Posted on: Friday, August 16, 2002
HAWAI'I GARDENS
Plant arugula, and you can harvest it for months
By Heidi Bornhorst
Advertiser Garden Columnist
As we all try to eat more healthy, with more green in our diet, try a summer garden decor tip that doubles as a salad supplement.
Make your own mesclun mix of seeds and sow them in wide garden planter bowls, as my akamai sister Mimi and her creative friend Edie do. They buy packets designed for Hawai'i conditions and mix in arugula seeds. This makes for a pretty and colorful garden addition, as well as a tasty and nutritious instant-shopping experience outside your kitchen door. Arugula can be cut and re-cut as you eat it and can provide several months of tasty eating and attractive gardening.
You probably have a suitable planter lying around from last Christmas, when someone gave you a poinsettia/herb color bowl. Planters about 10 inches wide or larger work well for this planting method.
Refresh the soil by adding organics like raked-up monkeypod leaves, lychee leaves or composted garden debris, or buy some organic soil conditioner and planting media from your garden shop. Fill the bowl to an inch from the top. Soak the planting media well and gently sprinkle the seeds on top.
Water daily, and soon the seedlings will emerge. When they are about six inches tall, you can start eating them! 'Ono!
You also can buy small liner plants of herbs and lettuces and grow these in your wide planter. Plants give you quicker results, but cost a little more than growing from seeds. Plant several of them in slightly different-sized pots, and you will really have some fun.
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Slug tips
You may need to protect these tender morsels from slugs, those ravishers of our choicest plants. Set out bowls of beer, use copper strips or old pennies to shock and repel them, squirt them with soap or use a slug bait.
I did a column on slugs a while back and got many great responses of how Hawai'i gardeners creatively control these slick mollusks. Please write a letter (which I love receiving, even if I don't have time to answer all of them) or e-mail me with any more slug tips.
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Garden gingers
A true sign of summer in Hawai'i is fragrant gingers in bloom.
Yellow, white and the newer colors of peach, nectarine, deep gold and burnt orange are some of the colors of our fragrant Hedychium gingers. Newer hybrids are showing up, thanks to botanical gardens like Waimea and Lyon and creative plant breeders from Hawai'i and Japan, in a range of colors and delicate fragrances.
Heliconias, shell gingers, traditional red and pink alpinia gingers, as well as Hawai'i-made hybrids Kimi, Kazu and Raspberry, are all in full bloom in our warm summer months. These are not richly fragrant but are lovely to look at in the garden or in cut floral displays.
'Awapuhi or shampoo ginger, carried here by the ancient Hawaiians in their great sailing canoes, are in flower and can be found in some gardens and along hiking trails and streams in lowland moist forests. 'Awapuhi go moemoe, or dormant, in the winter months, with no leaves or flower visible. Leaves reappear in spring and the flowers come forth in summer.
Heidi Bornhorst is director of Honolulu's botanical gardens. Submit questions to islandlife@honoluluadvertiser.com or Island Life, The Honolulu Advertiser, P.O. Box 3110, Honolulu, HI 96802. Letters submitted to The Advertiser may be published or distributed in print, electronic or other forms.
