Tag: CTAHR

March 18, 2013 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

Field Day | Evaluation of Dismiss, Roundup & Salt for Weed Control in Seashore Paspalum

You are invited to a seminar/field day to see the results of 3-herbicide tests involving Dismiss, Roundup and salt on goosegrass, crabgrass, postrate spurge, creeping indigo, dollarweed, horseweed, nutsedge, and purslane in a seashore paspalum lawn. Although the results were inconsistent, you may still find the information useful and interesting.

Date: March 28, 2013 (Thursday)
Time: 10:45 to 12:00 pm
Place: UH-Maui College (UH-MC) Agricultural Greenhouse & Lawn. Across the Maui Arts & Cultural Center near the recycling center on Wahine Pi’o Avenue. Park in the lot next to the new science building with the vertical windmills on its roof top.

Hawaii Dept. of Agriculture Pesticide categories will be offered for categories 1a, 3, 6 & 10.

Deadline to register is March 27 (Wednesday) to reserve your handouts for this event. You can register by email (nagatan@ctahr.hawaii.edu) or by calling the Cooperative
Extension Service at 244-3242 x230. Please provide your name, company & telephone number should we need to contact you of any changes to this event.

Mahalo to: Ann Emmsley and William Jacintho of UH-MC for making this test and field day possible.

August 25, 2012 General Ag News and Notes, Vegtables Post a Comment

What’s Up with Carrots?

By Glenn I. Teves, County Extension Agent, UH CTAHR

When you think of an orange vegetable, carrots come to mind, but once upon a time the most common color of carrots wasn’t orange. It wasn’t until the 1500s that the Dutch stumbled upon an orange carrot and focused on developing more orange varieties.
Believed to be native to the area around Afghanistan, the first carrots were purple and yellow. Around A.D. 900-1200, they spread to the eastern Mediterranean, then to China and Eastern Europe by the 1300s. By the 1600s, yellow carrots reached Japan, but it wasn’t until the 1700s that orange carrots emerged in Holland and adjacent areas. White and yellow carrots are still used for livestock in eastern and western Europe, while red carrots are popular in Japan.

With the quest for new color choices in vegetables, we’ve gone full circle with the return of colorful carrots with names like Atomic Red, Nutri-Red, Purple Haze, Purple Dragon, Mello Yellow Scarlet Wonder and Rainbow. Breeding by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to develop a high Vitamin A carrot led to the development of a cultivar called A Plus, which increased the carotene content by leaps and bounds. A collateral benefit was improved taste, especially sweetness.

A nemesis of the carrot is the root-knot nematode causing galls on the roots, and this microscopic eelworm is common in many of our soils. A solution is to grow cover crops, such as Sunn Hemp, African Marigolds, Sorghum-Sudangrass Hybrids, or a variety of cowpea called Iron and Clay.

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March 29, 2011 Uncategorized Post a Comment

Herbicide Field Day on Goosegrass Control


To: Golf Course & Landscape Industries
From: Norman M. Nagata, Extension Agent

A test was conducted at Waiehu Municipal Golf Course to evaluate the efficacy of several herbicide combinations with Roundup, Revolver, MSMA, and Sencor to control herbicide resistant goosegrass using 2 spray applications at 2 weeks apart. You are invited to a field day to observe the results of this test.

Herbicide Field Day on Goosegrass Control

Date: April 7, 2011 (Thursday)
Time: 11:30 am to 12:30 pm
Place: Meet at Waiehu Golf Course “Service Entrance” (6th tee) next to Waiehu Beach Park & Baseball Field located at the end of “Lower Waiehu Beach Road” (MAP) at 11:15 am am. We will then car-pool to the test site at the 17th tee.

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March 15, 2011 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

Chocolate is locally grown product

Bob and Pam Cooper acquired more than 1,800 cacao trees in Holualoa over a decade ago and established the Original Hawaiian Chocolate Factory. They’ve been processing 100 percent Hawaii-grown cacao into chocolate products ever since. Bob also grows and sells cacao trees, encouraging others to grow this valuable crop. West Hawaii now has many cacao growers and several budding artisanal chocolate makers.

Cacao originated in the Amazon and Orinoco River basins of Ecuador and Brazil, and has been cultivated in Central and South America for thousands of years. Theobroma, the genus of the cacao tree, translates to “food of the gods” and the resulting chocolate was once reserved solely for the pleasure of Aztec kings.

Today, cacao growing and chocolate making is a global industry, but with more local growers and those making chocolate with locally grown ingredients, localvores can satisfy their chocolate urge with a reduced carbon footprint.

Cacao is a tropical rain forest tree and thrives in areas with temperatures above 50 degrees and about 60 inches of annual rainfall or good irrigation. It is especially well-suited to areas in Kona that get a cool afternoon cloud cover. You might consider adding a few cacao trees, if your growing conditions are suitable.

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March 9, 2011 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

If Only Chocolate Grew on Trees

If Only Chocolate Grew on Trees

…or does it?

…By Fern Gavelek –

Mmmmmm……chocolate! Many people consider it one of the major food groups. And with good reason—it not only tastes good, but makes you feel good while boasting health benefits.

The botanical source of chocolate is cacao (pronounced ka-cow); the tree’s genus, Theobroma, is derived from Greek theo (god) and brosi (food), meaning “food of the Gods.” Theobromine, a stimulant, is an alkaloid of the cacao bean that’s used medicinally as a vasodilator (widens blood vessels), heart stimulant and diuretic.

No longer just a guilty pleasure, chocolate possesses cacao flavonoids with potent antioxidant capability. Increasing evidence confirms cacao’s ability to inhibit the oxidation of bad cholesterol (LDL) by 75 percent. These flavonoids have also been linked to immune system health.

With all these attributes, it seems like everyone should be growing cacao in their backyard and whipping up a batch of chocolate once a week. Right? The reality is, first, that cacao grows best at about 20 degrees north or south of the equator, and Hawai‘i is at the far northern edge of that range. Furthermore, concocting chocolate from cacao is a measured, multi-step process.

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March 7, 2011 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

UH gardening gurus set invasive-species classes

Hawaii gardeners have the advantage of a year-round growing season that allows us to pick up plants any time of year and add them to our backyard collection. And local garden centers carry an abundance of ornamental shrubs, trees and herbs from which to choose.

The University of Hawaii Cooperative Extension Service wants to help home gardeners to be knowledgeable when choosing plant material. The UH Master Gardeners on Oahu have teamed up with the Hawaii Invasive Species Council to provide classes and demonstrations to the public. (See the Star-Advertiser’s Home & Garden calendar for class listings.)

What is an invasive species? Technically, according to HISC, an invasive species is an alien species — plant, animal, or microbe transported by humans to a location outside its native range — whose introduction has caused or is likely to cause economic or environmental harm or harm to human health.

Basically, foreign plant material that propagates at warp speed and those seeds or plant parts that can travel long distances to naturally forested areas are termed invasive. These plants often demonstrate rapid and aggressive growth, production of numerous seeds that are spread easily by wind, wing or water, and the ability to grow under many different soil and climatic conditions.

What is the impact of invasive species? It’s the plants whose “keiki” reach the natural forested areas that take the largest toll on our native species and ecosystems. They threaten native plant habitats, reducing the number of native plants and affecting plant biodiversity, as well as the insect biodiversity that depends on those plants.

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