Yard to Table

Photo courtesy of UH CTAHR.

With Thanksgiving fresh in the mind, The Molokai Dispatch reached out to our local University of Hawaii College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resilience (UH CTAHR) agents to get ideas for a couple easy crops that Molokai residents can grow in their own backyards. Kyle Franks, UH CTAHR Extension Agent, had a couple suggestions.

Sweet Potato

“It’s easy to grow,” said Franks. You want to start with what’s called slips, which are rooted sprouts that grow out of the sweet potato tuber. Franks recommended using the slips from the new growth ends of the mother plant to avoid weevil eggs.

“Weevils are one of the more predominant pests for sweet potatoes,” he explained. More on weevils later.

Franks recommended putting three sweet potato slips per planting hole. To prep the soil, loosen up the area or use a cover crop. This will allow the potatoes to grow into the soil with less resistance. For watering, Franks said to use one inch per week, or half a gallon per day.

As the potatoes grow, you’ll want to roll back their vines onto the area where you originally planted the slips. When the main vine thickens, or when flowering starts, that’s when you’ll know it’s time to dig up your potatoes. This will usually be at around five months. It’s best to plan out your crop so that you harvest during the drier summer months.

Prior to harvesting, you want to turn your water off for about two weeks to let the potatoes dry out. Then, once you dig them up, let them cure in the sun before storing for one to two weeks in a warm, dry place. Just make sure to check for weevils again, as one weevil can ruin the crop, explained Franks. After harvesting and curing, Franks said he likes to cook, chunk and then flash freeze the potatoes so that they’ll last several months in storage.

Franks ranked sweet potatoes a three-out-of-five on the difficulty scale.

“It’s not one you have to stress over and look at every day,” he said.

Daikon Radish

A true “beginner vegetable,” said Franks, these are good to grow any time of year except summer. Daikon radishes only take 45 to 50 days to produce a crop, and the entire plant is edible. Franks scatters the radish seeds and covers them with about an inch of soil.

For watering, the radishes need about half a gallon per day. You can also use radishes as a cover crop and have their roots feed the soil.
Liking cooler nights and lots of rain, the winter “is the perfect time to grow radishes” explained Franks.

“If you’re new to gardening, grow radishes because they will be successful,” said Franks. “Just not in the summer.”

He ranked daikon radishes a one-out-of-five on the difficulty scale.

Green Beans

The final plant that Franks recommended for backyard farmers is green beans. Plant the seeds about an inch and a half deep, spaced about 12 inches apart. Use the same method of half a gallon per day for watering.

It takes about 60 days to harvest the beans, but when you do, it’s a whole lot of beans. According to Franks, it’s best to harvest early and often.

“You have to be on top of them,” said Franks.

A 30-foot row of green beans can produce over five gallons of beans.

“That’s a lot of beans,” said Franks.

You can plant green beans anytime of the year, but Franks says he has found success best in the winter months.

The most technically difficult aspect of raising green beans is dealing with the pill bugs and cutworms that can surface as the bean sprouts are emerging, explained Franks. For this reason, he gave green beans a two-or-three-out-of-five difficulty ranking.