Hawaii Garden – Second Effort

The first year we were in Hawaii, we lived in a region that was essentially rain forest. It was cool and damp year-round, and I had a very difficult time growing anything in my garden. The bugs here are a year-round problem, unlike in Texas where I could grow broccoli worry-free through the winter. In Hawaii, the cabbage butterflies decimate the broccoli unless you spray for them. Nematodes destroyed my carrots, and mold, mildew, and cutworms were a constant problem with seedlings. Snails and slugs fed on everything.

Needless to say, it was not a productive year of gardening. I got a handful of tomatoes, a few snow peas, and not much else. I couldn’t get okra, cilantro, or squash to grow at all, and birds ate my lettuce as soon as it sprouted.

After a year, we moved about 4 miles from where we had lived before, and the climate is quite different. It is much drier and sunnier than our previous location. Further, the family who lived in the house before us built raised beds in an isolated location that is surrounded by rocks. The man was an avid gardener, and took good care of the soil. So, I moved in, planted seeds (I actually planted them before we moved in), and waited.

What a difference the change made. In just a little over a month, I was harvesting zucchinis, yellow squash, lettuce, and tomatoes in large volume. The cilantro is growing quickly, and it looks like I will actually have okra to harvest. Because the garden is isolated from the surrounding vegetation, I have almost no problem with bugs. Birds will get into the tomatoes, but that’s about it. I haven’t tried my luck with broccoli yet; I have heard that you simply can’t grow them without taking special measures.

I have even planted some pineapples; too early to tell how that will turn out. Interestingly, we planted some pumpkins that have grown and spread like mad. But despite lots of blooms, there are no pumpkins. I don’t believe it can be a pollination issue; the yellow squash and zucchini are being pollinated just fine.

Despite my pumpkin puzzle, I was pleased to learn that Hawaii didn’t prove to be too great of a challenge for my gardening skills.

Planting on Christmas Eve

I continue to experiment in Hawaii. On Christmas Eve, I planted about 50 snow peas in a raised bed, and transplanted a small okra plant outside. I spoke with someone who farms here, and he said he thought it would be too cold for okra (which I thought as well, but figured I would try anyway). He thought it might do OK here in the summer.

At the moment, I have a pumpkin plant that is doing pretty well, a broccoli that the bugs are eating alive, a jalapeno that is slowly coming along, and I just transplanted some oregano.

I am having trouble getting tomatoes and basil started. Once basil does get started, I have been told that it does very well here. Tomatoes are succumbing to fungus because of the very wet weather. The farmer said that I need to have them in greenhouses.

In the cool weather right now, I need to focus on carrots, broccoli, and cilantro.

Hawaii Update

I have not updated this for a while, but I am settled in Hawaii and experimenting with what will grow here. I have some pumpkins, zuchinni, summer squash, snow peas, broccoli, jalapenos, and tomatoes that are in the ground outside. The tomatoes look pitiful, but the pumpkins and broccoli seem to like the weather. Inside I have planted okra, basil, cilantro, and oregano for transplanting outside later. I want to get some carrot seeds in the ground as well, but the soil I am working has a lot of rocks in it - not good for carrots.

It has turned cool here, but it never freezes. I suspect that most things will do well right through the winter, but don't know if it will get warm enough for things like okra. At this point I am more or less experimenting.

I do have several fruit trees in the yard, and can enjoy a fresh-squeezed lemonade pretty much every day.

World's Largest Zucchini

8 Pounds and 20 Inches Long

I just spotted the monster above hidden away in my garden yesterday. OK, maybe there are bigger zucchinis, but I have never seen one. It is also bigger than several others I have seen that people had affectionately named "world's largest zucchini." I did read that the actual world record is 69.5 inches long, and that the record weight is 65 pounds. However I have yet to find a picture of one bigger than the one I pulled out of my garden.

Had I spotted this one earlier, I would have picked it before it got so large. In hindsight, since it was already so large maybe I should have let it keep growing to see how big it would get. It wouldn't have been edible, but I don't know how large they can actually grow. As it stands, it weighed 8 pounds and was 20 inches long.

My carrots were getting out of control, so I pulled up the rest of them. The ones that had gone to seed were no good, as their interiors had become the consistency of wood. I also learned a lesson about thinning them out. All of the carrots below were planted at the same time, and some were 10 times the size of others. Those that had room to grow were a foot long or so. The ones that were crowded were only an inch long. As you can see from the picture below, I also got everything in between. Oh, and you can see a bit of my zucchini (not the one pictured above), some yellow squash, and a little okra.

Some of My Harvest

And this is what the garden looks like now, with my dogs looking on in the background.

My Garden and My Miniature Schnauzers

It got so hot so quickly that I have pulled only one tomato out of the garden, and that one had been nibbled on by bugs. Right now I think it is just too hot. It has been consistently over 100 degrees. Overall I am pretty pleased with the harvest, though. I looked as this year as a learning experience for North Texas. Now I will have to go through this again, as next month I will be moving to the Big Island of Hawaii.

Birds Destroyed My Broccoli

Got back from Europe to discover that my broccoli heads were demolished. They looked like they had been shot with a shotgun. The second time I went out, I saw the culprits. Birds. At first I thought it had probably been insects (or maybe the birds were eating the insects?) but it appeared as if the birds were feasting on the broccoli. Thus ends my experimentation with spring broccoli. From now on, it is a winter crop for me.

The carrots are still coming on great. In pulling them from the ground, the tops kept snapping off, leaving the carrot in the ground. I decided I better water the soil first and soften it up a bit, otherwise I am going to have to dig the carrots up.

Tomatoes have really exploded, although no fruit yet. Yellow squash and zucchini continue the pattern of rotting after the blooms drop. Although it looks like I now have a couple of zucchini that are going to develop.

Finally, jalapenos and okra are both about to bloom. Looking forward to that, although I don't have enough of either planted. Actually, I planted quite a few of each (from seed) but only had 1 jalapeno and 2 okra plants survive.

Phase I is Complete

I came back from my European trip on March 5th to find that some of the squash had died. The temperature got down to 26 degrees twice while I was gone, and while my wife covered them up, the cold got the weaker ones.

Still, there were 5 or 6 that survived, and while they don't look good, I am hoping they come back now that temperatures are in the 70's and 80's. The 10-day forecast has no freezing weather, which probably means we are out of the woods.

Carrots have broken ground, and the peas are coming on strongly. It's been a month today since I planted them, and the carrots look like they are only a week old. I guess they only sprouted when it warmed up a bit more. I would guess that 80% of the peas sprouted, but their stems are very weak right at the ground. It looks possible that something has been chewing on them. The cilantro has really exploded; we have far more than we can use and I had only put out two plants last fall. We also had a lot of broccoli heads ready for harvest.

Of the seeds I had planted, I recognize a couple of jalapenos, a couple of crookneck squash, and a couple of okra coming up. There are some other plants coming up, but I can't tell if they are weeds or something I planted.

Today I also went ahead and put all inside plants in the garden. This included 3 tomato plants I grew from seeds (they are really small; I am not sure they will survive), 4 jalapenos, 2 okra plants, and a zucchini. In addition I put out a basil plant I had been growing since last summer (it looks like a small tree) and some oregano.

Phase I of the garden is in. Once I pull up all of the carrots, and the peas and broccoli are done, I will plant more warm weather plants.

What I Plan to Grow This Year

Eventually I want to start using heirloom seeds, but this year I went with what they had in the seed rack at Home Depot. My garden is laid out in a 5 foot by 25 foot plot. I may have to add some on to that. But here is what I have planned:

20 Green Goliath Broccoli
20 Sugar Daddy Snap Peas
16 Early Prolific Straightneck Summer Squash
10 Big Boy Tomatoes
6 Clemson Spineless Okra
6 Burpee's Hybrid Zucchini
5 Pimiento Jalapenos
Big Top Carrots
Genovese Basil
Oregano (Origanum vulgare)
Cilantro (Coriandrum sativum)
Marigolds
4 Flame Seedless Grapes
2 Celeste Figs

As I have mentioned already, I have been experimenting since August with some of these. Cilantro and the broccoli thrived through the winter, surviving a low temperature of 16°F (Jan 16th, per the Weather Channel's website). I had some jalapenos outside in containers, and they survived until a hard freeze in December. So I am optimistic that I can get in a really good harvest of those until late fall. I have one basil and some oregano in the house. The oregano has thrived and the basil has survived, and I will plant both outdoors in late March.

The temperatures start to regularly get into the 80's in early May, so I hope to have a crop of broccoli, snow peas, and carrots finished by then. I will replant some of the warm weather items like jalapenos and okra in their place.