Tag: Palm

January 15, 2012 Flowers & Nursery, Gardening, General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

All about Palms with William Merwin and Leland Miyano

MALP Educational Meeting—Free to the public

Date: Tuesday January 24, 2012
Place: Maui Community Service Bldg next to CTHAR Extension Services (Map) on the UH Maui campus.
Time: Pupus will be served at 6:30 pm and the talk will begin at 7:00.

On January 24th MALP is proud to host guest speakers: William Merwin and Leland Miyano as they share with us their vast combined knowledge about palms. Their talk will include information on Hawaii’s palms, palm growth habits and conservation efforts.

William Merwin, who has twice won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry and is the recent US Poet Laureate, has lived and gardened on Maui for over 30 years. Most of his focus has been on cultivating palms from around the world. He has gathered approximately 800 different species of palms, creating a truly unique palm jungle within the rainforest of Maui’s north shore. His enduring gardening passion along with his legacy of being a successful poet will be preserved with the recently created “The Merwin Conservancy“.

Leland Miyano, a good friend of Merwin, is an artist, landscape designer and author from Oahu. Leland has years of experience working with native palms throughout Hawaii and has worked extensively with many highly respected people in the field of horticulture and design. Leland’s numerous books include: Hawaii’s Beautiful Tree’s and Hawaii, A Floral Paradise. Leland’s own 1-acre garden in Kahalu’u is renown for its design and features numerous palms.

CLICK HERE for full information on this truly notable event.

November 1, 2011 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

Coffee lovers find ultimate brew in civet dung

Indonesia’s self-proclaimed “King of Luwak”, Gunawan Supriadi, is having a hard time keeping up with demand for the beans excreted by his stable of pampered civet “cats”.

And he’s not alone. Demand for coffee brewed with beans plucked from the dung of the furry, weasel-like creatures — known locally as luwaks — is surging among well-healed connoisseurs around the world, exporters say.

About 40 civets at Supriadi’s plantation in West Lampung district, Sumatra, provide the intestinal machinery for his Raja Luwak (King of Luwak) brand of bean. Lampung is the undisputed capital of luwak coffee.

“My target is to have 150 civets soon because I have to meet the surge in demand,” Supriadi said.

“In 2008, I gathered about 50 kilograms of luwak beans and sold them to local distributors. In 2009, I sold 300 kilograms. In 2010, I sold 1.2 tonnes.”

The “golden droppings” of the luwak, or Asian palm civet, fetch up to $800 for two pounds in countries like the United States, Australia, Japan, South Korea and Singapore.

It’s another story altogether at retail level. Single cups of the world’s most expensive coffee have been known to sell for almost $100 in specialty outlets in London.

The civets play two roles. Firstly, they tend to choose the best berries to digest. Experts say wild civets are the most discerning, but their droppings are also the most difficult to harvest.

Having nibbled off the thin outer layer of fruit, the civets put their digestive juices to work. The enzymes penetrate the beans — usually arabica in Sumatra — and change their chemical balance in subtle ways.

The end product, after a good wash and light roasting, lacks the bitterness of ordinary coffee and has a unique, soft flavour.

“If luwak coffee is a car, then it must be a Rolls-Royce,” Supriadi said.

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November 11, 2010 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

Green groups oppose MECO plan to bring in palm oil

Maui environmental groups are organizing a letter-writing campaign to persuade Hawaiian Electric Co. and the state government to head off plans to import palm oil from Malaysia to be used in a test at Maui Electric Co.’s Maalaea power plant.

The international campaign was sparked by a German group, Rainforest-Rescue.org. Maui Tomorrow Foundation, Sierra Club Maui and the statewide group Life of the Land are protesting here in the islands.

They oppose a Public Utilities Commission decision to allow HECO to use palm oil at Campbell Industrial Park and to allow Maui Electric to test palm oil at Maalaea.

A spokesman for HECO said Tuesday: “We share a concern for the environment and human rights, which is why in 2007 Hawaiian Electric worked with the Natural Resources Defense Council to create a sustainable biofuels policy that we include in all contracts.”

HECO has signed what it calls a “very short” (two years) contract to supply its Campbell plant with fuel made from recovered animal waste on the Mainland. To get its new Campbell plant permitted, HECO had to promise to use renewable fuel.

For the Maalaea test, it contracted with Sime Darby to supply a million gallons of palm oil.

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October 17, 2010 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

Fall is a great time to dress up your garden

By Norman Bezona

The weather is cooling down and it is a perfect time to dress up your garden. If you are getting tired of the same old common plants in your garden, why not try something different? Maybe you can even specialize. There are fantastic numbers of plant materials to choose from, but we seem to get in a rut with whatever we can “cockroach” from our neighbors. This year’s Kona Outdoor Circle plant sale on Saturday at the Old Kona Airport Park will offer new plants galore. The 33rd annual sale will be from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Thanks to palm lovers like the Hawaii Island Chapter of the International Palm Society, hundreds of new species are growing in Hawaii. Many of these are native habitat so Hawaii is kind of a Noah’s Ark for palms. Of course, native Pritchardias will also be available at the plant sale.

Ferns are a good example of a whole family of plants very poorly represented in our gardens. It’s not that they can’t be grown, but that we don’t. They require very little fertilizer but do require moisture and shade from intense sunlight. Cooler mauka areas are probably the best for growing ferns, but many types may be grown almost anywhere with protection.

We have hundreds of ferns native and introduced to Hawaii, but this is just a fraction of the more than 9,000 species found throughout the world.

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