Taro & Ti Home

More accurately, it’s fixing us who have failed to care properly for kalo. From the perspective of Hawaiian belief, as the younger brother, we’ve shown very little respect for the elder. In recent decades, disease has become a critical issue, and crops are failing. Poi demand goes up while supply goes down. Water issues only exacerbates this problem. But, the agriculture around commercial kalo isn’t focused on the ancient wisdom of the Hawaiians - kalo is treated like a corn crop. Is it kalo’s fault? We are what’s different in this equation - and that bears some examination from the viewpoint of solution seeking.

http://pono.taroandti.com/2008/10/10/fixing-kalo/

Aside from abandoning traditional soil enrichment techniques, a big challenge to kalo is that it is cultivated with little thought to where it wants to grow. Different varieties prefer slightly different environments and locations. In the day of the Hawaiians, kalo was grown where it desired to grow - where it performed the best. Today, it is grown by farmers desperate to pay their bills - and without regard of where it desires to grow. Farmers want to grow what’s hot on the market. In this manner, kalo is forced into environments where the water is too warm or too cold, where the soil is too dry in upland, or where organic media is nearly absent from the soil. Up until recently, the kahuna were able to cultivate kalo without the catastrophic disease problems for centuries that are plaguing us today. And with our supposedly superior knowledge and technology, we can’t seem to get a grasp of it today? Kalo is not the problem - we are. And we can fix it.

http://pono.taroandti.com/2008/10/10/roots-of-kalo-diseases/

I was planning on splitting my KTBH hives into Langstroth equipment this coming Spring. I have a pair of them and figured I’d get four hives out of it. I have six Lang hive bodies ready and will get more soon to give me room for next year’s cutouts and swarms. Also out in the bee-yard I had a 10-frame cutout hive based on the JHH hive design. It was empty except for a couple of combs picked clean by ants. Well, it appears that it was cleaned so well that one of my hives decided to do a split for me and swarm into it.

http://bees.taroandti.com/2008/09/28/swarm/

I installed a couple of patches one wet Spring with high hopes that maybe things would be different now. Well, they were for a while. The taro grew great. Then, the rain stopped, as it invariably does. And with the stop in rain came a rise in heat. Even with irrigation, the weeds would suck the soil dry and before long I decided to let the weeds shade the taro just to keep the soil and taro from being cooked right in the soil. Eventually the taro disappeared and that was that for last Summer’s experiment. Here is the tale of a surprising resurrection of these taro after a full year of dormancy in very hot, very dry and in the winter very cold soil.

http://taropatch.taroandti.com/2008/09/21/taro-survivors/

It was a hot day in a full suit out in full sun. And I was occupied with this particular cutout for over 7 hours in the Texas heat - mostly trying to get the queen and final cluster of bees that had sequestered themselves in a void within the tree. It was a lot of work - and ended with success. Until the ants came…

http://bees.taroandti.com/2008/09/04/fire-ant-catastrophy/

My second honeybee cutout last weekend. It was a colony that had taken up residence in a well-cover five years ago. I tried to document it as well as possible in this post, including documenting a method of stringing comb to the top-bars that I’m calling the comb hammock - using strips of cotton cloth around the edge of the comb and tied to the top-bar.

 http://bees.taroandti.com/2008/06/09/second-cutout/

Inspections of beehives seem mundane, but there’s always new discovery each time I suit up and crack open the hive. Especially in a Top Bar Hive such as the one I am using. In this article I describe such an inspection, including locating the queen bee. With all the brood that’s being laid, it’s just a matter of time before I see some serious honey production!

http://bees.taroandti.com/2008/05/26/yet-another-inspection/

Years of reading and asking newbie questions and absorbing have cumulated in this experience - my first humble beehive. It’s a hive that anyone can build. It’s a hive that can be in anyone’s back-yard or apartment balcony - out in the open or surreptitiously hidden as we indulge in our hobby and honeybee conservation. This latest article describes my first visit to my beehive after a week of it getting established in its new home. It was a very fruitful and painless visit for both bee and myself. And it represents the first of a great many such visits as I expand my collection of hives. Read about it here:

http://bees.taroandti.com/2008/05/10/first-hive-inspection/

Every story has an end. This cutout is no exception. The previous blog layed out the act of getting the bees out of the wall. This blog closes up the story and opens the way to future articles on managing the hive itself. I cover the trip home with the hive in the back of a pickup truck, and my inability to avoid running out to look at the bees. Will the excitement wear off? Probably not - I still run out to look at the new leaf on one of my banana trees or taro plants.

http://bees.taroandti.com/2008/05/08/first-honeybee-cutout-epilogue/

The time for getting my bees is finally at hand. In this blog I lay out as close to step-by-step what I did to get the honeybees out of the wall. I have to say, suddenly I have no more desire to get rock-climbing gear or sky diving - this was thrilling! Sure, roll your eyes - you stick your hand into a mass of thousands of bees and see how thrilled you get. Needless to say, the cutout was a complete success with no unexpected problems. Read on to get the whole story.

http://bees.taroandti.com/2008/05/08/first-honeybee-cutout-the-act/