kentiopsis

Rob, good to hear from you. Please contact me with any questions you have about growing plants in that part of Puna. Conditions at my place are considerably different from where you are, despite the fact that the two locations are separated by only a mile or three. My elevation was 650 feet just off Opihikao Road, in that last small subdivision you pass on the way up, before the highway, and I had some soil there. It's where Oscar, the guy who sells plants, lives. If you don't know him, you need to meet him.

Despite the differences in conditions between our places, I know quite a bit about gardening in that area. I didn't grow natives, though, and I didn't garden in the sense of growing herbaceous plants like tomatoes, lettuce, and beans; the ferociousness of the tropical weeds made that too difficult for me. Fruit flies made tomatoes just about impossible, except for cherry tomatoes, which seem to be too tough for the fruit flies. Did you get your Hawaiian chili peppers in yet? As for me, I focused on palms, citrus, orchids, avocados, and rare tropicals.

I had bananas up there, though, although 10 or fewer species because they were more utilitarian for me than a passion. I want to suggest two palms for you as food plants, aside from the coconut. One is Euterpe oleracea, which is the palm from which the acai "berry" comes. Not only does it produce the fruit, but you can harvest heart of palm from them—because harvesting the heart kills the stem, and you'll want to do that before it gets too tall, which will be before the stem is mature enough to produce fruit. But E. oleracea is a multistemmed palm which will keep sending up new stems. Have a few plants going for each purpose, fruit and heart of palm.

The other good food palm that I know about is the peach palm, Bactris gasapaes. Like the Euterpe, it is good for both edible seed and heart of palm. Lots of people on the Big Island know about raising peach palm for food. For heart of palm, you keep harvesting when the palm is short enough to whack off the crown from ground level. You'll need to reserve separate plants to let them grow tall enough to mature and produce edible seed. One of our Bananas.org listmates here in Honolulu told me that he'd eaten the seed in South America, and that they are delicious. Here's a link to an article in Honolulu magazine about two people who raise peach palm One of them, Leslie Hill, I met in the 70s, when she had a plant store. She's active in the Tropical Fruit Growers organization, and knows everything. Peach palm should be available at Garden Exchange or other plant stores in Hilo. Be sure to get the spineless variety. The ordinary variety is a very spiny, nasty plant. All the palm people will have the E. oleracea; Garden Exchange might have it from time to time, too. Just ask around.

I didn't notice a contact email on your web page. Is it there somewhere?

Aloha,
Ken