to GMO or not to GMO???

The papaya ringspot virus (PRV) devastated papaya production on the Big Island of Hawaii in the early 1990's.  Commercial papaya production virtually ended as the virus completely wiped out all Solo papaya production.  Fortunately, Dr Gonsalves and his team foresaw the impending disaster (the virus was already in Oahu but not the Big Island) and started work in his laboratory at Cornell University a decade in advance of release and commercial production of "Rainbow".

Naturally Farmed GMO "Rainbow" papaya

At my day job I am General Manager for the largest papaya exporter to the US Mainland.  We exclusively produce GMO "Rainbow" papaya.  Papaya is always in the top five most nutritious fruits anyone can put in their body.  Is our Rainbow papaya safe?

Well the Japanese government recently approved our Rainbow for sale in Japan after 13 years of reviewing the science.  Believe me, if there was even a small shred of evidence to the contrary, it would never have been approved.  It is safe!!!!!!  It is HEALTHY!!!!!

Naturally Farmed non-GMO papaya

On my weekends I have been a student of Korean Natural Farming.  The whole point is sustainability.  If you have to import fertilizers, commercial or organic, it is not sustainable.  So what about GMO's?

Well take a look at the evidence presented in photos above.  Non GMO get the virus and die.  GMO Rainbow thrive and give us all the papaya we can eat.  Both are identically naturally farmed.  No pesticides or herbicides.

Planting more Sugarloaf Sweet White Pineapple

Jennifer watering in liquid IMOs

August is typically the month when the Sweet White Sugarloaf Pineapple is in full harvest mode.  With all the tops on the fruit we will have it is time to prep more beds.  Because plants often need two years to bear fruit, weed control is very important.  Using weed mat has proven a good strategy with pineapples.

I ran the spader implement on our real tractor over the bed several times to loosen the soil and till in the weeds.  Next step was to use my Japanese hand held digging fork to take all weeds and roots from previous crop out.  This is time consuming and hard work, but helps keep this old guy in shape.

Hands in the Dirt

After this I spaded in some dolomite lime (calcium and magnesium) and watered in some of Drake's oxygenated liquid IMOs.  Then it is back to hand work, shoveling trenches on both side of the garden row and burying the sides of the weed mat.

Now the fun part, planting.   We remove the bottom leaves of each top to expose root nodes.  This allows the tops to root quickly.  Then I cut a small X in the weed mat with a knife and push the new plant into the soil through the weed mat.

Peeling back leaves to expose the roots

The new tops will take two years to fruit.  We will plant all the tops from our harvest and all of the kekeis located at the bottom of each pineapple fruit.  This could be several hundred new plants.  We will leave the suckers on the older plants which are harvested this year.  There is two suckers per plant and they will each produce a pineapple fruit next Summer.  Voila, a bit of hard work now, and sweet pineapple for years to come!

New babies planted!

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