New Era

Today, I am showing Nathan how to update and keep the blog going for all you loyal viewers. We have certainly been remiss about adding entries, but are very happy to get it going again. This morning on the farm the crew was in the nursery cleaning malay dwarf bamboo for shipment to Oahu. We are now ready to ship out the 200 2 gallon Malay Dwarf plants.
We do have many new apprentices now, including another cook, whom agrees with our “localvore” diet.

The pictures illustrate the work we have been doing to create a space to build a quonset hut to house the bamboo soaking vessel.

18th Annual Taro Festival

Once again, the East Maui Taro Festival was a great success in Hana. We had excellent weather and lots of Hula and music. Whispering Winds Bamboo had a booth at the fair where we sold some bamboo and talked to a lot of people about what we do. It’s a great event for us because it is so close and creates a presence for us. Some of the more popular things to do there is eat poi and buy taro to plant or eat. The Taro Festival is really a venue for promoting Taro and its cultural practices.

Photos by Ryan Zucco

peach palm

Apologies for the delay in updating the blog, we’ve been working overtime on the new Whispering Winds website. We’re very excited about the new site and hope to share it with you soon.

Earlier this week we went out to fertilize our peach palm trees in the lower orchard. Peach palms, or Bactris gasipaes, are known in Central America as the favorite Pehibaye, and produce a wonderful potato-like fruit that is very flavorful. Peach palms are also a great source of heart of palm, which can be harvested sustainably since the tree grows in clumps rather than as a single trunk.

We learned how to clean heart of pal,m and enjoyed them for lunch the next day with some ginger.

Photos by Thackary Grossmanksy

Hirose Harvesting

This morning we went back up into the hirose grove to finish last week’s harvesting. We collected around 100 good poles, trimmed the branches, and put the remainder through our chipper.

This weekend we went to our neighbor’s annual Valentine’s day chocolate party, and had a great time.  There was a huge spread of all kinds of chocolate treats, including some great raw chocolate pie and mocha fondue, but we’ll probably stay away from chocolate for a few days – too much of a good thing is indeed possible even here in Kipahulu.

All photos © 2010 Dan Bloch

air layering

Today we worked in the nursery learning new propagation techniques with Bambusa chungii, focusing on air layering. Air layering is a method used to sprout new roots from the bamboo culm itself, rather than from the root system. First you top (cut the tops off) the bamboo and cut back all the new shoots. Wait a few weeks and then come back to check if new branching has happened below the cut top. If so, then wrap the new branches with sphagnum moss, thoroughly soak with water, and wrap with tin foil. Leave the bottom tight and the top slightly open to collect rainwater.

With any luck, you should see some new root growth after a few months to two years (it depends on the rain, sun, and nutrients). Then cut down the culm below the moss/tin foil blob, trim the new branches that have their own root growth, and repot, making sure to trim extra leaf and branch growth, since the new roots can’t support too much greenery.

After repotting the air layered chungii, we returned to our B. textillis Gracillis from last week and trimmed extra branch growth, to keep from overtaxing the roots.

We also dug up some Gigantochloa atroviolacea, one of our beautiful black bamboos, that was taking over the nursery, while our culinary specialists climbed up a starfruit tree to harvest lunch.

All photos © 2010 Dan Bloch