Unusual Rains Make Changes

Community Contributed

By Joe Kennedy

So far we’ve had two months of on-going small rains without dry periods. Amazing changes now going on along Maunaloa Highway, trees and grasses are growing like crazy! But on closer look, the older trees in people’s yards are flowering and fruiting with abundance. People that have avocados are estimating their harvest in the hundreds of pounds per tree.

Mushrooms are growing in the dead wood and even here and there beneath the grass. Insects are swarming, going through the screens and aiming for the sink and the light bulbs. We see this all the time in years when the winter rains are good, but never like this! The flip side is that species like the small white moth and the flying termites don’t seem to hardly be showing up at all.

Those of us who bury their organic waste as fertilizer around the fruit trees are now seeing small plants like mango, avocado and lilikoi popping out of the ground. And what about dead trees? One farmer’s 60 pomegranate trees looked dead for more than two years, but now leafed out and have branches crowded with fruit.

This unexpected abundance of vegetation has many uses. It can be used as mulch for fruit trees, animal feed, organic food for earthworms, natural fertilizer and piled-up left-over branches can be used as garden windbreaks.

Aloha everybody. Please don’t forget to pick up plastic and do what you can to take care of the coral. Save our reef.