Shop our Keauhou Farmers Market booth Online Tuesday-Thursday,
for Saturday pick-up Curbside at the Honalo Marshalling Yard.
keauhoufarmersmarket.com/online-market
My general approach to gardening in the tropics is to choose perennial food varieties that only need to be planted once and can be harvested for years. Most of the cuttings you receive today, you can stick directly into soil, preferably covering half of it, or at least 2 nodes which can form roots. If you need time, put them in a glass of water or plant them in nursery pots. The 2 varieties of taro can be placed on top of the soil where you would like them. The turmeric and galangal should be placed just under the soil. -Melanie
Garden Starts: Cuttings of Perennials
4/4/20 • 4/18/20 • 5/2/20 • 5/16/20
Greens
Green Okinawa Spinach (4 cuttings) Ideally, this takes over a whole garden bed. It makes for great salad or cooking greens.
Purple Okinawa Spinach (4 cuttings) Ideally, this takes over anwhole garden bed. It makes for great salad or cooking greens.
Kattuk (4 cuttings) Originally from Indonesia, this grows tall and needs to be pruned back into a bush as you harvest. The leaves are nutty, great in salads. You can eat the stems & fruits.
New Zealand Spinach Tree (2 cuttings) Grows in to a full size tree, so prune severely for continuous harvest. Cook the leaves in a change of water.
Tubers
Ili’aua white able Taro 10 months to harvest, you can eat the furled leaf as well cooked in a change of water. The leaf was developed for laulau. The corm is a large delicious starch. Cook in a change of water to remove the oxcylic acid. Replant all the keiki as you harvest.
Chinese Bunlong purple Taro 10 months to harvest, you can eat the furled leaf as well cooked in a change of water. The leaf is purple. The corm is a small. Cook in a change of water to remove the oxylic acid. Replant all the keiki as you harvest.
Cassava (1 cutting) Plant in a hillock as the tubers form underground. The stalk will grow 6 ft tall. The leaves are edible, cooked in a change of water. Peel off the pink layer of the tuber before cooking. 10 months to harvest. Replant a whole bed from the stem.
Spices
Kilamanjaro Basil- (2 cuttings) Grows into a 5ft bush. Prune as you harvest. Delicious raw, makes a great pesto or flavoring for cooking.
Turmeric (orange root) Great immune booster, anti-inflammatory or ingredient in curry. Leaves grow about 2 feet high. Harvest after 8 months and replant some. I love it grated in tea.
Galangal (white root) Grows 6 ft high. Harvest after 8 months and replant some. Classic ingredient in Thai Tom Kha soup. Remove after cooking. Lightly spicy and floral.
Garden Starts: Cuttings of Perennials
4/11/20 • 4/25/20 • 5/9/20 • 5/23/20
Greens
Brazilian Spinach (1 seedling) Ideally, this takes over a whole garden bed. A peppery salad or cooking green. It can be an understory plant in the garden, suppressing weeds.
Edible Cosmos (1 seedling) The greens and flower are great in salads. Will grow to a full size bush and reseed itself.
Tea & Coffee
Mamaki (1 cutting) This broad leaf bush makes a tea that is a good health tonic, but especially good for your lungs. Put a leaf in a mug, add boiling water and steep.
Red Hibiscus (1 cutting) The leaves and flower are great in teas and salads.
Kona Coffee (pula pula seedling) 3 years to fruit, but fun to have your own coffee. Small tree when properly pruned. The fruit husk can be dried into a tea that makes you sleepy.
Fruits
Tamarillo (1 cutting) This tree tomato grows easily into a small tree. It’s red fruit is great as a tomato or plum substitute. Don’t eat the peel. Salsa, salad dressing, or cooked.
Lulo (1 cutting) Naranjilla is a beautiful plant, except for the spines, and the fruit is sweet & sour like lilikoi, but the texture of kiwi. It’s in the tomato family. You can cook it, eat it raw or blend it into a juice.
Cacao (5 seeds) The fruit around the seed is a natural rooting compound. Put in a quart pot of soil, 1 seed length down. They will sprout quickly and be ready to plant out at about 2 ft or in 2 months. Makes a delicious fruit and superfood for your smoothies raw, or you can experiment with processing to chocolate.
Tubers
Sweet Potato (1 cutting) split this into 3 cuttings as long as 1 node goes underground for each. Make sure the soil is dug and compost is added for best tubers (about 10 months). Everywhere the vine makes roots, tubers will form. The leaves are edible cooked and raw while you’re waiting for the potatoes.
Sugar Cane (1 cutting) Lay this on the ground, and it will shoot up to 6 feet. Harvest uprights for a sweet treat that is good for your teeth.