Olla

Where we live is is HOT and DRY it only rains a few times a year and water can be hard to come by. So keeping our soil "evenly moist" as is required by SO many plants required me to think outside the box a bit so naturally I turned to the internet. I found Ollas: Unglazed Clay pots for garden irrigation. After that I set out to buy me some Olla's and was astonished at the price!$100 for something I bury in the dirt to hold water? No thanks! So then I was looking at ways to do it myself. And there were several other people who had already come up with the solution! terracotta pots blued together or to their bases. I use the glue them to their bases method Since I don't want to have to dig down so far as to accommodate the others. So far I have had great luck with my Ollas they have kept my tomatoes going strong for several months. I water usually once a week my filling my olla and thats all it takes to water my 4 plants.

The method is simple enough bury the olla with the "base" side down so the hole is at the soil level or just above it. This hole is where you will be adding your water!

You can see one of my buried ollas here with my watermelon. I place rocks on top of the holes to help keep critters and dust out.

I have heard that you can add soluble fertilizer straight to the olla but have not tried this for myself. 

August 2017

Beautiful pink Plumeria in Bloom this morning.

Blood Orange new growth.

As you can see I have the wonderful citrus leafminer problem on all of my precious trees! The above picture is of my blood orange. I have been spraying them with Neem oil once a week for a month or so now and it hasn't seemed to really help yet I might have to resort to less organic means before my poor trees die off.

Moon and Stars Watermelon

 I'm hopeful about that moon and stars watermelon! I have heard they are a good variety to grow in Hawaii but the package says they get to 40 lbs! This one I transplanted last night but started in a tray 7/14/2017. Should be able to harvest by 10/17/2017 according to the package.

Pie Pumpkin 1

Pie Pumpkin 2

I always need to grow pumpkins I just hate having to buy things from the store I can do myself. So far these Sugar pumpkins seem to be flourishing. These 4 (2 per mound) were planted 6/23/2017 so should be ready by Halloween! And still around for pies! assuming I get some pumpkins off of the. So far this year mom hasn't had good luck with melons/squash. We have some sort of bug that lays its eggs in the blossom then they hatch when the blossom becomes a melon/squash and eat all the insides! Which is why I've put clips on my blossoms as you can see in the first picture to see if that will help if not I will have to resort to chemicals to keep my babies safe. You can also see a few homemade Olla in my mounds I will talk about that in a later post!

Potato mounds

On our last haul of mulch I wanted to make some mounds for potatoes. I LOVE potatoes and have found them pretty easy to grow. They don't need a lot or water or nutrients in my experience. If these mounds don't work though I'll be trying the tub method.

Raised beds

Here is my work in progress I work a little more each day on getting my raised beds all ready to go! We make these out of some pallets we pick up in Hilo. For full details I will add a new post.

Red Raspberry

Black Raspberry

I picked up some Black raspberries at the local Saturday market a few weeks ago and finally got them into their new homes 7/13/2017.  At that time I also planted to beds of red raspberries that we ordered online. They look very happy in their raised beds.

Cherry Belle Radish

Trying to find what variety of radish will grow the best here as well as what taste we prefer. Right now I have Cherry Belles in as well as some unsprouted Pink Beautys. They should be ready for harvest about a week apart. If you want to garden but feel like you just kill everything Radishes are a great place to start seed to harvest is only 22 days!

Onions

I planted a mixture of onions sometime ago but I have no idea what actually sprouted! I believe I have leeks in the back of this photo but I can't tell if the others are bulb onions or green onions! I've just been leaving them be to see what they do. I know Onions take several months to mature but I forgot to jot a note down for these!

Strawberries

I have this spot in my garden area that has that hard blue rock in it. and rather than keep tripping over it time and time again I built this lovely strawberry planter over it! I have two varieties here. The very bottom tier is Quinalt strawberries and the top two tiers are Eversweet Strawberries. Both types are ever bearing and heat tolerant. I ordered them online from Direct gardening for a very reasonable price. They came bare root but did very well!

Tomatos

My pride and joy! My tomatoes. I have here 3 Mature Roma plants as well as one Honey Delight Hybrid. I lost most of my new crop of tomatoes to blossom end root just a few days ago. Could either be too much nitrogen or too little Calcium. I gave them a good bit of lime and plan to pick up some soil amending goods later this week. Our native soil here is nearly ALL nitrogen according to the last soil test I did.

Shade bed

This is my Shade bed, sorry for the odd angle. I have some Wong Bok cabbage coming along nicely only one caterpillar so far and he is certainly no more! I just did a Sage harvest a few days ago. My carrots should be done at any time and that broccoli I just don't think is going to do anything! It's just not doing a thing! I bought a different variety recently that i'm going to try instead.

Ginger!

I am so excited to be able to grow my own ginger! It is so hard for me to wait for it to get going! What I do have is filling out nicely though!

Banana trees, Cubans have red trunks apple has green trunks. 

I am just not sure If my banana's are really doing anything! I think they might be lacking in some essential nutrients like I said earlier our native soil nearly 100% nitrogen, phosphate didn't even register on the test at all.

Lemon grass and some hopeful transplants

Glady's in bloom!

A glady from the kids garden