Watching Food Grow is Exciting

Call me crazy, but I really get a kick out of seeing food grow. It's truly satisfying.....and almost a miracle at the same time. I love it.

I'm picking zucchini squash already. 3 yesterday. 3 tonight for dinner. Yeah, I pick them super tiny. Hubby hates squash, but for some reason baby gourmet-size is ok. So I pick them either while the blossom is still on or is just falling off. If that what it takes to get him to eat veggies, I don't object. 

The succotash limas are producing pods already. Let's hope that there are little limas inside them. Right now they are too small to tell. 

The greenhouse tomatoes aren't flowering yet. Those tomatoes pictured above came from a wild volunteer growing in one of my driveway gardens. 

So dinner tonight was a one pot pork stew, using our own onions, tomatoes, squash, potatoes, plus some carrots and green beans from Matt's garden. Yum. Homegrown food! 

Local Lima Bean

Another lima I'm trying in the greenhouse is a local black & white, large beaned lima. I have no idea if this a landrace or if it is an imported lima. I've been given a couple of local names for it, but I can't verify any of them yet. But I'm still looking for a lead on identifying this variety. For now I just refer to it an Hawaian Landrace.

I have been able to get this variety to grow on my farm but not produce well. It's a pole type and grows vigorously. But the temperature tends to be too cool on my farm for most hot weather crops. So in the past I've only gotten a handful of seed off a dozen or so plants. Surely not enough for eating. 

I'm trying one more time, but in the greenhouse this time. I'm curious to see if this variety can produce decently or not. 

Oh by the way, if you have suggestions on what this bean might be, it's not Christmas or Calico lima. I've already checked those out and they don't compare. 

Succotash Pole Bean

I'm trying a new lima bean this year. Succotash. It's a pole bean that I bought from Baker Creek. Other than knowing it's a black or dark purple bean, I know virtually nothing about it. So this will be a fun learning experience.

I've sown the seeds in one of the greenhouses in order to provide added warmth. In the past I haven't had much success harvesting lima beans although the plants grew well enough. Possibly the problem is not enough heat units....thus the greenhouse. We shall see if the heat makes a difference. 

I got good germination from the seeds (only 2 failed) and the seedlings grew well, what I'd term "as expected". 31 days after sowing the seeds I saw the first blossoms.

Photo is a bit bleary but the flower is still a lovely color. 

Growing in Greenhouses

Why use greenhouses? For me it's mainly for pest control. Secondarily, to control soil moisture. And thirdly, to provide more heat to certain crops. 

Unlike much of the world, Hawaii is a difficult place to produce certain crops. Most squashes and cucumbers get routinely destroyed by pickleworm. Slicing tomatoes get stung by fruit flies. Sweet peppers, okra, and lima beans seem to require more heat than I get at my farm. Cowpeas do better with drier soil. 

Lima beans. Bush type in the front row. Climbing varieties in the back. 

I'm trying this year to grow food in three 10' by 20' greenhouses. One now has summer squash and cucumbers, all parenocarpic or with parnenocarpic tendencies. Since it's a night time moth that inflicts most of the damage to these veggies, I plan to leave the greenhouse ends open during the day to airflow, and closed at night to block the moths. That's the plan, so we'll see if it works. 

Zucchini squash up front. Cucumbers starting along the wall behind the squash plants. 

Greenhouse #2 has tomatoes and sweet peppers. Fruit fly is the main pest, which is active during the daylight hours. So this greenhouse will have screened end walls. 

The third greenhouse is planted in lima beans right now. I haven't had much luck harvesting lima beans although the plants grow well enough. General opinion is that they needs more heat units, thus the reason I'm trying a greenhouse. It gets much warmer inside a greenhouse compared to out in the gardens. 

Recent plantings

Since the last time I listed the planting statistics, I've added.......

Potatoes - 15 grow boxes = 328 plants 

Tomatoes -20 plants 

Cucumbers - 18 plants

Summer squash - 8 plants

Lima beans - 40' row (6" plant spacing), plus 5 seeds of a local variety that I've never discovered the name for. 

Taro - 14 plants

Beans for seed production - 10 foot row

Winged beans - 15 plants (a Japanese variety) 

.

So year to date planting totals.......

Banana trees - 4

Beans for seed production - 10 foot row

Chaya - 32 cuttings

Cholesterol spinach - 400 square feet

Cucumbers - 18 plants

Lima beans - 40' row plus 5 individual seeds

Pineapples - 18

Pipinolas - 19

Potatoes - 328 plants

Summer squash - 8 plants

Taro - 30 plants

Tomatoes - 20 plants 

Winged beans - 15 plants

Just a note...... Keep in mind that not everything that gets planted actually becomes productive. Some plants die or grow stunted. Some get damaged by pests or disease. Some suffer from environmental damage, such as wind. Some get destroyed by a lose goat, a person stepping on them, etc. And some simply don't produce up to their potential. Thus I tend to plant excess and hope for the best. 

4th of July

Took a break from the home hubbub to enjoy the holiday. Parade. Fireworks. Rodeo. And food----lots, actually too much.

My small town's not shabby....it can lead our parade with a cool banner. Hey, I love my little town, have you noticed? 

Naalehu - pa'u riders representing the island of Oahu. There's one of my friends on the right! 

Naalehu parade pa'u riders representing the island of Kauai. 

Naalehu parade flag bearer. 

Our parade this year was traditional......traditional by our standards. The town tow truck, the fire engine, the forest fire truck, the local kids' clubs, the civic club, the local church group, motorcycles, muscle cars, politicians, seniors' organization, Ka'u coffee queen & her court, and the pa'u riders representing each populated island. 

Maui festival...stilt walkers, game shows, food.......and ice cream! 

Boom! Fireworks show over Lahaina bay. Actually a good show worth seeing.  

Yes, we hopped over to Maui for the fireworks. One day was devoted to touring farms to acquire more local farming know-how and buying new taro varieties for our own farm. This trip had been scheduled for the weekend of the 20th, but we were able to move it up to the 4th in order to squeeze in some much appreciated R&R.  

Harvested Pumpkins

I know that the blog has been quiet, but I've been busy......doctor appointments  (just checkups, nothing special wrong with us), hearing test, spay/neuter clinics, picking up building supplies, etc. It takes up an entire day just to get one of these things accomplished. Such is one of the downsides of living rural where it takes 1 1/2 to 2 hours to get to "civilization".  But there's no way I want to move to make those trips shorter. I like it where I am right now.

Now for those pumpkins....... I didn't intentionally plant these this year. I had thrown a number of ruined pumpkins from my landrace varieties into the chicken pens. I guess the birds either didn't eat some of the seeds, or the seeds passed through some of the hens unharmed. So some seeds ended up in the pen litter, which I often use as a top dressing for certain crops. In this case, it was the lilikoi vines. Several pumpkin plants volunteered in the lilikoi area. The past couple in months I've been harvesting a number of pumpkins off them. 

As is typical of my landrace pumpkins, the come in various sizes and shapes. All are generally small, and generally roundish. They all mature out to an orange rind if I let sit long enough. By the time they have become orange on the outside, they are strong orange colored on the inside and quite sweet & flavorful. 

Freshly harvested ones on the left. Ready to eat ones on the right. 

I tend to harvest them fairly green, but I wait until the lighter areas on the rind turn from green to light cream. If I let them stay on the vine any longer the mice and rats eat them. It only takes 1 or 2 nights for the little critters to hollow them out.  Learned the hard way to get those pumpkins picked on time, otherwise I harvest nothing but rind. 

I just cut open one of the pumpkins and plan to make a pumpkin/coconut soup. And of course I'll be saving the seeds in order to replant more pumpkins. 

Nicely orange interior. And not too seedy. 

By the way, the reason I grow these landrace pumpkins rather than varieties from the seed catalogs is that this landrace has resistance to the pickleworm moth, squash stem borer, and powdery mildew. For me, that's great news! I've not yet found a seed catalog variety that can do that.