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Yeah, you've probably also got a lot of wild kahili ginger growing there, and it's very invasive, and tough to kill. In any case, you cut it all to the ground, and then either paint or spray the stump with herbicide, repeat as necessary. It can take more than a year, with dilligent attention, to knock it back completely.
A trick I learned from a nabe, a Ranger at the National Park, is to mix some blue dye in with the herbicide (I use Cimarron... $50/1 oz from the grower's supply place south of the Hilo airport, or $75 from the garden store in old downtown - makes many gallons) so you can clearly see where you have already applied it.
BTW, I just got around to reading the Volcano Community Newsletter for March, and it details community efforts to close that park in Glenwood, or at least render it safe for normal everyday people to use. Page 6. It also shows how Glenwood area gets a lot more rain than Volcano does. http://www.thecoopercenter.org/VCN-2013-03.pdf
No need to lay them down as a hedge, in that area the waiwi are already so dense you can't walk through them.
The hedge would be layed before somebody buys the lot next door and clear cuts it, which theoretically could happen. America's never been a hedge laying culture because everything is so spread out there, even on Hawaii, but I think it's a very practical approach to building boundary. A well layed hedge can also keep the pigs out. You have to see them in action to understand their value. It's all just my opinion of course.
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Originally Posted by HIguild
....not only for aesthetic and functional purposes but also for their ecological role in helping wildlife and protecting against soil erosion.
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Originally Posted by hotzcatz
What wildlife? Feral pigs? Feral cats?
Myself, the furry and the feathered, but also, again, to keep the pigs out!
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Originally Posted by hotzcatz
There's birds, but they prefer the ohia and trees with shaggier bark instead of the waiwi. Turkeys and pheasants prefer brush land to waiwi.
A forest garden can be as thick or thin as you like, and also very conducive for "free" range turkeys, ducks and chickens, not to mention goats.
Hi OpenD, thanks for the trick from the Ranger!
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Originally Posted by OpenD
Yeah, you've probably also got a lot of wild kahili ginger growing there, and it's very invasive, and tough to kill. In any case, you cut it all to the ground, and then either paint or spray the stump with herbicide, repeat as necessary. It can take more than a year, with dilligent attention, to knock it back completely.
Along the roadsides in Glenwood I saw tons of it, but into the rainforest not so much. This reminds me of another business idea I wanted to run by you, OpenD. Better than slash-and-burn, D9, or even herbicide, the absolute best and fastest way to eradicate rhizome plants is to let goats graze them. The goats have got a nose for the starch reserves in rhizomes, which means they have at them until they're completely gone.
This could only be a Japanese thing, I don't know, but what we do here is run cables (trolley system) all the way down either side of a road, tether goats to them, and watch the kudzu, an aggressive vine that has the ability to grow a foot a day and smother everything in its path, disappear. It's old-school, time-honored appropriate technology, with no need for the chemicals!
Within Japan, in various locales, there are businesses that rent out "their" goats for weed-whacking jobs. What do you think, could it work as a business on the Big Island, too?
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Originally Posted by OpenD
BTW, I just got around to reading the Volcano Community Newsletter for March, and it details community efforts to close that park in Glenwood, or at least render it safe for normal everyday people to use. Page 6. It also shows how Glenwood area gets a lot more rain than Volcano does. http://www.thecoopercenter.org/VCN-2013-03.pdf
Thanks for the link.
Down with the decorative lawn chairs! Ha, ha. I doubt the newly proposed video surveillance system will "improve" the park much. It'll just be a park with a video surveillance system, and even the good people won't want to go there. Anyway, maybe I should't speak on the matter, I don't even live there!
On the precipitation, the pattern on the island is crystal clear to me: where's there's more rain there's more topsoil (less people too!), as it is there where the rain works its magic to erode away at the ground. Of course there are new lava flows that cover the old topsoil in places where it should be, but there's still a pattern language. For example, draw a line starting in Mountain View, up through Glenwood and then Volcano, and notice as you go both the rain and soil get lighter in weight.
The hedge would be layed before somebody buys the lot next door and clear cuts it, which theoretically could happen. America's never been a hedge laying culture because everything is so spread out there, even on Hawaii, but I think it's a very practical approach to building boundary. A well layed hedge can also keep the pigs out. You have to see them in action to understand their value. It's all just my opinion of course.
It sounds interesting, if time and energy consuming to create. One problem I can see with using waiwi as a barrier is that it attracts pigs, which love the fruit the trees drop. A friend who lives down that way swears by his electric fence to keep the pigs out, and says it's the only thing that has ever worked for him. The old school approach was barbed wire, which you still see a lot.
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A forest garden can be as thick or thin as you like, and also very conducive for "free" range turkeys, ducks and chickens, not to mention goats.
Keep in mind that there are a lot of free range mongooses in the area too, and they love to eat eggs and poultry.
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Better than slash-and-burn, D9, or even herbicide, the absolute best and fastest way to eradicate rhizome plants is to let goats graze them. The goats have got a nose for the starch reserves in rhizomes, which means they have at them until they're completely gone...
Another interesting concept. If it would work here, I wonder why it isn't already being done? The masses of rhizomes built up by kahili ginger can be astonishing. My friend the heavy equipment operator did some "rip and roll" on a nearby lot, and he literally hauled out thousands of pounds of kahili rhizomes. When he first plowed through the stuff to get down to the ground it became obvious in places the mat of rhizomes was over four feet thick. They just grow and grow and grow, layer after layer. And the ranger says they tried many things in the park before settling on the cut and spray technique as most practical in ridding 100s of acres of the pest. Even getting rid of the cut vegetation is challenging, because it's very fibrous in nature and clogs up conventional chippers. There's a guy in Volcano who builds specialized high power shredders just for the task, and rents them out for people who are clearing land. Most maddening, they were deliberately introduced by someone who thought they were soooooo pretty. And the waiwi were deliberately introduced by a former Park Superintendent who thought the fruits would be handy snacks for hikers.
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...Within Japan, in various locales, there are businesses that rent out "their" goats for weed-whacking jobs. What do you think, could it work as a business on the Big Island, too?
There is a section of Highway 11 in South Hilo, just coming into town, where I frequently see a small herd of goats chowing down along the roadway, very close to the pavement, but they are just loose, with no fence, no tethers. I keep wondering how often one gets hit.
Here's something you might consider... the area around Volcano was historically a popular area for Japanese farmers and workers to live and farm, going back at least 125 years, and though some aspects of earlier patterns have declined, people of Japanese heritage still play a large part in the agriculture of the Big Island, especially in Puna. The Ace Hardware store in Kea'au stocks more Japanese gardening tools than I've seen anywhere. Some of them I can only look at and wonder what they are for. And the big gardening store on Kilauea Street in "old" Hilo has even more. There are a lot of 3rd and even 4th generation Japanese families still in the area. They are prominent farmers and business owners and landlords. So I'm kind of thinking they probably know best what works and what doesn't here over the long haul, and it could be a useful resource for you if you could make some friends who have that heritage. I would imagine your language skills and experience living in Japan could be a big advantage in doing that.
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Down with the decorative lawn chairs! Ha, ha. I doubt the newly proposed video surveillance system will "improve" the park much. It'll just be a park with a video surveillance system, and even the good people won't want to go there. Anyway, maybe I should't speak on the matter, I don't even live there!
No worries. Even the proposal to remove the roof from the "pavilion" area to discourage people hanging out under its shelter all day, which seems the least costly of the options presented, could take years to accomplish. Anything to do with infrastructure changes very slowly.
OpenD, interesting to hear the story about how both guava and kahili ginger were introduced there. And to think that now some roads and trails around there are virtually "walled in" by them.
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Originally Posted by OpenD
It sounds interesting, if time and energy consuming to create. One problem I can see with using waiwi as a barrier is that it attracts pigs, which love the fruit the trees drop.
I don't have hang-ups about killing things (vermin, livestock, young plants), or too many other dogmas, so a few perches at points along the top of the hedge could aid in a kill. I read somewhere that in Hawaii you don't need a hunting license to kill wild boar on private land, so I'm thinking with the hedge I won't need to leave the land for pork, it will come to me instead. OpenD, you know the permaculture scene: everything, everywhere, is useful all the time.
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Originally Posted by OpenD
Keep in mind that there are a lot of free range mongooses in the area too, and they love to eat eggs and poultry.
Thanks for this. That's why I put "free" in quotes, because for the most part chickens would be in tractors and ducks cooped up at night. While driving along the Belt road, or highway 11, I noticed mongoose every few miles bolting across the pavement. Here in Japan I've got gem-faced civets to deal with, which are basically in the same taxonomy as mongoose, but more robust with nastier fangs, bigger bodies, and not to mention nocturnal !
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Originally Posted by OpenD
Another interesting concept. If it would work here, I wonder why it isn't already being done?
Good point. Hmm...
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Originally Posted by OpenD
There is a section of Highway 11 in South Hilo, just coming into town, where I frequently see a small herd of goats chowing down along the roadway, very close to the pavement, but they are just loose, with no fence, no tethers. I keep wondering how often one gets hit.
Freeloaders! Only kidding, but it's interesting to think that nobody there has thought to harness that energy as per it's in plain view. It's something people picked up on here, then just applied tethers to.
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Originally Posted by OpenD
Here's something you might consider... the area around Volcano was historically a popular area for Japanese farmers and workers to live and farm, going back at least 125 years, and though some aspects of earlier patterns have declined, people of Japanese heritage still play a large part in the agriculture of the Big Island, especially in Puna. The Ace Hardware store in Kea'au stocks more Japanese gardening tools than I've seen anywhere. Some of them I can only look at and wonder what they are for. And the big gardening store on Kilauea Street in "old" Hilo has even more. There are a lot of 3rd and even 4th generation Japanese families still in the area. They are prominent farmers and business owners and landlords. So I'm kind of thinking they probably know best what works and what doesn't here over the long haul, and it could be a useful resource for you if you could make some friends who have that heritage. I would imagine your language skills and experience living in Japan could be a big advantage in doing that.
Thanks for this. My wife speaks a bit of English, but she's Japanese, so she's been making connections with other Japanese on Hawaii, many fresh off the boat, others long timers, some even located in Volcano! My wife is also a part-time Buddhist, so she wants our children to attend classes at the temples in Hilo. I'll get dragged along as I always do and will make inroads somewhere. :-)
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Originally Posted by OpenD
No worries. Even the proposal to remove the roof from the "pavilion" area to discourage people hanging out under its shelter all day, which seems the least costly of the options presented, could take years to accomplish. Anything to do with infrastructure changes very slowly.
How about flight service? The day we flew into Hilo they forgot our bags in Honolulu, and the day we were to leave they delayed the flight for 2 hours, then terminated it altogether with no refund, which left us scratching our heads as to how we were going to make our connecting flight in Honolulu. This, with three little munchkins in tow. Long story short, and a few phone calls later, we had &%! Airlines (the opposite of "come".) buy our tickets for us via the internet, and we high tailed out of there.
OpenD, interesting to hear the story about how both guava and kahili ginger were introduced there. And to think that now some roads and trails around there are virtually "walled in" by them.
There are many similar stories of deliberately introduced species becoming unexpectedly invasive. Another is Tibouchina (or Glory Bush), which is fairly well behaved in Australia, and prized for its vivid purple flowers. Once introduced and naturalized in Hawai'i by an Aussie biologist, however, it began to run amok, growing much more vigorously, growing 20' tall, spreading rapidly and forming thick walls of vegetation. It's now a listed invasive species. We have a lot of it in Volcano along roadways.
Axis Deer are a new problem on the North end, because they breed prolifically and tear up truck farms and pasturelands. Rats with hooves, they are sometimes called. They're a major problem on Maui, where control efforts already exceed $1mil per year, yet some moron hunting enthusiast paid a helicopter pilot to bring a male and two pregnant females to the Big Island and turn them loose in 2009, and now there are maybe a hundred running around loose already. Both the hunter and the chopper pilot were arrested and sentenced, but the deer remain. State Ramping Up Efforts To Eradicate Axis Deer | Big Island Now
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I read somewhere that in Hawaii you don't need a hunting license to kill wild boar on private land, so I'm thinking with the hedge I won't need to leave the land for pork, it will come to me instead.
Thanks for this. That's why I put "free" in quotes, because for the most part chickens would be in tractors and ducks cooped up at night.
Keep in mind that mongooses are diurnal and that chicken tractors are hard to make mongoose-proof because the varmints can get through fairly small cracks under fencing.
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My wife is also a part-time Buddhist, so she wants our children to attend classes at the temples in Hilo. I'll get dragged along as I always do and will make inroads somewhere. :-)
If you do settle in Puna there's a large temple in Kea'au, called Puna Hongwanji Mission, a block off the main intersection on Highway 11.
Aloha OpenD, ah, the "beautiful weed of Hawaii's uplands." That's all my pocket guide has to say about Glory Bush, so thanks for the detail. And although I didn't know the story on the knee-jerk decision to import Axis deer to the Big Island, I do know the Axis deer, as they're originally from where I'm standing just now. Quoting from an old 1950 press release from there, "The Japanese, or "axis" deer - which were brought to Molakai [sic] during the last century as a gift to the king - also offer possibilities for transplanting to other islands to add to hunting opportunities, Mr. Rutherford says."
Axis Deer are a new problem on the North end, because they breed prolifically and tear up truck farms and pasturelands. Rats with hooves, they are sometimes called.
In Japan their threat to farmlands is contained, despite their HUGE numbers, likely in the hundred of thousands range, because of the terrain to human settlement factor: most farming regions; some thousands of small river basins throughout Japan, each composed of a plain and its surrounding mountains, are lined with miles of fencing, both make-shift and electric, and in some places living hedges! And also contrary to common understanding, there are lots and lots of rifles in rural Japan.
Got it, but I didn't mean to hunt, I meant to kill (on your own property). I'm sifting through some Big Island livestock/farmland protection program documents just now, and I'll let you know what I find. There's likely a bunch of loop holes and grey areas. Or maybe you knew what I meant and were setting me straight?
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Originally Posted by OpenD
Keep in mind that mongooses are diurnal and that chicken tractors are hard to make mongoose-proof because the varmints can get through fairly small cracks under fencing.
Duly noted!
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Originally Posted by OpenD
If you do settle in Puna there's a large temple in Kea'au, called Puna Hongwanji Mission, a block off the main intersection on Highway 11.
The problem with goats for brush control is that they kill everything, not just the plants that you want gone. They also kill trees by stripping the bark off.
The problem with goats for brush control is that they kill everything, not just the plants that you want gone. They also kill trees by stripping the bark off.
Hence the cable and tether system. They also come along just after the goats have cleared the strip and re-seed with a cover crop, everything from clover to wild flowers.
HIguild
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