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

12/21/2012

Sunrise Blessings

The Mayan Calendar starts counting in 3114 B.C.  Wow, that is more than a few moons ago.  Despite the craziness of our world today, including insane tensions and transitions in the Middle East, our daily lives and the human race march on.  For me it is about the rhythms of life.  Almost daily I am blessed with incredible sunrise paint-scapes of multi-colored clouds at sunrise as the world turns another turn.  This morning a sliver of a new moon was just above the horizon as the sky turned from the blackness of night into another brilliant day.

Mauna Kea at sunset and our nearly completed Kitchen/Living Area.

Getting near our goal of completing the infrastructure to be self sustaining, we crossed the $200K mark today.  It ain't cheap to build.  But I am blessed to have the resources to do make this happen. 
Thank you!

My dream is to enjoy the rhythms.  I may get my wish soon. 

Halloween Night

Trick or Treat

We are so remote, no child has ever knocked at our front door in the seven years we've lived here.  They probably know they would receive an avocado or rambutan as their "treat" and are off to better pickens where they can get their high fructose corn syrup rush.  So I am spending this uninterrupted time posting to my blog.

Additional Farm Dwelling Oct 31

Humble first steps.  Foundation for Drakes bedroom starts to rise.

Our goal for 2012 was to get the infrastructure built.  We just might make it by 12/21/12.  Our main kitchen / living building got the dry wall textured today.  We'll paint the inside this weekend and cabinets and floors should go in soon.  The three detached bedrooms are getting the interior finishing touches done, wood floors, bathrooms tiled, etc...  The electrician is connecting the main unit to the bedrooms tomorrow in underground cable.  The trenching was fun, ask Drake.   The plumber will be installing solar hot water next week.

New shed before putting the tin roof on.

View from new shed

Our new shed is up, roof on, water tank full.  Animals and their Natural Farming habitat is so close to being ready.  Working hard trying to cross the finish line and meet our 2012 goal.

De-Wainaku

Wainaku Grass deep beneath Garden Bed

  I just spent four hours double digging a garden bed that had become overtaken by Wainaku Grass.  It is also known as "Torpedo Grass" as it sends out roots very deep.  It must like anerobic conditions as it most often travels along the clay just below the prepared garden.  This makes it very difficult to combat.  You just can't weed the surface.  One must turn the entire garden bed, one shovel full at a time, throwing the dirt in such a manner as to expose any roots that may be in that shovel full of dirt.  So each shovel of dirt must be sifted through to pick out the roots.  Even the smallest root left in the garden bed will grow and be the nexus for the invasion.

Garden Bed after de-Wainaku process

Master Cho suggests no till.  However, Wainaku is so aggressive, I'm not sure desired plants could compete.  I won't till this bed again.  I'll let the insects dig their air holes in the soil, the microbes establish their environment, and I won't disturb it.

Wainaku Roots

During this process I did notice that the soil just under the weeds was very healthy.  It was darker in color, and in granules.  It also had lots of worms.  This must mean that the weeds are adding fertility to the soil.  I used all the weeds and roots removed from the garden bed to mulch a near by avocado tree.  Thinking that these have lots of good nutrients.

LACTIC ACID BACTERIA

rice rinse water surrounded by milk

LAB, Lactic Acid Bacteria, is an ingredient we use frequently in Korean Natural Farming and it is easy to make.  Rinse some rice, keep the water, let it sit for a day or two.  Then pour a little (one part rice rinse water to 10 parts milk) into a jar of milk.  Don't refrigerate.  The kurds will separate in a day or so.  Pour off the liquid and mix with equal parts brown sugar.  This is liquid will keep for months and is used in almost all our plant sprays.

Lactic Acid Bacteria are very effective in improving ventilation of air in soil and highly effective in growth of fruit trees and leaf vegetables.  It has a pH of 2, possessing strong sterilization power.  LAB decomposes or chelates minerals stuck to soil and not easily dissolved, making them easy for plants to absorb.  When plants absorb lactic acid, body fluid is adjusted within the plant to increase the disease tolerance and withstand heavy rain without becoming soft.

If I ever have a tummy ache or the runs, a take a sip of LAB and in no time I'm normal.  

Summer Time

 

Today's Harvest

Summer is here in full swing.  Jennifer and I hiked down to the beach in Volcano's National Park to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary.  We spent 4 days watching the tide go in and out at a remote beach enjoying the solitude.  When we returned we had fresh ripe tomatoes, lychee and zucchini waiting for us.

IMO #3 pile growing mold

I've been taking it easy this year, backing way off of last years gardening pace.  Yet we still have lots and lots of food.  Above is an IMO#3 pile, two days old, growing micro-organisms like crazy.  A thin layer of IMO#4 on garden beds between plantings, and weekly sprays of CHO spray is all that the plants require to pump out large volumes of nutritious food.

Preparing Pig and Chicken Feed

Drake has been feeding our pigs and chickens.  Here he is cutting papaya, and he'll add a tiny bit of store bought feed, and add OHN, and a hand full of IMO#4.  He lets it sit to ferment for a day before feeding to the animals.  The animals get much more nutrition out of the same amount of food and they do NOT exhibit hungry behavior as they did before he went to a 24 hour ferment of their feed.

Common living and kitchen begins to rise

Troy and Drake are working daily to construct our additional agricultural dwelling.  The 3 detached bedrooms are almost complete and the common living and kitchen is beginning to take shape.