In with the old...in with the new

We are getting so many plants and new sprouts that there is a constant lack of planters. Inspired by a summer in Oregon, we decided to get a little crafty. A trip to the local thrift shop kitchen department ended in a new collection of creative pots!

In addition to new plant holders, there are a couple of new plants as well. We went along the Pu'u Pia trail in Manoa looking for bounty. The hike was lush and green, and no one else was on it. I managed to pick several berries and seeds--update on that forthcoming! Adam wants to bonsai something, and he found the cutie pictured here:

The other addition to our collection is a mini European Christmas tree! I love the idea of a living tree. If the climate doesn't prove too warm, we should have the same beauty to celebrate the holidays with next year. The tag says it can grow to 15 feet. Right now it's about 15 inches tall, so we will see what happens...

The Magic Sink (Hale-alula!)

It's been a while since I had a chance to blog, due to the fact that our camera-to-computer cord is broken. But thanks to a lovely new card reader, I'm back in the game! And boy: a lot has happened out in the garden. Seeing as how the holiday season is upon us, it seemed appropriate to write an optimistic story about a magical plant-reviving sink.

As you may recall, our native Hawaiian alula was completely on the fritz. Since the last post, it lost every single one of its leaves, and the flowers shriveled and died without producing any seeds, despite my best effort to pollinate. The trunk semi-caved in upon itself and the fate of this plant seemed sealed. However, I refused to give up on it. Since it was too depressing to look at it every day, we moved it out back...to the sinks.

There are two cement sinks in the backyard; I don't know where they came from or why they're there. But they seemed like a good (perhaps final) resting place for the alula and the cacti that Michelle left behind. We threw some soil in there with tons of rocks so that these desert plans would get good drainage. Many weeks passed with no progress, but slowly things started to change.












The cacti perked up, and regained their color. Two of them even now have flowers. This fellow was literally teetering back and forth in its pot and I was absolutely convinced of its passage to the next world. Now it has new growth (see the bumpy little babies) all over it. And the real Christmas miracle: the alula is even coming back to life. The leaves are growing greener and longer every day. Cactus on a baseball bat, I've missed you.

Thanks Santa.

No Hawaiian, No Aloha

Our biologist friend Dan gave us a couple of lovely native (endemic) plants when we moved into our new apartment. The Ihi plant only grows in the wild on Molokini, a bird sanctuary and snorkeling spot off the Maui coast. The Alula plant is critically endangered: I did a little online research, so I am not sure how reliable these statistics are, but some count less than 20 of these in the wild. The Alula is commonly known as the "cabbage on a baseball bat". Can you guess why?

The Ihi was extremely healthy when we received it: so much so that it was constantly producing offspring. They were appearing in the soil of the Ihi itself, as well as coming up in all the nearby plants. I sprouted several of the cuties and gave them away to anyone who was willing to take one. I even kept a single baby for myself.

One lesson that I have learned regarding personal relationships is that often times, those things that the other person requires are completely different than what you yourself enjoy. I need to take this lesson and apply it to my plants!! I'd imagine that if I were a plant, I would like lots of sun, a big pot, and plenty of water. So I gave both the Ihi and the Alula daily water and upgraded them to large pots full of soil. And they both now teeter on the brink of death.

These plants apparently thrive more when they are in rocky soil, as they live (or die) it the wild hanging from cliff faces in dry parts of the island. As of last week, the Aulua leaves had turned from green to yellow. They have now completely fallen off, and so did the first crop of flowers. Now I just have a baseball bat with three mite-infested flowers hanging on by a thread. I am hoping for a miracle: we hand-pollinated the flowers, and hopefully some seeds will appear. Perhaps if I dehydrate the plant and put more rocks in the pot it can come back to life, but maybe the second generation will be the one to carry the torch.

Mountain Apple, City Apple

A couple of weeks ago, our friends Justin and Amy came to visit from Tennessee. We had so much fun experiencing all the beautiful beaches and hikes that Hawaii has to offer. One morning we went up to Manoa Falls to experience some of the jungle. Along the hike, we saw incredible plant growth--really, it was overgrowth. Right at the falls, I noticed a mountain apple tree. We were joking about how I don't know much about plants, but I seem to know about all the edible ones. After looking more closely at the area around the tree, I observed some seeds that had fallen and sprouted! I carried back two sprouts, carefully shrouded in leaves and mud to protect them on the ride home.

I planted the seed in a small container, and kept it very wet and shaded. I thought that perhaps it was a lost cause when after a week or so there was no apparent growth. However, patience paid off in this case: the shell eventually split open and a sprout emerged!

The other seed taken from the hike has split in two, reveling a green core. I believe there is a green root down in the soil, though the sprout has yet to rise from the top of that one. In any case, looks like we are going to have a "city apple" tree soon!

Kaimuki Sprouts

So much has happened since my last blog...most notably, we have moved back to Hawaii! When I first got into gardening and sprouting as a hobby, we were living in Tennessee. I became used to a certain level of challenge regarding growing and maintaining plants.

When we got settled in to our new place, I was of course eager to get some greenery. On a major City Mill run, I picked out a few starts, including bittermelon, or goya (as it is known in Okinawa). This fruit is popular in parts of Japan and India, and it is a personal favourite of mine. I have been wanting to grow it for years, but my attempts at planting the seeds in Nashville were unsuccessful.

After just a couple of days I was amazed at the growth of the start! It got quickly out of control and needed the help of some bamboo trellises found on a jungle hike. Hawaii, it turns out, is very easy to garden in!

A small challenge nagged at me, however. The plant itself was undergoing rapid growth, and it kept producing flowers. But the flowers kept falling off of the vine. I tried spreading pollen between flowers, which has worked in the past for our peppers. With this technique failing, I decided to take a visit to our neighbor's house where there is an amazing goya vine growing all along their front fence. I took a single flower and used it to try to cross-pollinate mine. I am not sure if some helpful insect came around right at that moment, or if the trick worked, but either way, a mini-goya appeared just days later.









I have been reading about growing vegetables in Hawaii. According to this book, it should take 90 days after planting to get a bittermelon fruit. So far we are ahead of plan!

Oregon 'shroomin'

Because of the fact that we moved away from Nashville and left behind all of our plants, I haven't been able to blog much this summer. We are currently residing in Oregon, enjoying our period of rest and transition. A couple of days ago we partook in what felt to me like a very West coast, hippie activity: foraging for mushrooms. Adam has a friend who is quite into 'shroomin'. He had done some research into where to find morels and invited us to join him in picking. We had a nice long car ride where we were tutored on the fine points of where wild mushrooms grow and how to spot the real from the poisonous.

It felt great to get out into the woods. I was honestly a little skeptical about how much I would enjoy 'shroomin'. However, once we got out and saw our first wild morels, I was hooked! There is something exciting about spotting one, and it is satisfying to bend over and cut it loose. We found them in all sizes, although Adam definitely got the prize of the day.

Morel mushrooms can only be found wild. Even when you see them for sale in the store, someone has gone out just like we did and foraged for them in the woods. We saw dried morels for sale at $235/lb! We were able to make three delicious meals with our bounty: steak with sauteed morels, burgers topped with grilled morels, and pasta with morel marinara sauce. Now I see why morels are considered to be one of the world's most delicious mushrooms!

Reduce, Reuse, Re-planter

On an impulse buy at the beer/gardening store, Adam recently purchased a book for me about sprouting. I have enjoyed reading and learning from it. One of the suggestions made there that I have taken to heart is to reuse materials for planters. You may remember in a previous post that I had taken a jade clipping and placed it in water, hoping for it to sprout. Luckily for me, it did start to grow roots!

So taking the advice of my new text, I planted it in an old lamp shade. It was perfect timing: an old IKEA lamp purchased in Toronto has just died permanently, so what could be better than recycling the parts?

The weather has been getting warmer here, and I have hopes that today I can move all my plants outside. The pepper has been out for a while, and despite some near freezing evenings, it has survived. According to the weather forecast, the nights are getting warmer and we should be past any danger of frost. My only and greatest fear now is that a squirrel should dig up one of my lovelies. So everyone send wishes to guard against them!

The lamp shade was not the only everyday object that got reborn into a planter. We had just finished a large Kikoman shoyu (soy sauce) container around the time that the avocado was sprouting. After drilling a couple of holes in the bottom, it is a perfect place for the avocado tree to grow! Look how beautiful it is now.

waiting for forever

Does anyone remember back in September that I blogged about finally managing to sprout an avocado? Well, the story of how that ended up is a little bit sad. After trying for months to sprout an avocado seed, I enthusiastically placed the sprout outside in a nice big pot that was purchased especially for the occasion. Imagine my surprise when after just a couple of days, a squirrel dug up my beautiful seed and attacked it viciously! There was no chance to save it, as it was cracked in half completely.

Although the setback was quite depressing, I did not give up! For the last half year period, I prepared every avocado I ate--which ended up numbering quite a few! The fact that it was winter, and therefore cold and dry even around the house, did not help my cause, I suspect. However, Adam had the bright idea to put a seed in the bathroom, at least every time someone took a shower.

Low and behold, I have finally attained another sprout! I planted the seed and taproot into the soil, and after a week or two, the sprout emerged from the top. From what I understand, my most difficult days are behind me, and now the tree should grow easily and quickly. This one is staying inside, away from pesky squirrels and other animals, at least until it is much more mature. It is growing rapidly: it is already a few inches higher than in the picture. Of course, it can be 20 years until I get an avocado fruit, but for me, it was all about the sprout!

the best burgers, made even better

In addition to sprouting baby plants, I have found a new way to explore my hobby: sprouting just to eat! This is again a remnant of our holiday trip to Oregon: what a great adventure that was for my planting! The first thing you need to start sprouting your own food is a clear mason jar with a "sprout lid". This is a special lid with tiny holes poked all in it. Since we had procured a jar and several varieties of sprouts in Oregon, I went to online to amazon.com and ordered the lid. I mean, can't argue with free 2-day shipping, right? Once we returned home, I was so excited to get some sprouts started.

I checked my amazon.com account while still in Oregon, and it said that the lid had been delivered, but upon arrival in Nashville, we could not find it. After checking in the bushes, with the neighbor, and the petsitter, I complained to amazon, and they sent another one along. Spring has finally sprung here in Nashville, about one week ago, but at the time of all this, it was cold, dead winter. The sprouting really helped!

You take the dried seeds, and place a couple of spoonfulls into the jar. Cover them with water, and let them sit overnight to start. Then it is just a matter of rinsing 3 times a day in the sink, and after a week or so, you got some lovely sprouts growing.
It is so fun to watch the volume increase every day until the jar is just full to the brim. I have sprouted 3 kinds of edibles: mung beans (for pad thai), alfalfa (for salads or burgers), and "crunchy mix". This is a mix of green peas, lentils, and azuki beans. The key to a good crunchy mix is to sprout them just enough--a sprout should poke out of each seed, but not grow very long. The best is when they are a little crunchy! So just a couple of days on this particular delicacy.

What I loved about eating the alfalfa sprouts was that we had them with our "best burger in the world" recipe and some homemade beer! It doesn't get much better than this! By the way, are you wondering at all about amazon's mis-delivery? After the snow melted, I went back into the bushes; I got way up in there...and I found the first lid! So now we have the possibility of double sprouting...all the way!

It's my pine in a box

My brother always gives me really generous Christmas gifts, and they are normally at least a month late. Hey, that's how he rolls, and I don't ever expect anything, so imagine my surprise when I received the following in the mail. Among a cute scarf, and some nice candles and lotions, there was a tiny little box. It was marked "seed kit". Now, I don't know if this was an impulse buy that by coincidence turned out to be the perfect gift, or if he somehow found out about my sproutrageous-ness. But in either case, this little seed kit is prepared in order to plant a Ponderosa pine tree! How amazing is that? If I can get this to sprout and grow successfully, my brother better have himself some kids for me to pass it down to, because this tree with outlive us all. So we opened up the kit, and inside were some seeds, and a pot with a funny "magic pellet" inside. Supposedly, all you do is add water, and the magic pellet turns into peat. As it normally goes, things did not work out so easily. But eventually, after experimenting with different temperatures of water and containers for the peat pot, we got it going. Then we simply planted the seeds, and now we wait. According to the box, since it is winter, it should take about 8 weeks to obtain a sprout. Once that happens, we should get a larger pot, fill it with soil, and plant the peat pot in there directly. Adam made me promise that he can bonsai this little pine tree. It should turn out to be one cute sprout baby/baby tree!!!

TSA-OK

I have already written a little about our sprout-rageous adventures this past Christmas in Oregon. In this post, the fun continues! Once Adam's parents learned about my inclination towards planting, they tried to find ways to encourage the hobby. As we were packing our bags to come home, Adam's dad suggested that we bring a couple clippings from their aloe and jade plants. What is really cool is that if you take a small piece of these plants, you can re-pot it and get it to grow again! I was a little nervous about passing through airport security with our live luggage, but it's legal, and I was assured that the TSA agents in Eugene would understand. So we threw the plants into ziplock bags, and headed home.

The aloe is super cute, and we put it in the elephant planter. This is a pot obtained at a yard sale here in Nashville on a total whim. It is small and good for starting sprouts, but it has no drainage, so is usually just a temporary starting place. Let's hope it takes root!Next on the agenda was the jade clipping.
What is cool about this plant is that there
are two ways to start it, and we are trying both.
One approach is to plant the leaf facing downward into the soil. The other possibility is to take a sprig of the plant and immerse it in water. Because it is still winter, the development may be slow. It's been a couple of weeks and there are no visible roots, but I have complete faith that these little cuties will turn into viable plants!

New Year, new hobby

Happy New Year everyone! Adam and I are back in Nashville now, after spending the holidays with family out in Oregon. We had a lovely time together, and the fun included a visit to the Mill Ends park in Portland, which is one of the world's smallest! Every year I make an effort to try a couple of things that I have never done before. If anyone remembers, last year that meant making a sweet potato pie and doing tye-dye. This year, I decided to make yogurt. I have a few friends here in Nashville who are from India, and they all like to make their own yogurt, which is where I originally got the idea to try this project. After getting the down-low on the how-to from these friends, and looking up more details online, I was ready to go. Eugene is the perfect place to attempt this feat, because it seems that making yogurt is popular among hippies as well as Indians!

I should mention that I realize that making yogurt isn't exactly the same as sprouting a plant, but it is similar in the sense that it is growing something. And come on, it's winter, so I hope you will give me a break. :) The first step to making yogurt is to get some (not skim) milk, and bring it to around 185 degrees. We did this carefully in a saucepan. Next, you let it cool down to around 110, and then add a bit of yogurt. We had Nancy's for our starter, which is a really good Oregon-based brand. Then comes the tricky part. You need to keep it warm overnight. I had heard from my friends in Nashville that you can just wrap a scarf around it and let it sit for a few days. This produces a thinner (Indian style?) product. Most American websites suggest keeping it pretty darn warm so that it will be done after just one night. We got out the heating pad, covered the jar with a tea cozy, and put on a scarf and a hat to finish! The issue is that the heating pad has a safety feature which makes it automatically shut off after an hour. I was so proud and appreciative that everyone teamed in to keep the yogurt warm: we each got up once in the night to check on it, and turn the heating pad back on. I had been warned that the first time you attempt to make yogurt, it will likely not turn out at all. So in the morning, despite all our hard work, my expectations were low. Imagine my surprise and delight when I tipped the jar and found a solid product inside! It was sooooo delicious and healthy: nothing beats homemade.