Lanai / Balcony / Veranda Gardening

Here's an update on what's going on in my lanai gardening... After working many years in the Waikiki hotel business, I have learned that not everyone knows what a "lanai" is. I guess it depends on where you are from if you are familiar with the word or not. We here in Hawaii commonly refer to lanais as a lanai where others may call them balconies or verandas. Anyway, with that out of the way, gardening on a lanai has been a challenge for me. I have always grown things in regular gardens because I grew up in a regular house. These past several years, I have been experimenting with options available to have an efficient and visibly pleasing garden on my lanai. This is one of my latest experiments to add to my lanai. I thought of this after seeing one of those infomercials selling what is called a "Topsy Turvy". (I don't want to post a photo of it here, but I'm sure you can find it if you Google it.) If you don't know what it is, it's an unattractive hanging green tube that allows you to grow a tomato plant out of the bottom. (Just Google it if you don't understand.) I didn't want to have that unattractive thing hanging on my lanai because not only would it be something I would see, it's also something the neighboring buildings would have to see. I decided to pick up a coconut fiber hanging basket from Target (which recently opened in Honolulu) for about $8. Then I started some tomato seeds in a tall cup of soil until it grew to about an inch in size. The height of the cup actually was the same height of the dome of the coconut basket if turned upside-down. I used a "venti" size plastic cup from a giant coffee producer. When the seedling reached about an inch high, I made a hole in the coconut fiber with my finger in the center of the domed area. With the hole large enough to fit the tomato seedling through it without damaging the seedling, I carefully placed the upside-down coconut fiber basket over the cup with the seedling in it. I made sure the seedling peered through the hole in the coconut fibers. Next, I let it grow under the grow lights for about another month. It grew to about 2-3 inches; the size it shows in these photos. Yesterday, I decided it was time to turn my coconut basket "right-side-up" which would make my tomato hang out of the bottom. I took this photo because I was amazed that after only 1 day of hanging upside-down, the tomato plant seems to have turned itself to face upwards again. Very quickly! On the top side of the basket I planted some basil, cilantro and oregano. I planted the basil because I read a book one day while I was in Barnes and Nobles that said it was good to plant basil plants with tomato plants. I don't remember the name of the book now, but I'm sure I'll find it again. I also bought this window planter box from Target and started some salad mix seeds and more basil in it a couple months ago.

Compost Worm Bin

Last weekend, we decided to begin a compost worm bin. Kelli and I have been interested in these composting worms for a while, but just never made the effort to start one. A lot of the procrastination had to do with the start up costs. There is a local business woman who has been specializing in providing these compost worms and worm bin kits for several years. Her business is called Waikiki Worm Company. The business recently expanded and is now in a larger retail space just outside of Waikiki, at 1917 S. King Street. We started with the basic set up. It comes with: -A 1/4 pound of EPIGEIC Perionyx excavatus, a.k.a. Hawaii's native composting worms. (Click for worm info.) Sold ala carte at Waikiki Worm Company for $40 + tax. It comes in a quart size zip lock bag with some vermicompost that contains the other organisms to help start the composting process. -A 10 gallon plastic bin with "Waikiki Worm Company" logo and pre-fabricated holes. Of course you could buy this bin from Walmart or somewhere for about $5-$10, but it won't have the official logo on it and you'll need to drill your own holes. -A basic worm bin starter book titled "Worms Eat My Garbage" by Mary Appelhof. I've read about half of it, not in order. There are interesting parts, but has a lot about designing your own worm bin. I wasn't very interested in that part because I don't really want design information. I enjoyed the parts of the book that gave more explanation on the care of the worms. -Start up instruction leaflet & couple worm-y bumper stickers. The total with tax came out to $71.20. The other things we purchased to complete our set up was a larger plastic container to fit under the bin to be used as a drip tray and a couple bricks to prop the bin over the drip tray for adequate ventilation. That was another $10 or so. We started with the 1/4 pound because it's suggested that they will be able to keep up with 2 adults average weekly food waste that can be added to the bin. The suggested consumption amount is 2 pounds of fruit, vegetable or grain waste per week. It takes a while for the entire process to look like vermicompost. In approximately 4-6 months we should have our first batch of nutritious compost for our plants. Right now it just looks like a bunch of worms eating fruit and vegetable waste. I'll post another update when they start to break down more of it. Video... From WormBin

A Weekend, The Westin and a Wedding in Maui... Updated 1/6

Here's a quick (really quick) walk-through video of our suite. Blair Witch style cinemography at it's finest. We are here for a wedding. The video screen below is my qik.com live video stream link. I'll stream some live video from my mobile phone so you can have up to the minute footage almost like you are here! Live time 1/4/09 5pm HST and on through the evening here and there. On our last day in Maui, I decided to take Kelli on a ride back to the Kahului Airport by going around the "head side" of the island. The "head side" is what I call going around from Kapalua to Kahakaloa because if you look at the shape of the island of Maui, it looks like a head with the upper body. The first video is a short clip about 33 seconds. The one below is if you are really interested it's about 5 minutes long. Be sure to take your motion sickness medicine before watching.