GoFarm Hawaii and Updates

I came across a local program called GoFarm Hawaii that offers a series of classes and meetings to train new farmers and prepare them to farm commercially.  I thought it fortuitous that the first meeting for the Windward Community College session, called AgCurious, fell on the evening of Adjournment Sine Die (last day of the legislative session), creating a perfectly timed segway to a potential endeavor during the interim and perhaps beyond.  

I applied to the AgXposure program, which is only 4 Saturdays of exposure to farm life.  After that, I have to apply to AgSchool, where I'd learn the ins and outs of farming for 4 months.  I'm really excited about the prospect of learning to farm but nervous about my ability to do it and the time commitment, especially with other things going on life.  If I get the opportunity, though, I'll definitely do my best to make it happen.  If I don't get in, I'm still thrilled at the thought that people are learning to commercially farm.  Hawaii may be a long way away from food self-sufficiency, but programs like this provide great support for people who are considering the leap of faith into a farm business.

While I wait to hear about the program, I'm just maintaining my lanai garden and learning about crop rotation.  I'm having pretty good success with propagation, so I think I'll experiment with more propagation from cuttings.

I thought my elephant ear plant was dying, but then I noticed this new leaf unfolding :)

Now for some bad news -- I decided to get rid of most of my worm bin because of those awl snails that were propagating in the bin.  One of the Master Gardeners suggested leaving a jar of beer in the bin to attract and drown the snails, but that didn't work.  It seemed impossible to manually pick out all of the snails from the bin and, with the threat of rat lungworm disease looming, I thought it best to just start from scratch.  I did save a few worms that are in a new bin, but it's possible that some awl snails or snail eggs are in the new bin.  I guess I'll just have to wait and see...

In the meantime, here are some pics of stuff growing in the garden:

After success growing these for the wedding, I decided to grow more zinnias for Mother's Day.

This is my mystery plant.  I'm sure I planted something intentionally but can't remember what I planted.  It reminds me of the spinach plant I grew a while back, but I didn't plant any spinach.

Bird's eye view of my ginger/garlic/radish plot, green onions, potatoes, and radish buckets.  I hope this doesn't look as good to the birds as it does to me.

Bird's eye view of my tomatoes, zinnias, Tokyo negi, mystery plant, and basil

My Sunn Hemp grew tall again, but I read online that I was supposed to "plow it down" before full flower development.  Ooops.

My first eggplant!  Excited to see how this turns out.

I grew these tiny garlic bulbs.  Hopefully the next batch will get a little bigger, but I gotta start somewhere.