Farmers Market April 27

 What did we bring to the the market tables today?

 

I didn’t have everything out on the tables yet when I snapped this photo, 
but I had to be quick because buyers were already showing up. 

Fruits: Wayne’s famous papayas, longan, limes, lemons, several varieties of oranges, avocados. The oranges were donated by my neighbor. And two community members donated limes to add to our tray of limes from the farm. Thank you all!!!

Herbs: parsley, basil, oregano, cilantro, dill, spearmint. 

Veggies: Romano style green beans, Korean radishes, soybean, eggplant, salad and paste tomatoes, sweet green peppers, spring mix leaf lettuce, Malabar spinach, New Zealand spinach, leafy greens mix (several varieties of bok choy, spinach, chard, beet greens, Chinese cabbage, amaranth, mild mustard, tatsoi, arugula, mizuna, other Asian greens), and carrots.

By noon we had sold out. We didn’t even have anything left over to take to the Hub this time. 

Speaking of the Hub, today they served a meal made from the marlin that John Masters had donated, along with a salad that came from the OKK garden. I walked into the kitchen after the market and was delighted by the aroma of cooking fish. The meal smelled marvelous. The kitchen volunteers deserve a long applause and a sincere thank you. They are doing a great service to our community. 

Meals being loaded into takeaway boxes. 

Donated Marlin

This OKK food project is not just about a vegetable garden. It’s about our community coming together to provide food for its community members. So let me tell you about what just happened. 

Looking down on the marlin laying on a long table. 

This week a large freshly caught fish, a marlin, was donated to the Hub by John Masters. John is the one who caught it. Wow!!! That jumbo fish fish dressed out about 140 lbs of meat. What a bonanza for the people of Ka’u. It is going to make a heck of a lot of meals. 

Volunteers cleaned and dressed out this fish. The waste was given to the OKK garden project for making fish emulsion fertilizer. I will be spending tomorrow processing the waste , and I’m thinking that I might need to buy a few more 5 gallon buckets to hold the waste. This fish was really huge and will fill up my current buckets pretty quickly. 

So this event was a win-win situation for everyone, except the marlin of course. And on top of it, it’s a no-waste endeavor. Zero waste to the dump. Every scrap gets used. 

Greenhouse Volunteers

This food project is a community effort, so we welcome volunteers to join in this project. I’m really enjoying the volunteers helping out in the greenhouse. They are amazing! 

Volunteers at work. 

It’s quite enjoyable to talk story while at the same time have busy fingers sowing seeds and transplanting baby seedlings. In just the two hours every Monday, this group gets a lot done…..a lot! 

All these baby lettuce seedlings hot transplanted in one morning session.

The greenhouse volunteers help out with a variety of greenhouse tasks. There’s always something to get done each week……preparing the potting soil, filling pots, filling seedling trays, sowing seeds, transplanting seedlings, making plant labels, watering, arranging the trays and pots in the greenhouse. 

I don’t know about other people, but I get a real kick out of watching the freshly sown seeds sprout, then watching the infant seedlings grow into robust plantlets ready to be moved to the main garden. It’s a true miracle seeing our future food go from teenie little seeds to big plants, knowing that it was us volunteers that made it happen. 

Farmers Market

 Each Wednesday. OKK hosts a booth for the excess vegetables that the garden produces. You have most likely already seen us there. All the veggies and fruits that are on our tables are chemical free, thus are organic. Most come directly from the garden that’s on Eva’s farm, but some come from Wayne’s orchard, some from my farm, and a bit from others in our community who are supporting OKK and this food project. Each week the selection varies a bit, depending upon what’s in season and what’s ready to pick. 

This past Wednesday, the 20th, if you came early enough you would have seen on the tables :

Papaya, limes, lemons, longan, avocado, carrots, romano green beans, soybeans, daikon, eggplant, sweet peppers, snow peas, young onions, turmeric, basil, cilantro, parsley, dill, mint, oregano, mixed leaf lettuce, mixed greens (3 types of bok choy, arugula, mizuna, amaranth, chard, beet, Chinese cabbage, tatsoi, spinach), pumpkin, and pipinola. We also had plant starts for an orange sweet potato, various lettuces, broccoli, and beets. ……… And a rooster! 

Yes, a rooster. Various livestock is being donated for use to make the free meals that The Hub hands out three days a week. This rooster was a donation, kind of a "chicken soup starter kit". We decided to have him help raise money so that the garden could purchase a small cultivator to use for weed control. So we set his "get out of jail" bail at $20. Once people had donated a total of $20, the rooster would be set free to live his life out on a large macnut farm. This lucky rooster made his bail! So he was set free. Next week we will bring another donated chicken and again ask for donations to save its life. It’s a win-win situation. People can donate a dollar and thus feel good that they have become a part of their local food project.  The chicken, when bail is met, gets to go free to live it’s natural life in a large macnut farm. And the garden gets to purchase a cultivator, an item very much needed. 

Mr Rooster waiting to have his bail paid. 

Ready, set, go!

Rooster is off and running right down the road to the macnut trees. 

April in the Garden - What’s Growing

Now that I’ve given you a quick background about the garden, it’s time to talk about the present. 

So, what are we growing? With some of the crops we are very successful. Some others have been failures. Others we are learning how to grow better. I’ll discuss a lot of the details as we go along over the next few weeks. 

What’s growing now…….

Herbs :

     Basil, two varieties for now.

     Cilantro

     Dill

     Oregano

     Parsley, flat leaf Italian for now.

          We have just started marjoram, cutting celery, and lemon grass. 

Vegetables :

     Beans. Snap types. No dry beans at the moment. We have both round and flat podded types. And different colored ones - green, yellow, purple.

     Beets , mostly round but also a long rooted one. Three colors - red, gold, white. 

     Broccoli. We are just learning how to grow this. So we only have a little. 

     Cabbage. As with the broccoli, we are in the learning stage. We hope to grow both green and red types. 

     Carrots. Orange, red, and whites for now. We will be adding purple. Most will be short and blocky varieties until we can get the soil loosened down deeper. 

     Cucumbers. We have some growing in the greenhouse. Growing in the outdoor garden was a failure.

     Daikon

     Eggplant. 4 different varieties, all purple. We will be adding other colors, 

     Greens -assorted. We have a variety of them growing, including arugula, mizuna,  bok choy,  tatsoi, various Chinese cabbage types, amaranth, kale, chard, portuguese cabbage, Okinawan  spinach, New Zealand spinach, malabar spinach, cholesterol spinach. 

     Lettuce. We have a broad selection of varieties which we harvest at the leaf stage. 

     Onion. Both bulbing and green onion types. 

     Parsnip

     Peanuts

     Peas - snap peas and snow peas 

     Peppers - we are learning about growing sweet peppers in the greenhouse. Due to a request, we are adding a number of hot varieties to the main garden area. 

     Potatoes. We just planted several varieties. Whites, golds, pinks, purples. And red skinned boilers. 

     Pumpkins - we have a large landrace variety right now, and just added a smaller type landrace. 

     Radish - most red round types, but we threw in some other colors and shapes 

     Soybean

     Sweet potato - after the pigs destroyed them all, we have started again. Purple, white. and orange. 

     Tomatillo 

     Tomato - we have had varying success in growing some. We are still learning about growing the  larger types. 

Fruits:

      Papaya . Yes, Wayne planted 200 trees of his incredible papaya. There will be plenty. 

Flowers for cut flowers:

     Statice

The Great Rain

 December was a tough month. Pigs. Nene. Cows. Horse. 

Rain!!!  I’m not talking about a gentle rain. Not even an inch, I’m taking about a downpour of several inches. It rained all over the ranch, resulting in sheets of water flowing down the hilly pastures. It came down too quickly to be absorbed by the hardened pasture soil. And some of that runoff carved a runoff channel right through the garden. 

Wayne texted me about the disaster. I arrived to find wheelborrowfuls of our precious garden soil washed away. In places, 6 inches of soil was gone, right down to the hard pan. By the way, this is how I discovered how extensive and how deep the hard pan was in the garden. Areas with no hard pan successfully absorbed the water. Hard pan areas did not, thus washed away. 

The area shown above had been freshly tilled and planted. Deep troughs had been created where the soil washed away, leaving the drip irrigation lines suspended in the air. 

There wasn’t much to do except rake soil into the deep troughs and run the rototiller again to try to flatten things out. For the next two weeks we kept finding peas, beans, and lettuce sprouting all over the place. The rain had washed the seeds out along with the soil. 

In order to help prevent this problem again we are taking two steps. First, I have been using a broad fork to help break up the hard pan. And second, one of the volunteers has been digging a runoff trench at the high side of the garden where the worst of the runoff entered the garden. This trench will hopefully divert future runoff to the side while at the same time acting as a swale to capture the rain to add moisture to the subsoil below the garden surface. 

Cows and Horses

After the pigs and nene, we thought we were done with big critters. What a relief. We had two sides of the garden fenced in, and about 100 feet of another side installed. This seemed to baffle or intimidate the pigs, because we no longer saw more damage. But then I arrived one morning to find a lot more crops eaten and deep holes throughout a big section of the garden where the veggies had been eaten. The bottoms of those holes revealed the split hoof tracks of cattle. Gosh darn, another big garden predador! 

You talk about being down at heart! Egads, what else…..now it’s cows. Other than informing the cattle owner that their cows had escaped their pasture and were eating the garden, all we could do was work on getting more of the fencing up in place. This was so frustrating…but little did I know that more was to come. 

The next morning I arrived to see equine hoof tracks!!!  Oh no! More problems. Scanning the garden hopefully, I was saddened to see yet more veggies destroyed. Feeling low and helpless, all I could do was work on locating more fence supplies. Happily Aikane Coffee donated 25 t-posts, enough the run most of another roll of fence. And donations were still dribbling in so that we could purchase more fencing. (To let you in on a secret, two donors stepped forward with enough for us to buy the rest of the fencing. I nearly cried with joy, appreciation, and relief especially after watching our community’s garden get destroyed over and over again.)

We did learn that the horse and cows had escaped via a break in their fencing which then got repaired. The animals were all rounded up and returned to their proper side of the fence. 

I tell you, the month of December had been hard on the garden. But wait. There’s more to come!

Nene Attack

 One December day two nene showed up at the garden. Then two more. Two marvelous pair of nene. We thought how blessed we were, how blessed was the garden. Oh brother, we were soon the discovered that we were cursed, not blessed! 

At first the nene grazed the grasses and weeds. I was tickled to think that they were helping us weed. Natural weed control, wow! But then I noticed they had decimated the romaine lettuce. They next moved to the young pea plants, plucking every leaf. Returning to the lettuce rows, the trimmed the leaf lettuce. Then they discovered the young onions, trimming them back too. 

The tops of the onions were nibbled off.

Young pea planted totally ruined. 

All the while the nene were consuming the garden, we tried is get them to leave. Our hands were virtually tied, since with them being an endangered species, we were not allowed to attack, harm, or harass them. So we tried spraying the crops with soapy water….they still ate them. We tried spraying a solution of meat broth…..they still ate the crops. We tried sloshing bucketfuls of rotting meat scraps along the rows. No change. We tried fluttering ribbons, twirling cd disks, bird chasing tape. We resorted to walking in their direction and discovered that we could get up to 6 feet from them before they would turn and walk away. When we stopped, they simply walked right back to the garden. And of course when nobody was around, they had free rein of the garden to eat as they pleased. Out of desperation we purchased garden cloth and covered all the crops that the nene preferred eating. 

We ended up covering 10 rows with garden cloth. 

Then we noticed something. When the volunteer gardeners brought their dogs with them, the nene kept their distance. Seeing the nene being suspicious of them, the dogs responded by being suspicious of the nene. It wasn’t long before the dogs got bolder with the nene and went to check them out every day, resulting in the nene flying off a distance. After a week or so of this, both pair of nene decided that our free buffet was no longer a nice place to dine. They both left for quieter dining elsewhere. And we haven’t seen them since. 

Pig Attack

For 2 blissful months, we were in a dream world. Other than plenty of weeds, not much seemed to be going wrong with this garden. By month #3, the bugs had found the garden. And by December, far worse garden pests had arrived. 

Pigs!

Wayne went up one day and discovered that a pig had torn up some of the sweet potatoes. We already had a single wire of electric fencing supposedly protecting the garden, so we decided to beef up this protection. We added another strand. 

More sweet potatoes got rooted up. 

A pig hits the sweet potatoes the first night. 

We added a third strand in the direction that the pigs were coming in. Yes plural, pigs, because it was obvious that there was more than one now. 

More sweet potatoes got rooted up. 

We brought in a pig trap. Baited it with just about every item suggested. No luck. The pigs avoided the trap, avoided the hot wires, got in and ate all the sweet potato, then started eating the pumpkins. 

Every sweet potato eaten!

It was obvious to us that now that the pigs had discovered the garden, we would have to do something far better. Otherwise we wouldn’t have a garden. Because of the nature of this large farm, we could not bring in hunters. We needed pig proof fencing. Thus we started the task of fencing in the entire garden area. Expensive and time consuming, we started anyway. 

At this time I wish to thank everyone who contributed to the fencing project. Mahalo!!! This was a major effort. Without the help from the community, it couldn’t have been accomplished. It took 3 months to raise the funds. Along the way 25 fence posts were donated along with some used, but serviceable fencing. The rest of the materials were purchased new. A local man donated his time and labor to install the fence and make the needed gates. Mahalo!!! 

The Greenhouse

 When Wayne told me that Eva Lui was giving us the use of one of her greenhouses I was thrilled. Oh wonderful! We would now be able to grow plenty of vegetable starts, and with luck, figure out how to grow greenhouse tomatoes. We were also thinking along the lines of trying cucumbers and sweet peppers, both being notoriously difficult to grow in the open field here. 

We started out growing vegetable starts, and still use the greenhouse for this purpose. We have tried growing tomatoes. While successful, it didn’t seem to be a good use of the space. So we are switching to trying cucumbers and sweet peppers. 

Looking into the greenhouse after we cleaned it up.

What It Looked Like at the Begginning

In the very beginning, the garden looked a weedy mess. To find the early garden, one needed to look deep under the guinea grass. Especially the upper part of the garden area was thick with grass. It was a gardener’s nightmare, to say the least. Wayne brought his weedwacker and set to work finding the rows. At least then, we could find the veggies to harvest. 

The early garden was a task of harvesting and chopping weeds. Lots of hard labor. After making very slow headway, the decision was made to bring in a backhoe and tear out all the major guinea grass. It meant destroying the leftover crops, but it needed to be done in order to plant more crops. Thus after our initial glut of vegetables, we had a lull in the harvesting while the new crops grew. 

The garden thick with grasses. 

The upper garden area cleared of grass. 

The lower garden area was hand cleared of weeds. Initially we got ahead of the weeds and were quite smug about our gardening savvy. But once it started raining in December, we had to swallow our pride as the weeds once again took over. More about that later. 

How It All Started

During the summer of 2020, a small food garden was started by a visiting farmer, on land that was part of Naalehu Ranch, aka Ulu Farm, aka Ka’u Valley Farm, locally also called the Chinese Farm. The visiting farmer was planning to leave, abandoning the garden. The OKK president learned about the situation and approached the farm owner, Eva Liu, about OKK harvesting the abandoned vegetables for the community. One thing lead to another and before I knew it, OKK was granted use of the garden area by Eva. This is the point where I came in. 

Wayne Kawachi, OKK president, solicited the help of OKK volunteers to take over the garden site. Veggies that were harvested were donated to The Hub with the excess being offered at the Naalehu Farmers Market. As Wayne’s words tell it, there was a crazy amount of food! Carrots. Cucumbers. Squash. Lettuce. Chinese greens. Tomatoes. And more. 

Over the period of the next month or so, Eva Liu offered more land for OKK to expand the size of the garden. She supplied free irrigation water and irrigation supplies. Next, she offered the use of one of her greenhouses, water included. And one more step— she allowed OKK to harvest fruits from her orchards. All of this Eva supplied for free for the Ka’u community. Marvelously crazy, no?

WELCOME !

 Welcome to the new OKK garden blog. Actually, we are going to explore and report about OKK’s food project which includes the garden, the meals program, and other food oriented endeavors. 

So let’s get started !

I’m Su, an OKK volunteer. And I work primarily on the garden project, although I also raise food on my own farm too. In this blog I will introduce you to other OKK volunteers, show what we are doing, and keep you up to date on the news. And I’ll post plenty of cool pictures. I’ll start out giving a quick background, just to bring you up to date. Then each week I’ll let you know what’s happening from week to week.