Natural Farming Hawai’i

http://naturalfarminghawaii.net

Monthly Meeting Minutes

Tuesday, January 11th 2011

6pm @ Komohana Ag Research Center, Hilo

~45 people in attendance

Current and Recent Events

• It’s a new year and days are getting longer, so get planting!
• Members report that the Cassava given out last month at the meeting is growing and doing well in a variety of situations; Including Kaiwiki @ 1500 foot elevation; Also putting out roots in straight cinder soils
• Coming up this weekend (1/15/2011) workshop at Boys&Grils club on chicken feed.
• Basic Seminar presented by Dr. Park on Jan 21&22nd by CGNF @ Hilo Korean Church.
• Dr. Lee came last month to talk about the health of Natural Farming; full video of the presentation is available online; Well worth checking out. [ed. his presentation was the reason I got involved in Natural Farming]; the lecture is being presented free to all.
• KTA will begin carrying 5-10lb bags of IMO4 for home use; Sample it, and if you like it, come learn how to make your own.
• Kaika’s project to raise 160 chickens should be completed sometime this month. 12x30 NF Chicken farm. Most important thing is maintaining the living floor. Chickens need fresh grains and a varied diet to lay consistently. Grit is in the IMO4. Silage- chicks have in the orchard, purslane has protein when fermented. Hoping to make a months worth of feed at a time and store in 5 gal buckets. Supplementing feed with black soldier flies, and fruit flies from traps with attractant, seeds from albesia. Coconut meat has the same protein as corn. They will be raising Aracana breed; Healthier than other breeds.
• Papa Jeno says Leghorn breed is the best for eggs and the roosters are friendly enough to cruise around with you.

Recipes

• Kim Chang suggests from Master Cho:

• Instead of digging up wainaku grass and ruining the soil structure, cut the ground into small squares two shovels wide by one shovel deep, put imo in the cut and flip the square over so the grass is on the bottom. This invites the worms in, eliminates the grass, and maintains a “no-till” environment. The wound you created will heal quickly.

• Cardboard is hard to use to suppress grass in growing area because it limits the water to the plants you want. Cardboard also seems to invite pigs.
• Soak banana Stalk in FPJ for 3-4 hours, then feed to pigs.

Crop Discussion of Banana

• Presentation Available here on interesting facts
• Marvin at Kapua Farm Lots; Sells at Maku’u Market, has about 35 varieties of banana. Also sells trees along volcano highway at the old Island Fruits location in Mountain View on Saturdays.
• CTAHR report on bananas estimates profitability at $171 an acre for growing banana. Need 29,000 lbs per acre to break even.
• Dr. Park mentions that banana cultivation can be made better by realizing the true value of the crop, not just looking at the banana fruit, but also turning the stumps into useful natural farming inputs. Pigs can be fed ⅓ of their diet from banana stalk.
• Don’t dig holes to put in banana. Just mound up soil, then put the banana, then mound up more soil around the banana. may have to brace the tree with branch so it stands, when roots hold tree up, remove; Don’t bury banana deeper than 6 inches, or you are choking it, may also fill with water and drown.
• Bury animal carcasses under banana. Also banana can handle raw human waste in reasonable amounts.
• Planting bananas in rows makes it easy for bore worm to ruin whole crop, instead plant in irregular pattern and at larger distances. Best to inter-plant with other crops in poly-culture.
• Bananas may dies because of lack of potassium when fruiting. Notorious problem in hawai’i. see more here.
• Way to farm is do not let clump just “go”. to maximize fruit production prune to 1 adult bearing fruit. 1 adult about to bear. 1 or two keiki.
• Thinning bananas; either remove corm with shovel and o’o bar or cut about 6 inches above the ground. otherwise will regrow and take energy from fruiting part of plant.
• Hug a banana tree when it is windy to hear the water moving around in the tree!
• Soak the flowers in salt water, rinse, saute in butter and it will taste like mushrooms.
• Some varieties of bananas have the fruit inside the stalk.
• Popoulu is a great cooking variety. Also cowhorn banana is another grinds cooking banana.
• The staple food of menehune was banana.

Sugar Cane (Ko) will be the crop open for discussion next time. We will also have a presentation on Little Red Fire Ants.

Next Meeting February 8th 2011

Questions? email drake@localgarden.us for more info.

+ May the Microbes be with you.