As simple as that

Balance the soil, select a variety suited to your conditions, plant in season. A winter garden on Maui can be as simple as that.

Click if you'd like a closer look!

I offer this beautiful Romanesco as an example. No aphids, no cabbage worms, no spray. It's quite lovely, isn't it?

Fee Fi Fo Fum

Fee

Fi

Fo

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

'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

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

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!

When Beans Fly

"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

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?

...and then you reap.

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...

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!

Purple Rain Beans

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