mid winter overhaul

On Friday night I made a list of things I wanted to do in the garden this weekend. I got all of them done, and more!

In a nutshell, I turned 90% of the raised garden beds over. They're now either fallow or replanted. They're definitely all weeded - what a pain in the arse. This overhaul was long overdue. I've been able to observe my plants for what, 6 months now? and I know what needs to be where. I've also decided on the plants I'm going to focus on. It was time to shuffle stuff around & get ready for the larger focused crop planting in the raised beds. Pretty exciting!

I've had a nervous eye on my shade structure most of the week. We had a really strong windstorm predicted & it did get pretty blustery. I've been wanting to take the opaque part of the structure down for months & never got around to it. Mother Nature did it for me on Friday night :) I showed up Saturday & it was hanging half down. I'm lucky it didn't come down further, since the flapping around would have struck all of my delicate plants that are still in pots! I still have the 47% and 84% shade cloths up, but now the 100% opaque (and waterproof) tarp is down. This accomplished a lot of things. It opened up 5 beds for full/partial sun instead of mostly shady. It opened up the potato beds for full sun, which they really needed.

I realized that I desperately need to relocate my peppers and greens AND kill the weeds in their beds. I dug up all of the chard, peppers and chilis & relocated them to the 5 beds that now get full sun. I'm praying they take to transplanting ok & aren't completely pissed at having their roots disturbed. They were doing ok where they were, but needed more sun & they were constantly being overrun by the weeds in their old bed. I chopped down all of the chard when I transplanted, but didn't have the heart to cut back the peppers and chilis - they absolutely loaded with flowers and pepper keiki. I have a feeling I may regret that decision...come to think of it, maybe I'll cut back half of each variety tomorrow so I can see which approach works better. It killed me to pull up the peppers with so many buds on them, but honestly, they're never going to have a dormant period here. In fact, the colder it gets, the more they produce! So, I bit the bullet & re-located them now. I figured it would be best while pests are down from the cold & we're getting lots of rain.

I weeded the two big weedy beds as best I could, then realized this will always be a loosing battle. Those 2 beds got weed-laden dirt at the start & I will never win trying to pull weeks constantly. Since these are the two largest and most desirable beds in the entire garden I am really hell bent on killing the damn weeds. I decided to turn the top 2 inches of soil & cover both beds in 6 mil black plastic sheeting for a month. I'm told that should help interrupt the weed life cycle. I was going to propane torch the soil, but I have so many fat, happy earthworms I just can't bear to kill them. This is going to be an expirement for sure. I think I'm going to coat both beds in wet newspaper after the plastic comes off, then poke holes for my starts. The newspaper trick worked great on the mainland for killing weeds, so it should work here too.

I planted 70 garlic cloves & about 10 onion of some sort. I think they are Yellow Maui Onion & I have no idea how they will do. They have been in tiny dixie cups for 4 months (they got lost under foliage & I just found them). They may have been stunted too long to ever be happy or productive. However, they are interplanted with a second strawberry bed & the two are supposed to companion well, so at least the onions will be beneificial, even if they aren't edible.

The strawberries I planted in the pineapple bed are going crazy. They are so happy. I guess I call that a success for companion planting :) I finally got around to planting 6 more yellow pineapple keiki that were sitting, neglected, in a 5 gallon bucket for 4 months. They were growing roots anyway - dang they are tough. Should be interesting to see how they like their new life in soil. I think that brings me to 12 yellow and 25 white pineapple plants. I just asked my hanai parents for their weekly yellow PA crown (they are avid smoothie-ists) so the yellow PA bed will grow by one plant each week.

One of my 20 coffee beans is finally turning yellow with a red blush. WOO! I'm going to have coffee bean 'harvest' soon. I need to get the coffee trees in the ground. Argh, so much to plant!

Once a month I re-organize all of my potted plants to see what's going on , mostly to tame the vining plants. I finally have had it with the Lilikoi overrunning everything so I planted them along the guava whattle fence at the back of the garden. I'll have to be diligent about keeping them on the fence, or up a tree & not IN the garden, but it'll be a lot easier to observe their antics now that they are isolated up on the fence.

The vanilla orchids are happy as can be & sent out shoots that not only rooted, but sent up new orchids! I seriously need to get them in a permanent location, or make a large planter box/trellis that I can move later.

The cucumber is still producing like crazy. I got 4 huge cucumbers off of it today. I like cucumbers, but criminey, that's a lot. Oh, and I took the two remaining tomatoes out of the raised beds and put them in the 'feral berm' near the cucumber and the other tomatoes.

I started the prep on a new 10 x 20 bed by the driveway. I'll be a great full sun spot that's underlaid by solid pahoehoe. I cut down all of the weeds growing on Saturday. As soon as it rains I'm going out with the propane burner to scorch the entire bed & kill whatever weeds survived whacking. Then I'm laying down the 6 mil black plastic immediately & building the 12" lava rock walls to make it a raised bed. I'm going to let that sit for a week or so then have soil/cinder mix hauled in. I'm leaving the plastic to stave off weeds. I have my eye on two other 15x20 plots on the opposite side of the driveway to receive the same treatment. They too, are flat pahoehoe with grassy weeds growing. I want to get all three new beds done at the same time so I can do one dirt haul. We'll see!

At the house, I gave in to pretty-things (as opposed to eating-things) today. I started about 30 cuttings consisting of different hibiscus, gardenias, jasmines & sunset vine today.

The rice plants are getting really beefy now. They didn't grow up, just out - very stocky at the base of the plant, like their gearing up to support a seed head (I hope!).

The fig starts are all in dirt now too.

I'm trying Tumeric and Store-Ginger again. This time with smaggier dirt. I don't think I've kept them wet enough in my past attempts.

OH, a few weeks ago my neighbor trimmed back his Crown Flower. I happened to see the cuttings in the trash heap & took all of them :) Crown flowers are the sole food source of Monarch Butterflies. If you were following my personal blog back in January you'll know that I was raising Monarchs & releasing them to the wild. I have always planned to do this again, so I have all of the cuttings in water. Usually 50% or so survive & send out roots, of that, maybe 5% survive going into soil. I have about 100 cuttings, so I'll be happy to get 2 plants. There are 5 monarch caterpillars that hitched a ride. I keep an eye on them, but am not going to intervene again - I don't want to get sucked into Monarch Husbandry until I have my own established CF plants in the ground. It's too much of a chore to forage cuttings for those buggers every day.

For seeds starts this week: the edible peanut starts have all successfully sprouted, so I'm going to do more. I just sprouted 7 sesames, but I think 4 died today from lack of water - they are super touchy to wet & dry. I'm really interested in them for their high fat content + I want to make my own Tamari so I'm going to keep trying. I've started 20+ each of millet, black bean and adzuki bean. I keep finding myself reaching for them in the pantry, so I'm going to focus on them. I've had the worst luck with beans & swore I was giving up, but I'm going to 'Try One More Time' (tm). I read yesterday that beans hate to have their roots disturbed. Well, I've been starting them in dixie cups, then planting them when they outgrow the cup. THat sounds like root-disturbance to me. For this set, I'm going to soak/sprout the beans tonight, then put them straight into the ground on Tuesday when they begin to sprout. THe millet has already sprouted after just 12 hours.

On a side note, I'm going to attempt to make Thai Green Papaya Salad in the very near future. IF I can make it, I'm going to add all of the components to the garden. I freaking LOVE Green Papaya Salad. I can eat it every day. If I can make it and grow it, holy crap I'd be in seventh heaven. A whole nother tangent - goody.

I've started posting photos here: http://gallery.me.com/kohledfusion. No photos of the garden yet - I have to remember to take the darn camera - duh.

That's all there is that's plant related this week. Still a lot to do, but every effort is one more thing done!