Hilo : what part of Hilo can I grow fruit trees and manage a large garden? (Mountain View: houses, where to buy)

[hotzcatz]

Samoan coconuts are the large ones on short trees. It's nicer if they don't fall a long way before they land on something you don't want them to.

[Arktikos]

Originally Posted by sk290

Are these the tall coconut palms or the dwarf ones? I've seen people sell the dwarf ones on CL but wonder if it's worth the asking price.

$25? Yes, the dwarfs are worth the asking price. I wouldn't bother with anything else for the home.

[sk290]

Originally Posted by Blind Cleric

$25? Yes, the dwarfs are worth the asking price. I wouldn't bother with anything else for the home.

Not $25, $50 "imported from Kauai". They look to be about 5 to 6' tall and the coconuts are at about knee high.

[sk290]

Amazing Coconut Dwarf

[Arktikos]

Originally Posted by sk290

Not $25, $50 "imported from Kauai". They look to be about 5 to 6' tall and the coconuts are at about knee high.

I know one of the guys who was involved in this importation. He bought seeds, so I think what you'd be buying are seed sprouts, not small trees.

Sounds like the ideal coconut palm to me.

[hotzcatz]

A coconut 'seed' is the coconut, so even sprouted, they're still pretty big. It takes a few years before a sprouted coconut will bear fruit, but once it starts, it pretty much keeps going.

At our other house, there's the really tall coconut trees and they are much too tall for anyone to go up and get the nuts, but they do fall off the tree when they get ripe so we can still eat them. (People, chickens, dogs and rabbits all seem to enjoy coconut, so far the cat hasn't been enthused.) However, the coconuts fall about fifty feet or so and they weigh about seven or eight pounds? Makes a dent in whatever they hit, but there's bamboo growing around the base of the coconut tree so mostly they fall into the bamboo and don't hurt anything.

[birdmove]

If you want the ability to grow lots of edibles, take a look at Hawaiin Paradise Park. It's BIG. Lots here are one acre, except down on the water, which has much smaller lots. We bought our place on 23rd Street near Kaloli (street name), so are closer to the highway. We are right at 12 miles from Hilo. Keaau is only about 6 miles away, the they have a grocery store, Ace Hardware, Post Office, a farners market, couple gas stations, library, etc, etc.
Hawaiin Paradise Park (HPP) is classified as agriculture, so you can also have chickens, goats, etc. I built an 8x8 chicken coop, and we have three hens laying eggs. These eggs ruined me for store bought eggs.

We grow papayas, oranges, tangerines, mountain apples, avaocados,various spices, celantro, potatoes, wing bean, limes, lemons, coffee beans,ruby red grapeview, etc,etc. Now, my suggestion? I built a 4' x 8' structure out of 2x6's and 2x4's for a basic framework to grow dragon fruit. I suggest, you look into it and grow a few YELLOW dragon fruit plants. If you tastse one of the yellows that is properly ripe, you will have a new favorite fruit. We grew one yellow and also three different colors. Only the yelow is producing, and they are pretty small, but these are young plants.

Stuff grows so fast here, you will be amazed. We have avocado trees that our son planted in the ground from the avocado pits about 6 years ago that are 25-30 feet tall.

We bought out house in 2011, and it was built in 1996. I wouldn't buy an empty lot due to the hassles of building, permits, etc, etc. You don't want to buy a place with albezia trees on it, if they are very big. If you do, you are going to have to have them taken down. Best to buy a place with no albezias bigger than you can take down yourself.

If you buy a place in Hilo, it'll be a very small ,lot more than likely, and a whole lot more money than in HPP. We LOVE HIlo, but we got a acre with a 1056 square foot house with 3 bedrooms and a bath bath and a half for $185,000.00. That included FULL furnishing, as the sellers were moving back to the mainland, and we offered a little extra to buy all their stuff. We even got their old riding lawn mower. We rented the place out to vacationers for just over a year before the big move from Seattle. We brought very little stuff, as we wouldn't need much since the house had everything.

The short drive to Hilo can usually be done in about 15-20 minutes.

This worked out well for us.

Papayas and bannanas couldn't be easier to grow.

[Arktikos]

^ And HPP has no soil whatsoever. Growing in Puna is akin to outdoor hydroponics.

[birdmove]

The people that built our place brought in a huge amount of top soil. Stuff grows here just fine. But, yeah, it'll have to be brought in. They left the front third or so au natural, so no top soil. You can see the lava rock from that flow. There are still lots of bushes, trees, etc growing there from the cracks. And we've planted more stuff.
Also, tree limbs, sections of tree trunks, etc, etc, brakes down and becomes soil in record time here. Stack it up and watch. We have a wood chipper, and use it all the time. We use the wood chips to pack around plants. We've had plants that were not doing well, and packed the wood chips around them, coffee plants for one, and they transformed from scrawny little died out things, to thriving bushes with deep green leaves, and lots of new growth, in short order.

[hotzcatz]

Yeah, stuff will grow on pretty much bare lava rock although it will grow even better if you give it some soil to work with.

I had a pair of palms in a raised bed garden, they were started from seed and one on either side of a walkway. On one side, the planter was about two feet deep, on the other it was almost four feet deep. (Can you tell it was a sloped lot?) After a couple of years, the tree in the smaller raised bed was about six feet tall and the one in the larger raised bed area was almost nine feet tall. Since they were both planted from seed at the same time, I'm guessing the difference in growth rates was from the available amount of soil they had to grow in.

A lot of Puna gardening is done with trees and by 'permaculture'. That's stuff like papayas, bananas, trees, shrubs, etc. in that once it's planted it just stays there. The traditional mainland gardening method of using a roto-tiller or plow or some such turning over of the soil sort of thing doesn't work since the soil isn't deep enough.

I knew some other folks in HPP that had a pen with a few ducks in it. The pen was about 8' x 8' with a little water pool and duck house. They'd let the ducks live there until the duck mess had built up for awhile and then shift the pen over to the next square of bare lava rock. After they'd moved the pen, they'd toss out some grass seed and they were building up their lawn square by square.