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I love the variety of citrus I have yet to murder in my yard. I have also had great success with pineapples. Heck I think it takes a lot of hard work to kill a pineapple plant! Only time will tell if I successfully cultivate the Mangosteen and Mango trees planted a couple of years ago. I have been warned that 800 ft may result in less success for Mango. I figure if i get a couple mangoes per year, I would be happy.
I have not had much luck with vegetables. My asparagus plants struggle along as do my strawberries. I am contemplating container planting some tomatoes. At least I am certain this time around I wont catch the hubby feeding any tomatoes I have to deer. I was wondering, would I see more success if I were to put up a greenhouse? I have not have much success when I planted my peppers and tomatoes in a raised bed. I am still trying to debug growing in Hawaii as opposed to the limited seasons of the mainland.
Isnt gardening wonderful ?!!!!! i read a report that evening tilling the soil with a shovel, in the garden has certain health benefits . The microbes that are in good soil are released when stirred up and we breathe them. The remarkable story is that they are beneficial to us. I am not making this up. Research it for yourself.
Breathing soil bacteria makes you smarter - Mother Nature Network https://www.city-data.com/forum/hawai...s-you-smarter6 days ago – Scientists have observed that ingesting or breathing in a common ... Now, it turns out, even the dirt is good for you. Scientists at the Sage Colleges of Troy, N.Y., have discovered that exposure to certain kinds of soil bacteria ...
Breathing soil bacteria makes you smarter. - HelpfulGardener.com http://www.helpfulgardener.com/phpBB...php?t=26272Jun 3, 2010 – Breathing soil bacteria makes you smarter. - The HelpfulGardener.com Forum, Winner of BusinessWeek Magazine's Best of the Web Award!
I was wondering, would I see more success if I were to put up a greenhouse? I have not have much success when I planted my peppers and tomatoes in a raised bed. I am still trying to debug growing in Hawaii as opposed to the limited seasons of the mainland.
I don't remember where you are, but if you get a lot of rain, then you will probably have better success if you put them in a grow tunnel or provide them some other shelter from the rain. They get beat up by too much rain. You don't need a greenhouse, just some half rounds of PVC pipe covered by some white plastic. That's what the produce farm up the hill from me uses and they get beautiful results.
Breathing soil bacteria makes us smarter? And my mom always told us not to eat dirt. Who'da thunk it?
We've had strawberries that just sort of languished around and did nothing. Then we got some from a yard sale where the folks were moving and planted those in a new raised bed garden and they've just about taken over. The plants are prolific putting out runners and multiplying all over the place although their berries are minuscule. They seem to have a lot of them all the time but they are barely big enough to pick. They taste good if you can get enough of them in one spot. I suspect it just the type of strawberry they are.
We got another variety from someone else who was moving (I dunno what it is about owning strawberry plants and moving, I hope we don't have to move now) but anyway, we got another variety that has much bigger luscious berries and they made lots of berries about a month ago and now no more. I'm thinking there are several varieties of strawberry, either "ever bearing" and not or "day neutral" or not, although I've not looked up strawberry cultivation. There may also be something about soil pH that makes a difference. The strawberries going nuts are in the new planter made of concrete blocks and intermixed with chunks of coral as well as some lime. All of that will lower the acidity of soil. There is a Decanso hybrid lilac at one end of the planter and it likes a sweet soil instead of acid which is why the soil amendments. It might be the strawberries prefer sweet soil. There are also beans planted among the strawberries. Things grow like crazy when beans are planted among them.
For the asparagus, that has deep roots and takes a couple years to get established from what I've read. I've only kept a few of them around, mostly to use the foliage in flower arrangements. A friend has an asparagus patch where he gets asparagus to eat. He mows his patch flat when he wants asparagus and then when it re-shoots he has enough shoots at one time to get enough to eat. Otherwise, the spears get put in the freezer until there are enough of them to eat. If I were planting asparagus, there would be a deep hole with a very liberal amount of bunny berries added in, filled in with compost and then the asparagus roots planted there and heavily mulched. Probably plant some beans there, too. And keep feeding the patch with liberal dressings of bunny berries, but we have a lot of bunny berries for fertilizer.
Cabbage loopers eat kale? Do I need to get a big stick to protect the little plants? What keeps away cabbage butterflies?
Five or six years ago there were clouds of cabbage butterflies all over. You'd drive down the roads and there would be like a low flying cloud and it would turn into a swarm of white butterflies. There had been a drought, then rain, then all the flowers and then herds of butterflies, then the grass went to seed and then several months after that there were swarms of mice everywhere. Running across the road, a dozen in our attic, it was a bizarre year.
Five or six years ago there were clouds of cabbage butterflies all over. You'd drive down the roads and there would be like a low flying cloud and it would turn into a swarm of white butterflies. There had been a drought, then rain, then all the flowers and then herds of butterflies, then the grass went to seed and then several months after that there were swarms of mice everywhere. Running across the road, a dozen in our attic, it was a bizarre year.
Wow, not calling you a liar; it just sounds so bizarre, like a plot in a movie...Never heard of such a thing, not even in Africa, where National Geographic teaches me most everything about world calamities. Be Safe !
It had to do with the drought and the food supply when the drought ended. The drought pretty much put everything on the same schedule so instead of just a few things growing and flowering everything did at once. After the drought there was a whole lot of growth and flowering all at the same time so the butterfly population was huge. When the grass went to seed, the mice were really well fed so they all had huge litters which then had young mice growing up all around the same time and stupidly running around at the same time. I'm sure the hawks and owls ate a lot of mice and laid more eggs that year. Everything is connected, especially on an island.
For awhile it seemed there were bufo toads and African snails everywhere but I've not seen any lately. Has anyone else found toads or big snails lately? The toads would be good for the garden, the snails are bad for the garden.
Totally crazy bad amazing to the 1000th degree... Flocks of butterflies on Hawaii ? Never seen or heard of it. Just crazy amazing.... If you got a news clipping, please do share !
Location: not sure, but there's a hell of a lot of water around here!
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Originally Posted by hotzcatz
For awhile it seemed there were bufo toads and African snails everywhere but I've not seen any lately. Has anyone else found toads or big snails lately? The toads would be good for the garden, the snails are bad for the garden.
May just be a coincidence, but the disappearance of the bufos here on Maui seems to coincide with the arrival of the white egret..
I have been known to be wrong, uuuurrrrpppp,,,,, march madness, 24/7.5
I don't think the newspapers ever came out to see the butterflies. It was only several hundred at a time across the upper highway between Waimea and Kailua-Kona. But there were a flock of butterflies every couple of miles so overall there was a huge amount of them. They were the white cabbage butterflies, a rather common butterfly. That was only early one summer and they haven't been back since, probably since there hasn't been as severe of a drought since then to get the food growing all at the same time so the caterpillars all mature at the same time.
Are white egrets new on Maui? We've had them around for quite some time along with bufos. The last big bufo toad I've seen was several years ago. They used to show up all the time and there'd always seem to be one squished on the road somewhere.
The newest gardening venture is mulberry trees. Someone gave me some cuttings so they were stuck in the garden to see if they will sprout. They have nice berries, no stickers, might make a nice hedge if they are trimmed into a hedge shape and the leaves can be fed to bunnies as bunny food.
There are a lot of things in Hawaii that are "planted" by just sticking a bit of a branch in the ground. Currently, I'm waiting for a rose to root as well as these mulberry cuttings. I've tried citrus, but not a lot of luck with that yet. Anyone else know how to multiply citrus trees? There is a really great orange tree in the neighbor's yard and I'd like to get a clone from that one, if we just knew how.
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