Duff is a plant adviser, educator and consultant with an organic farm in Captain Cook. Peacock manages Kealakekua Bed and Breakfast on Napoopoo Road. Elevitch is a local author and editor of books on sustainable agriculture in Hawaii and Pacific islands.
BY DIANA DUFF, EMILY PEACOCK AND CRAIG ELEVITCH | SPECIAL TO WEST HAWAII TODAY
Last May, Emily Peacock, helped by Jean Hull, began her new project called Farm to Fork Hawaii (farmtoforkhawaii.com), fulfilling a personal passion to offer delicious dinners from locally grown products. She is now planning her fourth dinner for Feb. 17.
Farm to Fork Hawaii is a unique and elegant dining experience highlighting and supporting Hawaii’s agriculture and chefs. The locavore dinners include a casual conversation between courses about the growing and preparation of the food.
At the first Farm to Fork, Chef Daniel Theibaut created a menu incorporating veal from Kealia Ranch, produce from Earth Matters Farm and 100 percent Kona coffee from Homestead Coffee. Greg Smith, of Earth Matters, spoke about his farm and food sustainability in Hawaii, pointing out that as an island community, we can’t look to one farmer with 13,000 acres to create our food security, instead we need 13,000 1-acre farms to ensure our community’s sustainability.
Smith’s remark inspired Peacock to action. She is creating her own 1-acre farm at her bed-and-breakfast on Napoopoo Road. She plans to plant “1 acre in one year, one square foot at a time.”
Peacock is not the first, nor hopefully the last, to imagine the benefits of growing some of her own food. Craig Elevitch, an agroforestry specialist based in Holualoa, has been developing a 0.33-acre plot that focuses on perennial tropical food plants.
Perennials have the advantage of requiring little maintenance after establishment. The idea behind the project is to demonstrate that a small perennial home garden can produce much of a family’s food needs with very limited input of labor or materials. Many tropical plants that are well adapted to Kona such as breadfruit, banana, papaya, citrus and other fruits and nuts can produce hundreds of pounds of food per year, and require little input. As many people experience, fruit trees often provide much more than a family can consume.
Similarly, many tropical perennials such as cassava and sweet potato produce abundant and nutritious edible leaves. There are a range of tropical perennial legumes, such as winged bean and certain lima bean varieties that produce large quantities of beans and, in the case of winged bean, edible leaves and flowers.
Through the Hawaii Homegrown Food Network, hawaiihomegrown.net, Elevitch’s project will produce a manual for abundant perennial edible gardens in 2012.
Tropical
gardening helpline
Celia asks: My coffee is ripening late this year and the last round of coffee I picked was more than 75 percent infested with coffee berry borer. I only have a few trees and I am leaving soon for several months to travel. Should I hire someone to harvest while I am gone or should I remove all the cherries now?
Answer: I am getting lots of questions regarding the coffee berry borer as the coffee harvest is drawing to a close. Several websites can help you answer questions. Visit ctahr.hawaii.edu/site/CBB.aspx or ctahr.hawaii.edu/site/CBBManage.aspx for the latest information from the University of Hawaii or go to a meeting of the Kona Coffee Farmers Association to find out what other farmers are doing. Its events are listed at konacoffeefarmers.org. Andrea Kawabata, UH Cooperative Extension agent, can also provide information and advice at 322-4984.
My advice to Celia is cut your losses and strip your trees before you go. You could just do an early pruning now. Be sure to put all the damaged cherries in a thick or double black plastic bag and place it in a sunny spot that gets hot. The coffee berry borer cannot survive in temperatures over 140 degrees but the heat needs to be maintained for a while to kill them. Other recommendations are to burn your prunings, but you’ll need to get a special agricultural burning permit. The other reasonable alternative is to bury the infested cherries.
What is important is to get all the beans off the trees and the ground at the end of this season, leaving no cherries, green, red or “raisins” where the berry borers can set up house.
Raisins are over-ripe or dried, blackened coffee cherries and provide an ideal breeding ground for the pest. Dozens can be found in these leftover beans on the trees or on the ground. The coffee berry borer can live there until next season and get a head start on your green cherries as they are developing.
Good sanitation practices now will likely mean less damage next season.
Email plant questions to konamg@ctahr.hawaii.edu for answers by certified master gardeners. Some questions will be chosen for inclusion in this column.
Duff is a plant adviser, educator and consultant with an organic farm in Captain Cook. Peacock manages Kealakekua Bed and Breakfast on Napoopoo Road. Elevitch is a local author and editor of books on sustainable agriculture in Hawaii and Pacific islands.