fast growing dwarf variety that can be enjoyed as green snaps, young peas or mature seeds. This is the first of several bush yardlongs i am trialing this year.

Mexican Marigold, used as a warm weather substiture for Tarragon. Did you know this plant is day length sensitive and rarely flowers on the mainland?

That's all for now.

A hui hou!

Fee Fi Fo Fum

2010-07-20T07:05:00.000-10:00

Fee

Fum

What do you think will grow from 'um?

I know. They're just seeds. But they are big, so wondrously big, that i had to show them to you now. They might not even sprout. They could get eaten by giant slugs. Anthing could happen, if you think about it. But don't. Really think about it, i mean. No, for now, for just a minute, Imagine instead.

Sword Bean

Good for what ails you.

What to do about aphids

2010-07-12T07:54:00.001-10:00

'Try Wait'.

It's a local phrase meaning hold on, wait a minute, don't rush. An important phrase in an island vocabulary and even sometimes in an island garden.

Aphids are not important, in gardens or vocabularies, unless they arrive just as the dill seeds are swelling, covering the flowerheads in a dismaying carpet of soft bodied sap suckers.

'Things don't look good for dilly beans' he says, looking forlorn. Dilly Beans are his favorite. 'Try Wait' i say, and smile...

...at the Lady Bug and her family.

i like limas

2010-06-27T23:19:00.000-10:00

My friend Joy sent me some seeds. Madagascar Beans, she called them.

I planted three seeds along a fence and looked forward to seeing what would grow. i did not double dig, i did not amend, i did not water.

I would have, if they needed me to, but they didn't. Bean number one is growng to the left and right of the wooden post. Bean number two is hunkered down at the bottom of the metal post to the right after running afoul of the lawn mower. It later made a fine recovery. Bean number three is off to the right, past the reach of the camera, looking a lot like bean number one.

It was four months before there were beans to pick but now they just keep coming, one to three beans to a pod. The grass is brown now but the limas stay green*. Lima beans are perennial in Hawaii, did you know?

Take some limas, two handfuls is nice. Swish under cold water and tumble into a bowl. Cover and microwave two or four minutes. Peel the pods from the beans, don't burn your fingers! Squeeze the beans from the skins and swirl in sizzling, curry scented olive oil. Gild with salt. Feel sorry for people who don't grow madagascar beans ; )

*These beans do show a susceptibility to rust. They are blissfully ignored by the Chinese Rose Beetle but favored by some kind of pod borer which makes harvesting dry seed hit or miss.

A Midsummer's Maui Vegetable Garden Tour

2010-06-24T08:30:00.003-10:00

The winter rains have gone making way for long, dry summer days. Come and take a walk with me in the midsummer garden.

Let's start with the seedling babies. The lettuce has all bolted and i am late with my new plantings. Here are a few bok choy plants to the left and some mizuna sprouts on the right. The bok choy is a year 'round staple crop but the mizuna is new to my garden. i've heard it makes a nice warm weather green. i just received some purple mizuna from Johnny's that i'll be planting next along with a few heat tolerant lettuces and baby chard to create a greens mix that i hope will thrive in the summer weather.

The arugula is still looking good. This is Astro, a widely available variety that tolerates the warm weather better than most. Arugula likes to grow in clay so i will be planting a new patch in the garden. These plants are in the raised bed and will probably start to bolt soon.

The Olive Leaf arugula keeps trying to bolt but i pluck the budding stems and toss them in salads. i have seen this plant described as a perennial. Cool! Perennials are always welcome in my garden.

Plaza Latina Giant Green Tomatillo is setting fruit like crazy despite perisistent attention from the flea beetles. Flea beetles are new to my garden this year and i am patiently waiting for a beneficial to come along and exert some control.

Remember the shallots? They have finally started to bulb up and are sloooowwwwly drying. i'll replant the smaller bulbs from this variety next year. If i am lucky i will end up with an adapted variety in a few seasons.

I begin to see why this Lacinato Kale is sometimes called Black Palm Kale.

Very excited by this heading broccoli! i planted three varieties earlier this year and this Umpqua is the first one to head. The other two are Arcadia and Fiesta.

The Piracicaba broccoli must be very photogenic because it looks great in this picture but really terrible in the garden. It is a favorite with some sort of chewing worm and the growing points are decidedly chlorotic. i finally purchased some Bt but after 5 or 6 weeks of rainless skies we are now getting just enough to wash the leaves clean every day, grrr.

This is Gardener's Delight cherry tomato. It was direct seeded in January but has just started to really grow and set fruit. A good example, i think, of planting in the wrong season.

Compare it to this Snow White cherry tomato that was planted three months later and is nearly the same size. Established plants will fruit in the winter months but i think they need the longer hours of daylight during their formative months.

Yay, carrots! Red Cored Chantenay Carrots almost ready to dig. Now to work on my spacing ; )

Daghestani White carrots look like they will be ready to dig soon as well. Carrot seeds can be hard to germinate during hot, dry weather so i am going to experiment with transplanting the young sprouts.

Masai filet beans. These are nice! They stay small, produce a good number of slender beans and can be picked only once or twice a week. First crop has already been picked which is why the plants look a little tired. i have just side dressed them with some chicken manure and hope to get one more crop in before some mold/mildew/rust/blight takes them out.

Do you know what these are? Baby mangos! i usually get to gobble down only about a dozen delicious mangos from this dwarf tree each year due to rampant anthracnose disease. This year i tried spraying with Serenade a few times to combat the anthracnose and maybe increase my harvest. i am greedy, a dozen mangos is not enough. Believe me, if you could taste these mangos you would be greedy too.

That's all for now,

A hui hou!

Tropical Peas Please

2010-05-31T21:32:00.001-10:00

Opal Creek Yellow Snap Vine Pea "has been long standing and productive in tropical ecologies" brags the Peace seed catalog. What an extraordinary claim! I contacted the breeder, Alan Kapuler, to find out more.

"two young women took some Opal Creek Peas to Mexico, they told us that they were 'semi-perennialized' in that they grew for a long time, produced prodigiously in the heat and were unlike any other peas they had grown in the tropics...
then in our greenhouse, they outlasted all of our other varieties, seeming to thrive in the heat like no other peas..
so these are our observations about the tropical success with Opal Creek....in addition the pea leaves are sweeter than any other we have found, so far."

i planted some peas in March. The vines are about 3 feet tall so far and began flowering a two or three weeks ago.

Here are the first sweet, golden pods.

This is usually the end of Sugar Snap pea season for us but the Opal Creek vines do indeed look very happy and robust.

The peas are stringless with a nice crunch. They are not as sweet as Super Sugar Snaps but taste better straight off the vine. If any make it back to the house they will be great in salads. The pods tend to twist a little bit as they get older, i think because they do not have very much fiber in the pods. The yellow pods are translucent so they appear greener as the peas inside swell.

Disease is rampant in my tropical garden. So far i have lost one vine to Fusarium and powdery mildew is in the house. Fingers and toes crossed that Opal Creek steps up....

Ono means delicious

2010-05-28T22:27:00.000-10:00

Take some fish, ono is nice. Sprinkle with salt, some turmeric, swirl in a hot pan, reserve. Sizzle wing beans, quench with coconut milk. Add grape tomatoes, halved. Spice with lime leaves, fish sauce, brown sugar, cilantro, thai basil, a Hawaiian chile pepper, two if you're brave, mmm. Simmer briefly. A squeeze of lime, more fish sauce, the fish returns to the pan. Splash over hot, white, sticky rice. Devour.

You might call it dinner, we call it delicious.

From my garden: wing beans, grape tomatoes, lime leaves, cilantro, thai basil, Hawaiian chile pepper, lime. He harvests the ono from the sea.

The Gift

2010-05-24T07:12:00.000-10:00

A few weeks ago the phone rang. It was my neighbor, wondering if i might like some horse manure.

He delivered it a few hours later...with a semi-truck! It was very hot and fresh, maybe you can see the steam?

When Beans Fly

2010-05-14T08:13:00.002-10:00

"Wing Bean" i say to my Filipina girlfriends, prompting gales of laughter. "Pa-long" they correct me. We are talking about the same vegetable, of course. Goa Bean, Frilled bean, Asparagus Pea, Princess Bean, Four Winged Bean, Psophocarpus tetragonolobus if you want to get Latin about it, all different names for the same trendy little bean that has been growing in Hawaiian gardens for years.

Considering it's popularity in the garden, wing bean seeds are conspicuously absent on local seeds racks. If you want to grow them you'll have to make friends with a gardening auntie or uncle. 'Hunan' is a day length neutral variety that can be mail ordered from Echo and Baker's Creek but it doesn't seem to be well adapted to island gardens, at least not mine. These seeds are from a locally grown variety saved from last year's plants.

In Hawaii Wing Bean is a carefree crop that requires little more than a sunny, wind sheltered spot, ample watering, and a sturdy trellis to climb. Nick the seed and soak in water overnight to help speed germination. My seeds were sown in January, the vines have been flowering since March but are just setting beans now. In his book 'Growing Vegetables in Fiji', Kirk Dahlgren claims that vines can grow and produce for up to four years.

The immature green pod is the part most commonly eaten although the flowers, leaves, dry seeds and roots are all edible, sparking the 'supermarket bean' description. Here are some tubers from last year's crop.

The nutritional powerhouses have about the same protein content as soybeans. The large blue flowers have a sweet, mushroomy flavor and make a fine addition to green salads.

Wing beans do not have a long shelf life and turn brown if refrigerated so the best place to find them for sale is at a local farmers market. They also make an apperance in the produce section of Long's Drugs from time to time. Bean pods can be thinly sliced on the diagonal and added to stir frys or salads. Here is one of our favorite ways to enjoy the harvest.

April 21 Tour

2010-04-24T23:03:00.003-10:00

I received seeds for this papaya in a trade last year. It was supposed to a long green papaya but the seeds must have crossed. They are not the long ones but they are growing large and the tree is bearing only about 30" above ground, a very desirable trait since i am short!

You can see the wing beans which are growing to the right of these on my last post. The seeds from these plants came from Baker's Creek and just don't seem to want to grow.

My little Meyer Lemon tree has been bearing heavily all winter. i love this combination of blue and yellow.

When oh when will my shallots be ready? They have been taking up this patch of earth since last September!!

The Striped Bunch beans are looking really good. The Pink Calendula i planted are no match for the Pacific Giants.

Yum, my favorite, Purple Passion aspargus. It is so sweet and tender that we have been eating it raw.

Wow, the potatoes are growing fast. i peeked under the straw today and found a few babies already.

This pretty plant is Black Cumin aka Nigella. i saved seeds from last year's plants and was suprised to get really poor germination. Luckily a little goes a long way.

The Lacinato kale is only a few months old. i wonder how it will do during the summer months?

Mid April in the vegetable garden

2010-04-16T23:10:00.004-10:00

Musica Beans are reaching for the sky.

The first flowers have just appeared and are already starting to fade. Beans will not be far behind!

A few runner beans have resprouted at the feet of the Musica beans. Maybe they will find spring weather more to their liking.

i had to battle the wild hens for these but finally i have a good stand of Striped Bunch beans. Look closely to the left to see the first few short tendrils. Striped Bunch are supposed to be the best for Dilly Beans.

The Portuguese cabbage has been growing merrily in the recent cool and rainy weather. Caterpillers like it too!

Wow, the potatoes are growing fast now.

The Opal Creek Golden Snap Peas are about 6 inches tall.

Sugar Magnolia Peas are still just young sprouts. i'm looking forward to trying purple podded peas in a few weeks.

Wing Beans reached the top of their trellis a few weeks ago and are draping back down. Flowers, flowers but no beans yet. A repeat of last year. The Baker's Creek seed was planted to the left. Not very vigorous compared to the seeds from my friend.

Artichokes are still growing sideways. Should start reaching skyward soon. i wonder if i will have to wait until next year for buds?

We received about 6 inches of rain earlier this week. Unseasonably cold, needed the heater for the first time all winter.

My Favorite Tool

2010-04-04T18:35:00.001-10:00

I'm not sure what it's called but i love it.

It's perfect for weeding, cutting gingers, clipping back ground covers, edging beds, slicing slugs and probably other little jobs that i haven't thought of yet. The pink handle is my own touch but you can find plain handled ones at most any store on the island for $6 or $7.

...and then you reap.

2010-03-20T17:26:00.006-10:00

OK, cheating a little. This picture was actually taken on February 27th.

What's in that basket? Kabocha pumpkin, Cavili zucchini, Hakurei turnip, Bright Lights Swiss chard, Bordeaux spinach, red leaf lettuce, Okinawan spinach, Meyer lemons, basil, cilantro, Jade and Royal Burgundy green beans, Super Sugar Snap peas , Fairy Tale and Ping Tung eggplant, and a few Sweet Pea flowers.

Today marks the first day of spring!

First you sow...

2010-03-18T22:38:00.003-10:00

I've been tucking seeds into the wet earth for the past week or two. i'm a notoriously bad record keeper so i have decided to try to record my plantings here.

Two weeks ago
Yukon Gold potatoes
Musica Pole Beans
Argentata Chard
Watermelon Radish
Wing Bean (from Baker's Creek)
Extra Dwarf Bok Choy
Wrinkled Crinkled Cress
Flashy Butter Oak Lettuce
Strawberry Cabbage Lettuce

Two days ago
Striped Bunch Pole Beans
Piracicaba Broccoli

More to come this weekend!

Gandule Beans

2009-12-19T10:44:00.030-10:00

Gandule Beans were introduced by Puerto Rican plantation workers who immigrated to the islands in the 1900s. This legume is most commonly known as the Pigeon Pea which is kind of funny since Cajanus cajan is not really a pea at all.
I planted a long line of these about a year ago, hoping to provide some fast growing wind protection for my new vegetable garden. Boy was i surprised when almost all of the pea plants grew to only about two feet tall! Since then I have learned that there are over 600 varieties of Pigeon Peas. I am now picking my third harvest since planting them a year ago and have given them NO CARE, not even water during the dry summer months. The seeds came from ECHO, a wonderful organization based in Florida.
I try to pick them as they are just filling the pod. If I time it just right, the beans are plump, tender and sweet and can be eaten raw or with only brief cooking. They lose their beautiful markings during cooking and don't taste exactly like soybeans but are still good. I steamed them in the pod the other day and we ate them like Edamame, dousing the shelled peas with chile pepper water.

Purple Rain Beans

2009-11-16T23:10:00.011-10:00

It's raining again, on and off for most of the day. Between the showers i am able to gather a few handfuls of beans, long beautiful things called Purple Podded Pole Beans. The dark color makes them hard to miss amongst the green, heart-shaped foliage. As they slip into a pan of boiling water purple shifts to green, signaling the right time to plunge them into a bath of cold water. Chilled and bathed in a spicy roasted sesame dressing they are positively addictive. The vines, despite the wind, are just starting to reach for the top of their 6 foot trellis and have not bent to disease or insect pressure. Compared to their bush sized cousins, pole beans produce a smaller yield over a longer period of time making my four foot row just right for my garden.

Purple Podded Pole Beans, such an obvious name for these gorgeous amethyst hued jewels. i think i will call them my Purple Rain beans ; )

Source: Baker's Creek Heirloom Seeds

Runner Beans

2009-11-10T21:27:00.005-10:00

i can hear the first of the winter rains falling now and hope the eight fat seeds i planted last Saturday will soon be swelling and sprouting. The beans are phaseolus coccinea, commonly called Runner Beans. They grow well in damp, rainy English weather and i am hoping that they will enjoy our cooler Kahakuloa winter well enough to grow for me. i have selected Potato Bean seeds, aka Aztec Half Runner Beans, to try this first time because i read that they will tolerate more warmth and drought than most Runners. A perennial bean, Runners are commonly grown in this country for their beautiful flowers alone. Potato Beans are usually picked as mature beans and used in soup but i am hoping that they will taste good as shellies and plan to try the snaps too.
The packet says vines will grow to three or four feet tall so my six foot trellis should be adequate.