Sunday, July 14, 2013

Mid-Summer 2013

Harvesting String Beans

The first half of 2013 just whizzed by but not without accomplishments.  We installed a 4 inch line on the Hanawai, added a second 48 volt Harris hydro alternator and we are now producing 20 Kilowatts of power per day from our river.  The additional ag dwelling is completed, insides caulked, painted and the pine interiors sanded and coated with a water based varathane finnish which totally brings out the natural woods brilliance.  Our daughter Kaitlin is expected to move in to the blue cabin soon.

Jennifer shows off her Kale and Amaranth

It is only in the last month that I agian have concentrated on my gardens.  If you neglect them, the grasses take over.  So I have been digging out the wainaku roots in my greenhouses.  This requires digging down three feet and sifting through each shovel of dirt to remove the roots.  So as not to have to do this again I am utilizing my son's Drake method of changing the soil chemistry.  The microbes are either bacterial (grasses) or fungal (forrest).  We are attempting to be more fungal which we expect will be less atractive to the invasive grasses.  Drake is using  a living compost pile to inculate batches of liquid IMO which is then applied to our garden beds.

Drake making liquid IMO adding oxygen for 24 hours before spraying on plants

We have planted our greenhouses with big beef steak tomatoes to be trellised up to a single leader.  This leaves lots of room for more low profile vegies down below.  We have scaled back in area, but are trying to be more intensive with that smaller space.  This means less weeding as the vegies help shade out areas weeds would normally fill.  Our plan is to have our greenhouses produce our green drinks.  So we've planted kale, spinnach, chard, cilantro, celery and lettuce.

Newly planted Greenhouse

We continue to drink our smoothies blended in our Vitamix from our papayas, bananas and sugar cane juice.  So tastey.   With an abundance of free electricity we can dehydrate our excess fruit.  Our sugarloaf pineapple patch is in its annual harvest season.  Dried pineapple is the bomb and apple bananas aren't bad either.



Eric in his Pineapple patch
Kaitlin and Jennifer Sugarloaf Harvest

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