Imafan's 2025 garden

[imafan26]

It is a new year, so a new thread. It was cold this morning at 8 a.m. it was 69 degrees. Everything is still wet, so I only spot watered.
I cleaned up the nursery bench again. The neighbor's tree is still shedding. I transplanted some of the habanero seedlings and started more Wailua jalapeno seeds. Soarer cucumber seedlings are starting to sprout, but only show a hint of green on the soil, the cotyledons should be up tomorrow.

I did not do much more in the garden. I made the mistake of wearing my reading glasses outside and I tripped 3 times, over a chair, on the plastic under a container and I lost my balance for no reason once. I decided this was not a good day to be in the garden and decided not to push my luck.

[applestar]

Good luck with your garden this year! As usual you are off to an early start and no doubt bountiful harvests!

I recently got new prescription and have two kinds of glasses — a fixed distance focus lenses for driving, and progressive nearer focus lenses for reading/indoors and gardening. Since I wear the progressive lenses most of the time and gardening, this one also responds to sunlight and gets darker.

It’s been great, but I’m still fumbling to switch them for driving. Luckily, it’s not a complete disaster and I can still see well enough to drive with the progressives, but much MUCH better with the driving glasses, and was told these are a must for night driving.

Trouble with the progressives is that I think can’t see distant birds as well, but I couldn’t before anyway with the old glasses, and I can use binoculars as usual when looking at the garden from the window.

The trailcam gives me even better view of the pond now.

Don’t you think losing your balance was due to wearing those reading glasses?

[imafan26]

I have two glasses. One for driving and one for reading. I did have progressives, but the bifocals were so narrow it was hard to focus through them and the bifocals are the part of the prescription that changes the most. Normally, I don't use glasses at all in the yard. It really changes my depth perception. I did not take them off because I did not want to lose them.

I did not have to water today because of the rain. But I did get out today to look around the yard.

The bougainvillea is blooming again. I am always amazed when people remark about how well the bonsai blooms. it is strange to me because this plant is pruned and fed after every bloom and it reblooms in 6 weeks. So for me it being in bloom so much is nothing special.

I do have a few orchids in bloom now. A couple of dendrobiums, a catleya , a few oncidiums ( which are blooming out of season), den. bracteosum x tanii (has been in bloom for months) and a few phals. A couple of the phal spikes were wound around another orchids leaves and pressed against the shade cloth so the spikes are growing crooked. There are more spikes coming up. It is actually harder to see what is happening to them. They were on the table on the lanai before. It was easier to see the spikes and they had less chances of running into taller orchids. One of the phal's tip was damaged. The leaves look o.k. but I will put out more snail bait. I did find a 4 inch African snail on the oncidium pot. Two more bowls, the oregano, and peppermint were infested with root mealybugs. I sterilized the bowls, so all I can think of is that the mealy bugs are coming from these clay pots. So I scrubbed them and soaked them in hot water and bleach. I will let them sit for about 5 days. The bleach should dissipate by then and the pots will then get another spray with a different disinfectant before going back.

The bare root roses have arrived at Sam's club. They are in dormancy, but the roses are standard varieties. I only have space for one or two roses. That's not really true. I have more roses in pots that need to go into the ground. I'll see if other places have their roses yet. I have grown Chrysler Imperial and Proud land before and those are good roses.

I have some zinnia seedlings volunteering in my path. I am contemplating potting them up.
I cut back the lavender and the potted mussaenda. Lavender needs to be cut back every year or they will become very woody. I usually cut it back in stages. I cut half off and wait for that side to sprout and then I cut the other side. Sometimes, especially on the older woodier lavender, if I cut everything back, it dies. I still have to cut back most of the roses.

Some of the lettuce I planted again in the tower has sprouted. This is how far I got the last time. I will put more slug bait in the tower just in case. I don't see any more of the cilantro getting beheaded.

I overseeded the cilantro in the main garden, but nothing happened. I did use the split seed this time. I may try to reseed it again. I did bait around the garden even though I haven't seen any slugs or snails. The beans have started to flower. The beans look very under developed. I did give the garden some nitrogen, but I probably need to supplement it sooner with nitrogen. Unfortunately the only fertilizer with nitrogen and potassium are fast release. I prefer not to have to supplement so often.

The habanero pots got a little try the other day. I did not think the tiny seedlings would make it, but only one lost its' head.

I rooted more citrus and bay leaf cuttings. The bay leaf I transplanted look fine so far. None of the air layers on the calamansi took. One branch died. I will try a different technique to air layer. I have a lot of branches to practice on. I have problems the bag keeps slipping. I probably need to put a pin on the branch it cannot slip off the branch. the bag was very heavy for the branch so I may need to prop the branch too. I am going to try the bottle and pot method next and see if it works ou better for me. I can probably take more of the araimo keiki out and pot them up. They will probably be ready in February. When I pot them up at this size, I often have to cut off the leaf. I am running out of space but I can try starting more seeds of garden chives and leeks. The no name tomato I got from the garden has sprouted. The MG's said this tomato is sweeter than Valentine.

I can't work very long in the garden. I just get too tired. I still need to rake up the flowers from the neighbors tree. They are starting to turn black. I need to weed whack the courtyard. The grass is almost 8 inches tall. I hoed the weeds in the front yard, most of it was clover.There are the weeds to deal with in the back yard too. I am slowly moving the things in the yard back. I broke a piece out of the base of the terra cotta planter. I hope I can get it glued together later. I have a couple of broken heads that need be put back together too.

[imafan26]

I got some eggplant, finger lime, and oranges from the garden yesterday. I went out in the morning and almost all of the pepper starts had disappeared overnight. I think it was snails. So, I will have to start that over again. I have more pepper seedlings, but I may have to put them in a different place.

The seedling cucumbers are in a bag now, and appear to be safe for the moment.

One Wailua pepper sprouted from a lot of seeds. It is not that unusual. It is cold for starting seeds. Tomatoes have also sprouted. The tomatoes are from the MG garden but I don't know the name. It is similar to a grape with a pointy end. One Wailua pepper came up. I am not surprised it is a little cold for peppers. More may still come up. The dill is up, but it also looks like it may be under attack. I may have to restart those seeds too. The larger seedlings of eggplant and the older peppers have lost leaves but are intact. I probably need to check out some of the one gallon pots of onions on my bench. Slugs particularly like to hide in the pots and eat the roots.

I put slug bait in the tower that is covered and I saw some lettuce starting to sprout. I have to wait to see if the seedlings start disappearing. I may rebait the tower just in case. I did find a slug and a snail on the ground next to the tower among the garlic chives. I probably have to check those pots too.

It hasn't rained a lot, but I do get some mostly overnight rain that keep the ground fairly wet. So, it is the time of year, I do have to step up snail bait. I wish I had one toad, but I don't.

Swiss chard, komatsuna and semposai are growing bigger. The bush beans are small but are flowering now. The carrots and cilantro are sharing the container now. I reseeded the main garden, but I haven't seen anything come up except weeds. I may reseed it again. It is 70 degrees now at 10 a.m. It may not get up to the predicted 79 degrees. The low is 67. It is a little low for germinating peppers, but I can give it a try anyway. I have a lot of pepper seeds. Winds are calm and it is sunny but cloudy. If the winds do not pick up, it will get cloudier with the daytime heating and it may rain later since humidity is already 90%.

There is a plant share on Saturday, but I also have a hazarous waste appointment so I may or may not be able to make it. If not, there is another share in a couple of weeks that is much farther away.

[imafan26]

I thought I had to reseed the cilantro, but the other day, while I was watering I finally saw some coming up. I have baited the yard with iron phosphate again. Almost all of the habanero seedlings disappeared overnight. I have more. I will have to put them somewhere else. I probably have slugs in the pots on the bench. The green onions are usually the culprits. Slugs like to eat the roots.

It has been raining overnight for a few nights now, but it is still less rain than normal for this time of the year. It is 65 degrees now at 6:30 a.m. The sun isn't up yet, but the rooster is. It is cloudy and overcast (no stars), the radar shows some scattered showers coming in on the trades. It looks like I may get some of it today sometime. Humidity is 88%.

I probably have to fertilize the main garden again. It is a pain to have to do it this way, but I can only use fast acting fertilizers. K-mag (langbenite) and sulfate of ammonia and they have to be applied more often in small amounts. ( 1 tablespoon of each per 100 sq ft. The phosphorus in the garden is so high, I can only use 1 inch of compost, which makes it hard to stop the weeds. I have incrementally limed the garden. The rough pH is still around 6. I will have to wait awhile to retest after liming. I want to get the pH up around 6.4.

My beans are flowering, but they are very short. I have to figure out why. This same variety is over two feet tall in the bean container.

[imafan26]

It's been awhile. I could not access helpful gardener for some reason.
I got a late start on this season's garden. I planted my first fall crops in December.

I have already harvested two crops of cucumbers. Not the best yields this year, I have three tomatoes red currant (x2 locations) plus a couple of "volunteers" in the yard. The second is a grape tomato I got from someone at the garden, and the third is my first experimental tomato of the year, Red Snapper. It is not resistant to powdery mildew or blight, but is resistant to TYLCV and black spot. I will try it again when the weather is drier. The flavor isn't bad.

I am now on my third planting of beans. I harvested Provider beans in February and Maxibel and Provider in the tower gardens are starting to produce. I have already planted the next succession of Provider and Poamoho beans.

I still have some romaine, salad bowl, and Schweitzer-Mescher lettuce in the tower. These will be the last last lettuce since it will soon be too hot to get edible lettuce. I can plant Adriana for seeds, it is too bitter to eat in summer.

I still have some Swiss Chard, Kale and carrots to harvest. The cilantro have already bolted and I harvested and pulled out Oregon Sugar Pod peas the other day.

I made a lot of cuttings in December and January and planted seeds in March and many of them need to be potted up.

I planted my flower and nectar garden. But the birds are eating a lot of the seeds. So, I may start some of the flowers in containers and transplant them out. I am already running out of room.

It has been raining for the last couple of days, so the weeds are back with a vengeance.

[applestar]

Looking good @imafan!
I love seeing your garden

[imafan26]

The neighbor finally had the large African Tulip cut down. It was shading over half the back yard and dropping leaves and seed pods all over the place. I still have seedlings I haven't found yet. I had to move a lot of my potted plants out of the way.

I was amazed how the arborist was able to take down that tree and the large branches hanging over my yard and not hit my hoop house. I have a lot of sawdust and a few branches that fell in my yard. It has been raining for a few days, and it is still mostly cloudy, so far, nothing is really sun burned.

I have some lettuce, beans, tomatoes, and a few carrots to harvest. Some of the lettuce is starting to bolt. I planted my second set of beans too close to the first so the harvest time is over lapping. The next succession of beans is starting to flower. I think I need to extend the time between the succession more.

I just picked the first cucumber from the 4th planting of cucumbers this year. I do need to get another pot set up for the next one. But, first I need to put the all the pots back in place. I have put half of them back, but the citrus and sweet potatoes still have to go back. I have to clean the back of the bed and sweep the weed block first. A lot of the containers need attention, but I don't have time to deal with them now.

I have a club sale on May 11, and I have some plants I want to donate for the sale. That should free up some space. I still have more seedlings to up pot and plant out. I have some gomphrena, lavender (some died), rosemary, culantro, Jalapeno's and some herbs. I did not start the tomatoes on time. I can do that for the next plant share.

I have more cuttings of lavender, citrus, gomphrena, assorted sweet and hot peppers, basil, oregano, and some flowers to pot up or transplant. My coffee is making berries again, and it survived the tree trimming ( I was worried because It cannot be moved) It may not like being in the sun though. I did take cuttings from it. I planted some seeds a month or so, but seeds can take months to germinate. I dug up some seedlings I think may be coffee. They don't look like the usual weeds and there were coffee beans all around them. Seedlings will take 10 years to produce berries. I have had this coffee tree for years and it only started flowering a few months ago.

[imafan26]

I am still putting the yard back together. I still have to move the bigger pots back. I counted my citrus trees. I have 15 now. One was a goner. ONe of the 15 trees, the graft died, so I only have the rootstock. I will have to regraft it again. I have several citrus cuttings and a few seedlings of calamansi and tangerine on the nursery bench. I have potted up a few of the seedlings. It will take at least a year for them to be big enough to think about grafting them. I found the missing tango in the bunch. I could not find it before. A couple of the trees need to be repotted and all of them need to be fed.

The good thing about citrus from cuttings. They fruit early. One of the cuttings bloomed in the perlite. They will not form a taproot, so it makes them better options for containers because they will stay small and not be inclined to punch through the container into the ground. They don't make good containers now. The plants have no problem going through the thin plastic containers that are available these days.

I am in harvest mode now. I have lettuce (too many for me to eat and no takers), bush beans ( thankfully, I do have takers and they can be frozen). The succesion planting of Poamoho and Provider beans are already blooming. I think I need to space out the successions more, to get a break from the beans. tomatoes ( many of them are falling and sprouting), Cucumber, I just harvested one from the 4th planting of cukes and I bagged 9 more cucumbers. There are still a few smaller cukes that need to be bigger to bag and more flowers. I just bought some new finder mesh insect bags that are lighter, so hopefully I can bag the cucumbers without breaking as many. It is why I wait for the cucumbers to size up, so the stems are stronger. The other bags are thicker and it is harder to get a good tight seal at the top of the bag because some of the cucumber cultivars have very short stems. The biggest pest of cucumbers for me are pickle worms and so far, they haven't made an appearance, but I know they will show up eventually.

The grape and red currant tomatoes are still producing, but look a little shabby now. Red Snapper has had a second life. It is a determinant, but did sucker and those suckers are now taller than the trellis about 4 ft and have flowers. Red Snapper is a beefsteak tomato I am trying for the first time that is TYLCV, TSW resistant and has good heat set. It is not resistant to fungal diseases but it survived powdery mildew and early blight. It isn't Brandywine, but one of the better tasting resistant tomatoes I have had. It has a little tang to it and the tomatoes are a good 8-10 oz. They can get bigger, but in my climate with the shorter days, tomatoes never get at big as they could get where you are. And they got more water from the rain and the fact that they were next to mustards that needed to be watered more often. Most of the disease resistant tomatoes I have, traded off flavor for resistance. Sun King was one of the better ones, but it has poor heat tolerance. I do have some seeds from the dwarf tomato project. I can grow those with net bags and if I am lucky, I may get some fruit.

I pulled out the beans from the 7 tier tower. They were starting to show leaf spots. I need to refurbish the tiers and replant them with peppers. I cannot plant them with beans because of the bacterial spot. The beans were clean, the spots were only on the leaves and they appeared after the last 3 days of rain.

I have a lot of weeds that sprouted from the rain. I pulled 4 buckets of spurge and purslane out of the flower bed. I still have some to go. If the weather holds up, I will Round Up the other weeds in the pathways, most of those are volunteer Rama basil, and tomatoes and weedy trees.

I have a club sale in a couple of weeks so hopefully, it will make some room in my yard because I have more cuttings and seedlings to pot up.

There's a lot to do in the garden. I am enjoying it a lot, but I still am limited by how long my knees and back can take it, so it is slow going. I don't get as much done as I would like to.

[applestar]

Looks really good. I want to grow more in containers this year, but I have to think about irrigation because the rains won’t last and we’ll inevitably have drought.

I did resurrect all of the Sub-Irrigated tubs this year, and will use the shallow, plastic-lined trough bed I built last year and used for keeping fabric pots watered. BIL just got me extra bags of potting mix.

[imafan26]

The company that makes these towers came out with a tower with irrigation system and a cover. I could actually do the same thing by putting in my own drip tubing, but I have problems with ants and they are worse now that the house has been termite treated. Ants get in my timers and pretty much make them useless. My main irrigation system is still in place, but I have not used it in years because I hand water now and it uses less water. I also changed my soil mix since I am not getting as much rain with climate change. Most of my veggies now are in a 70/30 mix of peat/compost and perlite and I use cinders for succulents, cacti, and citrus.

I just did another soil test, so now I don't have to use any lime for a while on the main garden or any compost. My total carbon corrected was 12% (ideal 3%).

The most ingenious thing was that they came out with a cover for the reservoir. That is something I am really thinking about doing especially since all this time I have had to fish out all the leaves from the neighbor's trees out of the reservoir every time I water. To keep the ants from nesting in it. I am thinking more along the lines of a mesh screen instead of a solid cover.

It gets too hot and water costs too much to keep a lot of plants through the summer. Not to mention the pest pressure. So, I will only plant the drought resistant plants like cucumbers, okra, heat tolerant tomatoes, and beans and the long crops taro, sweet potato, herbs, and citrus. I do use the plastic mulch on the pots to keep the weeds down and it does conserve water.

I have replaced some of my peat moss with a plant based compost I found so my mix now is 4 parts peat moss 1 part compost, 2 parts perlite. Plus a handful of vermicast. It makes the ratio aprox. 70/ 1.5 / 28.5 peat/compost/perlite. This only works with this specific plant based compost that I found. Other composts still hold too much water and I would have to decrease the peat moss or up the perlite to use them. In the rainy season this is still too much for the tomatoes, they had problems from staying too wet, but when it did not rain, some of the larger pots would only need water a couple of times a week.

During summer, the plastic mulch and basically harvesting out most of the plants as they mature without replanting until fall (reducing the total plants I have to water) is my strategy. The flower garden now lives on rain. Normally, I only water the front yard once a month and I never water the grass. I did have to water more to get the flowers established and my crepe myrtle actually was starving and needed both fertilizer and more water, so it is looking better now.

[imafan26]

There are cold fronts moving west to east above the islands that actually hit the Pacific High and suck up moisture from the storms that are south of the islands. This brings rain almost every night and when the winds are calm, afternoon showers. The weeds are happy. The rain is too often to Round Up anything and it takes me an hour to weed a section and within 3 days the weeds are back. I have very persistant weeds, which is why I use glyphosate to start with. I have been pulling a couple of buckets at a time whenever its not raining, but the weeds are growing faster than I can pull them. I can only pull weeds early in the morning or in the late afternoon. It is too hot to work in the yard in the middle of the day.

I got some new composting worms from someone from my garden club. I traded cucumbers for a handful of worms. I still had some worms in my bin, but they were definitely not doing well. I made a new bin with smaller holes, so hopefully, I will have fewer escapees. I did drill holes on the bottom. The old bin had a drain plug and then larger holes and the worms fled after the rains came.

She also taught me how to bed my bin better. I normally put large pieces of brown paper, cardboard, eggcrates or newspaper in the bin. Along with occasional coffee grounds, and steer manure. She said I needed to shred the paper and the egg boxes. I also pull up whole plants, roots, dirt and all and she told me not to put roots or dirt in the bin, not even for grit. This bin is actually smaller than the one I had. It does make it easier to carry. The handles do not lock though. I did not realize this size does not have locks. I can still use the old bin as a planter. My strawberry bin actually is very brittle now and needs a change. I will have to dry out the worm bin and collect the vermicast that is in it. It was so wet, there was even mold growing in the bin. If I can find some of the escaped worms in the yard, I will put them back in the bin, or I can get a few more worms. At the moment I have more food than they need, so I have to freeze or store the greens a lot longer.

The cilantro bolted early in April. I have some seeds to collect. Interestingly, I did not realize how long cilantro will stay in bloom when it isn't pollinated. I will have to remove the ones inside the hoop house because they are still blooming and not making seeds and I need space for peppers and maybe another tomato. I will have to get the shade cloth over the hoop house as well now that it is getting hotter. I also ordered another agrifabric netting. The one on the hoophouse has a lot of holes in it. It keeps out the birds and the moths, but small stuff still can find its' way in.

I have a dill plant that is in the wrong place so I have to keep removing the seed heads. The dill needs to be at least 10 ft away from the other plants so it can attract the beneficial insects but not stunt the growth of nearby plants. Both fennel and dill do this when they are in bloom. Fresh dill smells so good.

I was able to sell the bozu, mini roses,some of the culantro, and half the Jalapeno peppers at the club sale. Someone took home the remaining culantro and I brought back 4 peppers, I have since given one of the peppers away to someone from my garden club, and I have given the peppers away to a couple of people.

Besides the cilantro, I have saved a couple of heads of lettuce to allow them to go to seed. The Schweitzer-Mescher lettuce seeds were hard to find, so I do want to save them and I have a red lettuce I am saving seeds from. I also saved seeds from the grape tomato from the other garden. I may save more of the Jalapeno seeds since I have quite a few ripe ones. I can give some of those seeds away at a seed share. The red currant and the other grape tomato I have have already reseeded. I am going to save some seedlings to replant.

Red Snapper is on its second life. These determinant tomatoes are amazing me. I never expected them to live so long or sucker and come up with a second flush of tomatoes. The Red snapper now is between 4-5 ft tall and it is full of flowers. It supposedly has good heat set. At 80-82 degrees now, setting should not be a problem. It is not totally resistant to fungal disease, but if managed early it does not spread. I planted some tomatoes from the dwarf tomato project and they were being "confined" by the insect netting bags. I really need to get more pots ready, but it is hard since I do have to dump most of the soil in the pots first.

I have replanted the 6 tier tower. I have mostly Jalapeno's ( I had a lot of them) on the bottom 3 tiers. I just planted a few new ones this week, one tier still has green onions. and the top 2 tiers I planted with contender beans that are just sprouting now. And I still have some provider beans to harvest. the pole bean is still growing and growing and it is trying to grow onto the plumeria tree.

I have wild tomatoes, culantro, rama basil, bittermelon, purslane among the many weeds in my yard. Including a few zinnias that popped up near the planter. I thought about moving them to the front yard, but I know there are nematodes around there.

I still have to take the 5 tier tower apart to redo it. I haven't decided what is going in it except maybe some of the bell peppers and probably more beans. The tower is good for strawberries, but it needs a cover or the birds, slugs, and beetles will all attack them.

It is feast and famine time again. I have surplus cucumbers and beans. I have 2 cukes in the refrigerator and a bag of beans with at least 4 more cucumbers coming soon and more beans ready to pick. I have a few carrots that are over 100 days old. Carrots don't store well in the ground here.

I should probably harvest the dasheen, but I have too many leftovers now and it does not keep very long. If they stay in the pot too long the mother corm will make keiki and rot. Dasheen can multiply really quickly.

I have a lot of dividing and repotting to do and I am so behind in everything. I wish I could get more done, but I actually only have a couple of hours a day that I can spend in the garden because I just get too tired to do more than that.

Which reminds me, I am going to have to freeze more beans, onions, and garlic.
I also have a small piece of cabbage that still needs to be used before it becomes worm food.

I am on day 3 of spaghetti. I will have to clean the frig and figure out what I have that needs to be used up next. At least, I used all six bell peppers this time, but a couple of onions and cucumbers were mush. It is really hard to buy fresh veggies. I can only get one vegetable at a time because if I get too many, I can't use it before it goes bad. Even things from the garden like the cucumbers can be more than I can eat. It is also why I have so many wild tomatoes, bitter melon, basil, and the sweet potatoes ae also trying to run under the mat. I even have coffee seedlings ( I think) sprouting between the pavers, while the coffee seeds I planted haven't made an appearance yet ( it can take months to germinate).

[applestar]

Sounds like a lot going on and keeping you very busy.

Leftover spaghettis good as omu-spaghetti — like omu-rice, you cook thin big circle or rectangle of beaten eggs (season as desired) and wrap the spaghetti inside it.

I’ve encountered “determinate” varieties that refuse to die — maximum sucker/re-growth I’ve had was Tatiana … 5x I think … this was including overwintering in the back of the family room. The final time, it was trying to go again, growing a new wispy shoot from the base of the stem after looking like it was completely dead, but I was busy with the new season’s seedlings so I just tossed the entire container outside in a shady spot to survive on its own. It did but just barely (it did produce one or two fruits). Otherwise, if I had taken care of it better, it might have grown on through the entire season again … who knows?

[imafan26]

The suckers from Red Snapper have exceeded the height of the original plant. It is around 6 ft now. Yesterday, I saw the first green fruit.

I plant mainly determinates now because of TYLCV. I can only bag tomatoes under 5 ft. I used to grow only indeterminates. My only indeterminate now is red currant which is resistant to TYLC and many more. I had always thought determinates would only set all of their fruit and have a limited harvest time (about a month) and then that would be it. This is the second determinate, Sun King, was the other that kept on going. Sun King, though turns out not to be very heat tolerant so it stopped setting fruit until September and it set a few more fruit before disease killed it.

Red Snapper is still going strong, so I will see how long it lasts. The drier weather may be better for it since it does have less blight and mildew resistance. Soon, I will get my shade cloth over the hoop house and see if it helps protect some of the plants.

It has been intermittently raining almost everyday. I still have to water, but it makes the weeds grow as well. I finally got out yesterday and trimmed my hedge. It was looking very shaggy. I still have to try to get into it to cut some of the Meyer asparagus fern that is growing through it. I was also able to spray a lot of weeds and I hit a couple of orchids, so I may lose them too. I have to learn not to get too close to those things. All this time I could only pull about 4 buckets of weeds when I could get out. My weeds are not annuals so leaving a segment or a root means they come back and they seed as well. I have a lot of purslane, sedge, nut sedge, wild tomato, wild rama basil, milkweed, goose grass, Fukien tea, allspice, and some other weeds I can't even identify. The newest one, is black nightshade.

On the bright side because it was a warm winter and everything bloomed out of season, I have had fewer insect issues. I had some whiteflies on kale and the beans in March and April which isn't bad, whiteflies are year round pests. I had thrips that destroyed orchid buds, also a chronic issue. I sprayed the honohono but I did not expect the dendrobium to bloom and it was too late to spray. I usually only spot treat for thrips to preserve their predators. I had soft scale on the citrus and broad mites which are also chronic problems. Broad mites on basil also a regular issue at thais time of the year. Now, I have black aphids on the garlic chives, green onions and beans in the 6 tier tower, but it has not spread to the other beans. I am controlling it with 3 different kinds of ant bait, alcohol and water. The chives always get attacked when they are being stressed with too much rain.

Red snapper has partial resistance to fungal diseases. It does get powdery mildew and blight but it only affects a few leaves so I can just pick those off. I have pulled out 2 of the older tomatoes, but I have several tomatoes growing wild in the yard. I did spray some of them yesterday that were growing where I don't want them to be.

My crepe myrtle had some kind of pest that happened after the Mauka fire. I never figured out what it was but I treated it with rose care and it has recovered. I still have a few dead branches to remove but it is blooming now. I will have to prune it later to control the height.

I have expanded the front flower garden. It still is not finished and there is still a lot of weeds and grass infiltrating the beds, but it is making progress. I just deadheaded and pulled out the old zinnias the other day. I had to pull the grass out of the edges because it is trying to take over.

I thought the cucumbers were going out, but I found a couple of more cucumbers the other day that were not bagged and amazingly, not attacked by pickle worm, so it may hang out a bit longer although it is definitely aging now.

I finally got a handful of beans from the Poamoho pole beans. It is a little too close to the plumeria. It wants to climb the tree. I may have to cut the plumeria branch.

I have replanted the 6 tier tower ( I stopped counting the water reservoir as a tier) . It has mostly jalapeno peppers, some shishito, green onions and I just planted the top two tiers with Contender and Maxibel beans. Some of the beans did not survive so I replanted with Cherokee Yellow Wax beans since they are more heat tolerant (and I have the seeds). I have harvested most of the Provider beans I planted under the pole beans.

I have taken the 5 tier tower apart. I am letting the lettuce go to seed. I had Schweitzer-Mescher, New Red Fire, Red romaine, and Butter Crunch. I still have to sift and re-blend these pots. Because of the supply and tariff issues. I am trying to again reuse some of the soil. I can only reuse soil that has not had any major disease or nutrient issues. I can check the pH with my 3 in 1 meter, but I am still guessing on the fertilizer. I do know, I can't get away without supplementing about every 3 weeks with nitrogen and kmag. Cucumbers are very sensitive to nutrient deficiencies.

I am glad I don't have a lot of pest issues except for the ants. I put out 3 different kinds of ant bait and Spinosad seems to have made the fastest difference. It has a corny name "Come and Get It" from Fertilome, but it is also the only one I can use in the vegetable garden because its main ingredient is spinosad and it is not supposed to hurt the lizards. As a bonus it also took care of the soil mealy bugs too. It does kill soil organisms, but I can wait and re seed the mixes with vermicast to help rebuild the soil web. The ants were in my mailbox, empty containers, media, planted pots, and in my house.

[imafan26]

Pictures from my garden today. After all the rain almost everyday, there are some fungal diseases. But for the most part the garden is doing well considering, none of the plants have been treated with a fungicide.

[applestar]

Sorry it took a bit before I could take time to sit and read through you post. Soooo busy this week!

Everything looks wonderful! And BIG! I really think your sense of how big plants — especially peppers, orchids, and citruses in this instance — should grow to …is likely different from mine. LOL

It also never fails to astonish that SOMEHOW your gingers and turmerics seem to be on same or similar schedule as mine — mine have been very slow to sprout as well.

Do you do anything with those wonderful blossoms? I’m just right now in the process of extracting dianthus pink blossoms in witch hazel astringent to make facial toner. I’m doing rose petals next.

(I cheat and do this the easy way by using store bought bottle of witch hazel astringent — since it can be safely used as is, all I’m going to do is soak the petals for a week or two to impart some of the beneficial properties including the wonderful scent.)

[imafan26]

I actually gave some of the zinnias to a friend for Memorial Day. Otherwise, I rather look at the flowers on the plant rather than in a vase or in my case in the refrigerator, because that is where they need to be kept to keep them alive longer.

If I had enough flowers I could make a lei, but I got three leis on May 30, so I did not have to.

I found out that gomphrena can technically be a shor-lived perennial here. It has been so long since I grew it, I forgot how long it lasts. I does make a good lei flower. Gomphrena is a lot like alyssum that it reseeds so easily that it acts like a perennial anyway.

The popcorn orchids are not the biggest orchids I have. They are about 24 inches tall, but the flower spikes can be 3-5 ft long. The vandas right now are the tallest orchids. The renanthera is at the top of my 20 ft plumeria tree. I did cut off the bottom of it to replant. I have other vandas that are 8 ft tall. The vanilla vine may be 6-8 ft long as well. Vanilla needs to be about 20 ft long for it to bloom.

My growing season is longer and a lot of thins are perennial here that are annuals elsewhere. However, my days are a lot shorter so things will not grow as fast as yours. Even when I plant a "giant" anything like a pumpkin, pepper, or tomato, there are not enough daylight hours for fruit to get to a giant size often. My plants are bigger than the ones at the MG training garden, but they primarily do organic gardening and so their plants are much smaller and they have more pests than I do so they are spraying more often. I hardly have to do any pest control because of the pollinator garden. My plants are not pest free, they will tolerate most pests because they are healthy and I don't spray for pests if the plants tolerate them in order to preserve predators.

[applestar]

LOLOL We ARE on parallel gardening schedule!

I saw this and had to chuckle —

[…]

I planted one container with roselle. It was overdue for planting, it was starting to bloom.
The second planter took me a couple of days to mix and fill. I will be transplanting a tomato into that pot hopefully today.

I moved more potting soil and fertilizer from the garage to the lanai. These 18 gallon pots take a lot of mix. I tested the pH of the containers and they are about pH 7.3 so I won't need to add much lime. I am using one cup of 6-4-6 citrus food, plus 2 tablespoons sulfate of ammonia and 3 tablespoons of k mag per 18 container. This is half the food that a new container would get, but I don't want to add too much phosphorus so I will have to supplement with sulfate of ammonia and k-mag later. This soil previously had okra growing in it.

[…]

I just planted my overgrown roselle babies started from seeds in 3oz individual containers. The location I had envisioned planting them turned out to be much shadier than I thought after the overhead persimmon tree leafed out, so I had been delayed while trying to figure out alternate location(s).

I ended up planting one in a giant tub container (with 2 eggplants), one in available corner of a bed of potatoes, and uppotting the other 4 temporarily 2@ in 1qt containers.

I thought I’d ask you — They were completely rootbound as expected and were starting to desperately grow into each others containers. Are they likely to recover?

What kind of container mix, pH, and initial fertilizer/schedule do they in fact need? I was rushed so just gave them Tomato Tone + bokashi juice today. I did mix a good amount of perlite in the big container of organic potting mix, raised bed mix + sand, and compacted used container mix (with earth worms). The temporary 1qts had winter tomatoes in them then had been left out exposed to elements since late March (added Tomato Tone).