Click Here for Larger Image Bananas can grow quite vigorously and productively in many landscapes and gardens on the Big Island. The many varieties of this large, perennial herb yield the world’s most important fruit. The ripening, homegrown bunches hang in garages around the state, ready to nourish our families.
Most banana plants can produce large and high-quality fruit yields if they receive sufficient plant nutrition and well-timed horticultural care. Here we describe simple practices that growers can use to cultivate better bananas and to harvest bunches heavy with delectable fruit.
Ohio FFA President Hannah Crossen addressed Wapakoneta High School FFA members on the responsibility that falls on FFA students to be advocates of the program and agriculture.
“There are always ways to be an advocate of the FFA program,” Crossen said, “For example, I was recently shopping at the grocery store, really taking my time to hold up and examine how the eggs were setting in the carton — so long that it was almost ridiculous — when a young woman approached me asking me what I was doing and what she, herself as a consumer, should be looking for when purchasing eggs. That right there was a perfect opportunity for advocacy and it only took two seconds.”
Using examples from places she has traveled as the Ohio FFA president and the interesting people she has met along the way, Crossen said students shouldn’t aim to change others minds about agricultural but their perspectives.
“I once met this guy wearing this bright floral shirt while on a plane to Hawaii, and after I told him what I was trying to do with my life — with my goal to some day become an ag teacher and work with students — he laughed and said, ‘Agriculture was dead,’ ” Crossen said.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection agriculture specialists issued an emergency action notification after discovering noxious weed seeds and a plant pathogen in a shipment of thatched grass for roofing material at the port in Honolulu.
Agriculture specialists, while inspecting a shipment in early February, detected a large number of Imperata cylindrica, a species of a federal noxious weed.
They also found black spots on the stems of the grass, identified as a plant pathogen, Massariothea botulispora (Teng).
The agriculture specialists issued an emergency notification requiring the items be immediately exported from the United States.
"Some products can be a vehicle for harmful invasive species that can have a devastating impact on our nation’s agriculture industry, natural resources, as well as the economy," Bruce Murley, area port director for Honolulu.
A developer who hopes to build 3,500 homes makai of the H-2 freeway says farmers working on the land have found another place to plant.
Bruce Barrett, executive vice president of residential operations for Castle & Cooke Hawaii, said the farmers will have an equivalent piece of land and could seek more with the landowner, Dole.
Castle & Cooke is trying to address several impacts arising from its planned community, called Koa Ridge, including the displacement of farmers.
The developer will appear before the Land Use Commission on Thursday as part of the ongoing process to receive a permit converting agricultural land to urban land.
The developer addressed some concerns about its project at a community forum on Wednesday sponsored by the Mililani Neighborhood Board and the Sierra Club.
Those two groups are intervenors against the petition, which would allow the developer to build the homes and 500,000 square feet of commercial development.
The neighborhood board plans to support the development if the Land Use Commission imposes conditions on the developer that address traffic, education, affordable housing and other impacts on the community.
The Sierra Club, however, opposes the project because it displaces farming businesses and destroys agricultural land for more homes.
During the depths of the economic crisis last year, the prices for many goods held steady or even dropped. But on American farms, the picture was far different, as farmers watched the price they paid for seeds skyrocket. Corn seed prices rose 32 percent; soybean seeds were up 24 percent.
Such price increases for seeds — the most important purchase a farmer makes each year — are part of an unprecedented climb that began more than a decade ago, stemming from the advent of genetically engineered crops and the rapid concentration in the seed industry that accompanied it.
The price increases have not only irritated many farmers, they have caught the attention of the Obama administration. The Justice Department began an antitrust investigation of the seed industry last year, with an apparent focus on Monsanto, which controls much of the market for the expensive bioengineered traits that make crops resistant to insect pests and herbicides.
Carambola is the pinup girl of tropical fruit, valued more for its comely shape (an unusual winged oval that yields starfish-like slices) and lovely skin (translucent and glossy, ripening to golden hues) than its substance.
Yet star fruit is more than a whimsical garnish for a cocktail. It can be a versatile cooking ingredient, and it is perfect for drying — an excellent option for home gardeners with a bumper crop.
I confess I had never been impressed with carambola’s flavor, finding the standard commercial variety, Arkin, blandly sweet. But then Mike Winterstein, a research technician at the USDA Agricultural Research Service’s station at Chapman Field, gave me a taste of his favorite cultivar, the Fwang Tung.
I was blown away by its intense flavor, delicious sweet-tart balance and abundant juiciness. I could imagine adding slices of it to a shrimp dish flavored with vanilla and hot peppers or grilling it with fish or pork until just golden brown, basted with a bit of olive oil.
The Fwang Tung, a Thai native, is one of 22 cultivars at Chapman Field in Coral Gables. Its deep, unwieldy wings mean it probably will never have the commercial viability of the compact and packable Arkin, but the University of Florida’s Dr. Jonathan Crane foresees a boutique niche for such superlative fruits.
The story of carambola in Florida is intertwined with that of Miami-Dade’s distinguished Campbell family, beginning with the late Dr. Carl W. Campbell, a pioneering horticulturist. It was he, according to the University of Florida’s Dr. Jonathan Crane, who in 1965 “formally described, named and released Golden Star carambola,” the state’s first important commercial variety.
Campbell selected it from a group of trees grown from seed that had been introduced from Hawaii in 1935 at what is now the Subtropical Horticultural Research Station of the USDA Agricultural Research Service at Chapman Field. In his own backyard, Campbell planted the second grafted Golden Star in existence.
His son Richard, senior curator at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden and a plant pioneer in his own right, has fond memories of that tree. As a teenager in the late 1970s, he would pick and pack its fruit and carry the cartons by bicycle to Brooks Tropicals trucks, which then carried them to markets in New York.
