By Heidi Bornhorst

Q: We like to eat. We like edible landscaping. What can my family and I plan and grow and plant now for an abundant harvest for New Year's Eve 2004?

A: Tangerines are a good place to start.

Buy a nice grafted tree from a local fruit-tree nursery. Make sure it is a grafted tree so that it will be strong and resistant to disease.

If you can, talk story with the grower about the best tangerine for your soil and microclimate.

If your yard is too small or you have no yard, try a dwarf tangerine, or my fave, kalamansi, the tiny Filipino lime. This is an extremely pretty, small tree with ornamental and onolicious, tart juicy fruit. Great with seafood and for refreshing drinks.

Lilikoi or passion fruit, Passiflora edulis, is easy to grow from seeds and is prolific in the winter when we need and crave vitamin C. (Super 'ono for juice, alone or mixed with that extra-delicious tangerine juice).

A few taro or kalo plants can give you tasty greens all year round. Advertiser library photo

Our friend Nani Higashino on Maui lives in hot Napili, and lets her lilikoi ramble over the ground as a very pretty, erosion-fighting cover plant.

When you lift it up, there is all the gorgeous fruit, nestled underneath the vines, waiting to be picked and made into juice, jelly or — best of all — Lilikoi chiffon pie.

Herbs are great to have around, make good gifts and additions to spark up a pupu platter, and are pretty easy to grow. The most successful and long-lived seem to be parsley, basil, rosemary, mint, oregano, and lemon grass. Arugula and ung choi are good greens to have around, and we should all grow some kalo.

Years ago we grew Filipino long beans on the chain link fence at Ho'omaluhia Botanic Garden. These were perfect for picking and supplementing a lunch of canned goods, Spam and fish. Eh, we get veggies li' dat! I have saved and regrown the seeds ever since.

My new favorite thing to do is pick them young and sauté them for breakfast — ono with garlic and eggs! This is such a tough and easy bean to grow. I let it grow all over and train it where I want it to grow, to block some views and highlight some others. It also is a good companion planting/support vine for the lilikoi.

Another classic Hawai'i garden favorite is mulberry. I got a cutting from great gardener Mary Jane Lee of Wahiawa. It was so prolific in November. I could pick enough to have berries and yogurt for breakfast. Mine wants to grow over towards my neighbors' immaculate yard, so I pull the rampant branches artfully back, and espalier them out of the way and over into our yard for easy picking. This is a pretty tree, especially when in fruit. The berries shade from pale to deep pink, and then to a deep, dark purple when ripe.

Add some cherry tomatoes and poha berries and you will have a very colorful, edible enjoyable garden. Now that's a productive and do-able New Years resolution.

Support Island farmers

One of the greatest gifts to those of us who cherish fresh local produce and support our farmers and growers is the new farmers' market at Kapi'olani Community College.

Mahalo nui loa to all the growers who offer their bounty every Saturday. A big mahalo to Joan Nam-koong, cookbook author and former Advertiser food editor, for organizing and getting it off the ground.

Produce from O'ahu and the Neighbor Islands is there for us, fresh and ready. You can find good coffee and various kinds of breakfast or lunch or munchies for later.

I was so happy to see many of the best plant growers there. Nalo Farms has fresh herbs. Jill Coryell came from Mokule'ia with her special and rare hibiscus varieties. The Wong family was there with choice cacti and succulents.

There were a lot of beautiful, choice orchids, anthuriums and cut flowers begging to be taken home.

There are other great farmers' markets around the Islands. The Hilo one is a fave — especially for omiyage of fresh anthuriums, fruit and other Big Island specialties. The one up in Volcano on Sunday mornings is a must-do for all.

It's good for gift shopping, a place to get a hearty breakfast, strong coffee and spicy Thai soup for those chilly mornings.

Blooming aloes

Another bonus of having this market at the campus is free, easy parking. You also get to see the bountiful plantings and dry-land cactus and succulent gardens.

The aloes have been in bloom, and the gentle fuzzy orange of their flower spikes was in nice contrast to the mass of silver agaves higher up the hill.

Take a stroll through this classic, well-designed and lovingly maintained garden as you shop and support our hard-working Hawai'i farmers.

Aloe is a winning winter bloomer for us. It is gorgeous on the Big Island, rambling over old stone walls in Waimea and Kona and complementing the out-of-season blooming of the orange ku'uipo vine.

Mounds of aloe in a mass, or a single one in a pot, are handsome to have and great for medicinal use.

Any serious gardener or cook should have an aloe plant right outside the door for small burns, cuts and scrapes.

Heidi Bornhorst is a sustainable-landscape consultant. Submit questions to islandlife@honoluluadvertiser.com or Island Life, The Advertiser, P.O. Box 3110, Honolulu, HI 96802. Letters may be published or distributed in print, electronic or other forms.