Soon my garden will grow again!

Well winter is over and the sun is shining brightly today. With help from my sister, I felt inspired to get back out in the garden after a long hiatus.

We worked very hard today and got most of the weeds out.

Here is a shot from my instagram. Feel free to follow me :-) my user name is kristenhull.

My kale is still growing strong, despite my many months of neglect. It's become a tree, 2 ft. tall!

Winter Woes

I have been MIA lately, mostly because of work. But also due to winter weather. Here in Wahiawa, the rain has been so heavy and frequent, that it had ruined most of my crops that I had planted in November and December.

Now the weather is slowly starting to become sunnier, but it still manages to rain quite a bit. So its safe to say, winter is not quite over. Because off this, I've basically just left my garden to grow crazy and it is now dominated by weeds and yes, the dreaded California grass! Once spring arrives and brings the sun, I'll be back out there weeding and prepping for a new batch of veggies. For now though, I just have to wait.

In the next couple of days I hope to post a couple of things I've done in October with a nifty new gadget I purchased, add well as the last few things I've harvested before winter. Keep an eye out!

Melons can grow in Hawaii!

In my past post (click here to read) I talked about my melon growing woes, and how my melon plants were infested with leaf miners. I found a solution to these pests, and managed to plant them successfully in the garden. I have not kept rosemary near these plants in the garden, but they have done fine none the less. Perhaps the leaf miners are more prone to potted plants because I just recently started sunflowers, lettuce, and more kale. They have all been infested with leaf miners.

You will know when your melon plant is doing well, when they grow wild and crazy with vines, and their pretty yellow flowers are abundant! You will also see a few bees flying around, pollinating the flowers. The bees love the melon flowers, just as much as the basil!

Usually I see many bees out in my yard, all fluttering and hovering around my basil plants. More recently though I see them near my melon plants. - Which is a good thing, because I want them to pollinate and help my melons grow! To my surprise this morning, I finally found a melon growing nicely!

Now, like in my previous post about melon growing, the thought still comes back to haunt me...FRUIT FLIES. I am going to be keeping an eye out for those nasty buggers, to ensure that this, my one and only melon does well and survives! This little guy is the size of a softball right now, and I hope it survives the next month to grow into a decent sized cantaloupe. - Without bee stings, and rotting or getting eaten by fruit flies.

Here are some precautionary measures that I will take...

1) Place my melon in a brown paper bag, to prevent bee stings and other bugs from getting to them.
2) Occasionally letting it out of the paper bag to breathe, and also spray with a non-chemical bug deterrent.

What do you think? Anyone have success growing melons and battling the same pests? Please let me know what you have encountered and other possible solutions to my melon growing obstacles.

Saving Seeds Packets

Two plants that have bolted extremely well this year has been my parsley plants and my basil. My parsley plants are about 3 years old, and has never bolted this huge and this much. My basil plants are about 2 years old, and I let them bolt very heavily this year, despite growing basil that lacks flavor. - If you are a beginner gardener, you may not know this, but basil loses flavor and leaves grow much more slowly when left to flower/bolt. Same goes for parsley, and pretty much all other plants.

So, you might be wondering, how did I decide to start saving seeds? I figured eventually, anybody that falls in love with gardening, will probably move on to saving seeds. It took me two and a half years for my confidence as a gardener to "grow." Now I feel like I am capable of growing anything, weather and climate permitting of course.

I got the idea from none other than the hugely popular, idea-sharing site, Pinterest. I saw a very cute graphic of a seed pack template in my photo feed. This immediately sparked my interest. I clicked the link and ventured over to a very cute site, run by another gardener and blogger, Rosemary Beck. She has created these templates herself and has shared different ones on her blog.

All you have to do is print the image/pdf and viola! You have your very own seed packets that you can glue together yourself. The best thing of all, you can make them as you need them!

Carrots SUCCESS!

In my last post, I wrote about how stressful it was for me to try and grow carrots from seed. I also said I would update my blog on if I have finally succeeded after waiting another month. Well, I have waited, and my carrots have gotten much bigger. I have harvested a few of them. Here they are!

     

Here are some of my carrots next to a batch of radishes, that I also harvested.

Growing Carrots in Hawaii

I have heard that carrots don't grow well in Hawaii. I am stubborn and always have to try things for myself to really believe what I hear...if I am that determined to de-bunk the myth. At first I tried growing carrots in the ground. They failed terribly, and didn't even sprout from seeds. Next I tried growing them in containers. That worked MUCH better. My only problem was, I grew them in short little containers. - Not a good idea if you are planning to grow long carrots!


So I purchased a taller container, round, and black. I put soil in it and spread the seeds out across the top. Then I sprinkled it with soil again to cover the seeds lightly. I water daily, morning and night. I also add fertilizer to it twice a week to ensure it is getting nutrients, since most of them wash out from the pot with each watering.

 
Well it has been 2 months so far and my carrots are doing great! I pulled one out early to see how it was doing. - Still a tiny thing. I know I need to give them at least one more month to grow longer. But so far, so good. Carrots do well in containers, here in Hawaii. As long as you water frequently and feed it fertilizer.

Oh...and Bobo just loves them!

Melon Growing in Hawaii - Lots of Problems...

I have read on the gardening forum for Hawaii gardeners, that melons do not do well here. Big tomatoes like beef steak, squash, and melons do not do well because of bugs. Fruit flies eat the fruit and damage it. I have encountered leaf problems with my melons this summer. They are tiny bugs that go into the plant from the soil and eat through the leaves from the inside out. When I looked up this problem, I found that the bugs are called leaf miners.

As you can see on the left leaf, there are tiny white lines going all over it. That is where the leaf miner bugs attacked. This happened to all four of my melons that I have been growing in these cups. To solve the problem, I pinched off the leaves that were eaten through, then I placed my melon plants next to my rosemary plant. I also took some sprigs from the rosemary and placed them in the cup, on top of the soil. The rosemary keeps bugs away! To further test my experiment, I grew about six new melon plants. I placed the rosemary in the cup from the time they were very little sprouts. It has been about three weeks, and so far there are no bugs or more specifically, no leaf miners, attacking my newly planted melon seeds. When I plant these babies into the garden, I will need to remember to place rosemary around them as well. A garden is a giant playground for all sorts of pests and bugs, and I don't want them ruining my newly grown melon plants. Now the next thing I have to worry about is the  pesky fruit flies. I don't want those things to start eating the melons once they start developing. I'm going to have to go do some research on keeping them away.