Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
went up to the volcano winery yesterday and they are experimenting with different fruits so we were told. what i remember the gal saying was something about blending guava and jataboca (spelling) with the grapes. hope i'm not wrong about that info.
Hard to remember after all the wine tasting, huh? My friend's mom has jaboticaba growing in her front yard and it is a weird tree. Tasty fruit but it looks like dark purple ping pong balls hanging on the tree trunk.
Right now on a half acre we got:
-3 macadamias, one large grapefruit, three large lychee trees, an old and probably dying tangerine, two young orange trees, bananas, lemon, a large mango which doesn't produce well, a fig, 2 avocados which go off at seperate times, a young breadfruit tree and a young but already large kukui nut tree. In the garden, there are beens, corn, sweet potatoes, hawaiian chili pepper, basil, peas, kalo, tomatoes and greens. ...I'm sure there's a bunch of other stuff I'm missing. ...red ginger, heliconias, native plants, etc.
Would like to plant some atamoya and noni for the more shady areas.
I was born in California, but live Makaha, Oahu now & I’ve lived several other places along the Wai’anae coast. You can grow just about anything here. I’ve had Avacado, Papaya, Sour Sap, Mangos: Green, Haydan, & some I don’t know the name of, Mountain Apple, Guava, Pikake (Jasmine), Gardenia, Roses, Ilima, Spiderplants galore. Beautiful ferns. The place I have now has Palms, Oranges, Pikake, Calus (sp) lilies & I have a vegetable garden that has Tyme, Rosemary, Sage, Lettuce, Cucumbers, Tomaotes (I had a Tomatoe Plant that lived for 3 years straight - I’d never been able to do that in the mainland - I finally had to pull it up & start over because the vines had no were else to go & it was starting to strangle itself.) I’ve notice that most of the plants here grow faster than in the mainland. . . usually much BIGGER too.
One of the Waiane Rotairians (I used to waitress where they held their meetings) had a vineyard on the big Island of Hawaii & he brought some of the wine they made to one of the meetings. And many of the retired “Old Tyme†Military personel that I’ve meet have told me of the brews they came up with. If you know how to distill you can whip up just about anything w/ the right ingredients... Experiment & have fun.
I forgot to mention that just about every community has a Farmers Market. Just contact the Local newspaper to ask where the closest one to you is being held & on what dates. Some are only held once a month some places 2xs or more just depends. Recently I’ve seen adds for a farmers Market held at the Makaha Resort in Makaha Valley for the Wai’anae Coast.
Wow sounds great over there. Im in the state Ag dept here in Michigan and got into growing tropical houseplants as a hobby. Got some Hawaiian stuff like Loulu palms, Pandanus (hala), Tree ferns (Hapuu). My dream would be to get enough land in Hawaii to put up a little house and a few fruit trees. Mangoes are beautiful trees, good for shade too. How long does it take coconuts to start bearing after you plant them? I really like the Hamakua area between Hilo and Honokaa...
How long does it take coconuts to start bearing after you plant them?
Three or four years, I would guess. You need to keep growing new ones, because after they get over about fifteen fee tall, you need to have the coconuts trimmed two or three times a year so no one gets "beaned" by a falling coconut, or cut the tall trees down. I have two that are over forty years old, and I don't go under them without a hard hat on!
Hey, Kawika52, when you start your garden in Hawaii, come over and get a few coconuts to grow. There's generally some trying to sprout around here that need to be dug up and relocated.
From a coconut to a tree with new coconuts on it, I would guess it probably takes a bit longer, five to seven years, I'd guess. At least the ones in my backyard. They probably grow faster in different areas. It can take several months just for the coconut to sprout so if you start with a sprouted coconut that might take a year off the time. As far as I know, you can't "bonsai" a coconut so if you grow one on the mainland it will outgrow your house in about five to seven years. Each leaf can get to well over ten feet long by the time the tree is three or four years old.
There are two coconut trees in my back yard about forty to fifty feet tall (maybe higher? they are hard to measure) which drop coconuts in the bamboo grove as well as on the chicken coop's tin roof. CLANG! rumbly clunk THUD. (that's the sound of a coconut from fifty feet hitting a tin roof and falling to the ground) Poor chooks, they jump and squawk. So far coconuts have not fallen on a chicken, if that happens, there will be one less chicken. Those two trees produce a lot of coconuts so I welded up a hydraulic coconut splitter to crack open the coconuts for the chickens and dogs to eat. Traditionally, folks spike a stake into the ground and then whap the coconut on the stake and twist to get the husk off the coconut but I kept imagining missing the stake with the coconut and getting it through my hand so that's why the hydraulic splitter.
There are less coconuts available to eat anymore because folks keep the nuts trimmed off the taller trees which are the ones that produce the most nuts. Used to be that folks wouldn't sit under coconut trees because they knew nuts would fall on their heads, but now with so many trees being trimmed folks will just go right ahead and sit under coconut trees so if you have one folks can get to, then it probably should be trimmed. Since the bamboo is growing up around the base of the coconut trees in my backyard, I don't have to trim them since nobody sits in the bamboo clump.
Hey, KorkyKDiver220, the really local brew is "okolehau" which is made from fermented and distilled ti plant roots. I'm relocating a ti hedge (cut the tops off, stick them in the ground where the new hedge will be and then dig up the old roots so they don't re-sprout) and my neighbor up mountain is going to try doing something with the roots. If he wants to dig them up and take them away, that's all fine by me!
hank that is so true. remember awhile back someone got killed from a falling coconut on o'ahu? liability, my friend.
this new house of ours up here in fern forest of the big island has had some coconut trees planted. the previous owner kinda went nuts and planted them sporadically. he even went crazy with pineapples. we even have some of those decorative pink ones. i don't even eat the darn things unless they're cooked. and, they take 12-18 months to produce fruit.
in the meantime, we've planted tangelo, avocado and a brown turkey fig tree. the bananas are doing really well. the tangerine has stopped producing for now and the star fruit tree has yet to fruit. got some green onions, two peppers and kabocha squash started.
everyone seems to be raising chickens here as well and we've jumped on the bandwagon. learning the farm life. lol. our friend is building us this magnificient coop for our hens. we've named them the "henleys."
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
