Garden day or was that a concrete day?

We started the day off to Michael’s first breakfast consisting of baked eggs with bean dip, salsa, avocado, savory oatmeal, papaya, banana, mate, and turmeric tea.  It was a good way for the crew to start their day in the garden.  They spread compost, weeded the paths, and pulled out the old broccoli patch, planted string beans and soybeans.  In the greenhouse, they started some cucumbers, eggplant, cilantro and tomatoes.  According to the biodynamic calendar it is a “fruit” day.  Rich borrowed one of the guys to pour the footers for the storage container as well.  In the afternoon, Rich and Ryan were able to pour the footer for the pad under the solar batteries with two mixes in the cement mixer.  We did get a little rain today which is always nice.  All in all it was a good day on the farm.  Aloha.

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

garden day

Tuesday we did a lot of work in the garden, pulling out the rest of the old pumpkin patch, building new vegetable beds, and, of course, more composting and mulching. We also worked on some of the more remote corners next to the nursery, where some stray water hits from our sprinklers, rescuing some mystery peppers, casava, yakun,  rue, and prepping for tomato plants.

We also had to trim some of the taller papaya trees. If the trunks get too tall then we can’t harvest the fruit. While the birds certainly enjoy them, we like our papayas too, so we topped the trees for easier harvesting.

All photos © 2010 Dan Bloch

banana maintenance

This morning we worked trimming our banana grove. Banana leaves make great compost for banana trees, so we cut all the dry stuff and placed it around the trunks. We cut down trees that had already finished fruiting, since  once they’ve fruited that stalk dies and makes great compost.

We also did some work on the nearby papaya trees, trimming and composting around them as well.

We’re big fans of the film Avatar here, which we found both entertaining and meaningful in its environmental message. The design was pretty cool too. We noticed this drying banana leaf today, which reminded us of some of the wildlife in in the film.

All photos © 2010 Dan Bloch

Garden Day

We started the morning working in the community garden with Virginia.  We fed the soil with homemade compost, mulched the beds with bamboo chips, and weeded the paths.  Our compost is primarily made of grass and wood chips, and then we add organic seabird guano, Calpril, older compost (as an inoculant), and lots of water as we layer up the pile. We then finished the morning potting some tomato and jungle peanut in the nursery.

The strong trade winds are back and helped usher in a little bit of rain and our new cook.  We’re all looking forward to the meals that Jade will create using ingredients from our garden.

All photos © 2010 Dan Bloch

Garden Maintenance

Today was a garden maintenance day. With the help of the apprentices, we cleared and mulched the hill near the farmhouse, cutting down pigeon pea, gliricidia, and haole koa, all nitrogen fixers, and ti leaf and vitiver grass. We then placed the cuttings around the drip line of our fruit trees, including mango, papaya, coconut, starfruit, lychee, star apple, jaboticaba, the Malama variety of avocado, abiu (a custard like fruit), tangelo, and ice cream bean.

After a short break snacking on lilikoi (passion fruit), we did some gardening and weeding, trimming asparagus, topping basil, and pulling weeds out from around our amazon peanut, mispoona, taro, dill, beet, carrots, cilantro, parsley, broccoli, and squash.

All photos © 2010 Dan Bloch