Aloe Vera

I think that Aloe Vera is a plant that is recognised , grown and used around the world.  Although it is a  native of the dry climate of North-East Africa and the Middle East, it grows easily in tropical gardens as well.  Even the most anti-herbal remedy person is usually willing to concede that Aloe Vera has its medicinal use.

The Aloe Vera in my garden is grown in containers as well as in the ground.  Aloe Vera looks lovely in the used clay pots that I pick up for cheap at garage sales.  These can be taken indoors for a hardy indoor plant in a well lighted room.

The Aloe Vera that I have growing in the ground got there as a last resort.  I had a hot, dry, sandy area of garden that left any other plant I tried there dead.  So I broke off a few of the very big Aloe Vera plants from the containers and planted them out in the problem area.  With an occasional watering, they have taken off and now have babies growing up from the stems so that they are on the way to being a hardy ground cover.  The Aloe Vera has the advantage of being a little bit poky so it keeps the wild chickens from scratching in the area.

As the baby Aloe Vera plants grow bigger, I harvest a few and plant them in 6" pots for a gift or for selling.  These transplanted babies can turn rotten and die if they get too much water before their roots grow so keep them fairly dry and under watered.

Aloe Vera is, of course, well known as a herbal remedy for healing burns.  Cut a large leaf of the plant, peel off the skin and smear the cool, soothing inner gel over the burnt area.  It is good when you get a hot fat or water burn in the kitchen and it is wonderful to smear over sun burnt shoulders.  It is also used as a healing agent for cuts and lesions of the skin.

I have also heard claims that Aloe Vera is very good for the digestive system and is helpful for stomach ulcers and inflammation of the bowel.  I do notice that Aloe Vera juice in cold drinks is becoming main stream now and not just in health food stores.  Several  brands of Aloe Vera drinks can be bought  now at our local supermarket as well as at the gas station store.  If you are thinking of trying it out, one can easily add fresh Aloe Vera into a fruit smoothie at home for much less cost.  Just add about a 3" piece of a peeled leaf to the blended juice.  When I have tried it there is very little Aloe Vera flavor beyond that of the blended fruit.  I like it in a mix of papaya, ice water and a bit of lemon juice.

Aloha

All Saints Day in French Polynesia

Well, another travel related blog today.

Last November I spent  four weeks in French Polynesia.  It was wonderful to visit five different islands during the trip and finally see what French Polynesia was like.  I have visited many Polynesian islands and the tropical island landscape was familiar, but the Tahitian and French cultures add something to these that is different and interesting.  Now in case you are wondering how I could afford to have a month in French Polynesia, remember that I travel as a frugal backpacker.  I was not staying in those overpriced bungalow resorts built out over the lagoon.  I was sleeping in a bunk bed in a hostel dorm room for about US$30 a night and living on French bread.  The month stay cost me about US$2000 total.  This is not including my plane ticket there from home, but does include inter island ferries and a plane ride.  If you are not willing to go that cheap, you can find lots of Bed and Breakfast places there, called Pensions, that cost around US$100 a night.  That is where the French tourists stay.

While I was there, French Polynesia celebrated the public holiday called All Saint's Day that falls on November 1st.  On this day, the islanders pay their respect to their dead relatives by cleaning up the graves of the departed.  They give the graves a fresh coat of paint and place flower arrangements on the graves.  Although many families make their own arrangements, there are also people selling flower arrangements in the market places and along the road side.

Below are some photographs taken on the islands of Tahiti, Bora Bora and Raiatea of the decorated graves and the flower sellers.  As you can see, the Red Ginger is a very popular flower there.

Aloha

Cuban Oregano (Plectranthus amboinicus)

Cuban Oregano, also known as Indian Borage and a host of other herbal sounding names, is a handy herb to have in the tropical garden.  In the past, I grew a more upright, green variety but now the lower growing, variegated variety, seems to be the common type grown locally.  I grow mine in a container and it hangs over the sides nicely.  I also see people growing it on rocky slopes as a pretty, as well as useful, ground cover.  When it is grown in sunny, dry conditions, the leaves are smaller and lighter in color so you might want your plant shaded from the intense afternoon sunlight.  Baby plants grow easily from stem cuttings.

The Cuban Oregano has large, fleshy leaves and is different from the Mediterranean oreganos which makes some people hesitant to use it at first but you will be a fan after you get used to it.  It gives you that same oregano flavor.   Think of it more as a tangy vegetable leaf as you chop up several leaves to add to your chili, stew or stuffing.  My favorite way to use it is to chop lots of leaves to add to a Teriyaki marinade which is the common type of BBQ sauce used in Hawaii.  Combine Cuban Oregano, garlic, lemon juice, soy sauce, oil and brown sugar.  Soak your chicken in it overnight before the BBQ.  A few sprigs of the plant also make a nice decoration when serving meat.  Tuck a few leaves around your Thanksgiving turkey or on the meat platters.

Aloha

The USA National Botanic Garden

Well I think it is about time for a travel/garden post.  I plan to do a few of these each year and this will be my first.

 About this time last year I was able to have two weeks playing tourist in Washington DC.  I stayed at the wonderful HI Hostel there.  This is where the backpackers stay and you share a dorm room but it meant that I was in easy walkable distance of the National Mall at a cost of about  $450 for the whole two weeks.  This included breakfast and there was a kitchen I could use to cook meals if I wanted.  There was also easy access to transport and helpful staff. 

I was there just at the end of Winter with the last scattered piles of snow on the ground when I arrived.  Of course I checked out all the historic and national buildings and museums etc. but it was too early to really enjoy the outside gardens yet.   However, there was one gardening marvel to be seen and one that, I have to admit, I had never really heard much about before going there.  This was the US National Botanic Garden.  The garden was set up by the early planners of Washington DC as a national plant information resource placed on the front east corner of the Capital Building to balance the Library of Congress that sits on the back east corner of the Capital.  Back then knowledge of growing plants was a serious matter equal to book learning!

If you go today you will see huge glass conservatories with a native plant garden outside of it.   The outside garden was still brown and bare from Winter but inside the glass conservatories there was a warm magical wonderland.  It may have been freezing outside but inside there were humid tropical forests, dry deserts full of cactus and cacao trees loaded with their fiery pods of beans that make chocolate.  There was one conservatory dedicated to Hawaiian native plants but unfortunately it was closed for repair so I missed that.  Because everybody was tired of Winter, the most lovely thing there was their group displays of Spring flowers that just took your breath away with their beauty.

So here are some of my pictures taken at the US Botanic garden from that trip.  I hope it gets you to want to go check it out when you are next in Washington DC.  Our tax money is paying for it so entrance is free.

Aloha

Crown Flower (Calotropis gigantea)

It is said that the Crown Flower ( also called Giant Milkweed) was the favorite flower of Queen Liliuokalani who was the last monarch of Hawaii.  Maybe she liked the crown shape of the flower because it does not have any fragrance.

I know that the emphasis of this blog so far has been on food producing plants but my favorite plants are those that are useful and those that are tough.  The Crown Flower wins on both these counts.  This tree will grow in hot, dry sandy areas.  I have seen a variety of it growing in the desert in Dubai.  The one I have in my garden is growing in a dry sandy area where other trees have failed to thrive. 

                                                                               

The tree I have now I started as a cutting in a gallon pot of potting mix.  When it was well rooted I transferred it to a 3 gallon pot, pinched the tips, and fertilised it well so that it would grow into a nice fat plant.  I then planted it out in the garden during the rainy months of winter to get established.  It was a little slow at first but is now doing well with just an occasional water during dry periods and an occasional trim to keep it from getting too spread out.

There are two main uses of the Crown Flower tree.  First, as a member of the milkweed family, it is a host plant for the Monarch butterfly.  It gives me great pleasure to watch all the butterflies in the garden and to know that I am helping to support them.  Around December the butterflies show up in large numbers to lay their eggs on the underside of the Crown Flower leaves.  These hatch into tiny caterpillars who will munch and munch until they are big and fat and a couple of inches long.  Then they will climb down the tree and go off looking for a fence, or another shrub, or the side of the house to attach to.  They hang upside down in a J shape and turn into a  beautiful green chrysalis trimmed with gold..  After about 14 days they will hatch into Monarch butterflies.  I enjoy watching them and so do all the grandchildren and the neighbors kids

The only down side to all this process of nature going on is that the caterpillars will chew down every leaf and the tree will look very naked and straggly for a month or so but it will revive just fine.  I usually trim the tree at this time when the caterpillars have done with the leaves and the new growth has not yet come out.  Because of the sad appearance of the tree for those short few months I decided to grown my present Crown Flower tree at the back of our garden instead of in the front yard.  One visitor horrified me by suggesting I should be using some sort of insecticide on the caterpillars!

The other big use for the Crown Flowers tree is of course all the leis we make in Hawaii with the flowers.  There are purple and white flowered varieties of Crown Flower but the purple flowers do seem to get used here  more.  Actually I rather like mixing the two colors while making leis or I add some other flowers for fragrance.  Sometimes the petals are removed from the flower center to make a smaller flower for a rope type lei.  Professional lei makers have some very intricate designs using Crown Flowers.

When picking the flowers to make leis, I always be very careful about wearing a hat so I do not get the trees white sap dripped in my eyes.  The sap can cause temporary blindness.  I noticed in Thailand that all the Crown Flower trees there were kept trimmed to about waist height.  It would make for easier picking but also much safer for the eyes.  The picked flowers then need to be soaked in cool water for a few hours to get the white sap off them as well as giving them a last perk up drink.  Crown Flowers are a very long lasting in the fridge so are good for leis that are being sent to the mainland.

Aloha

Breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis)

Behind our house we have two breadfruit trees that were planted by previous Samoan occupants.  I am in love with these two large trees.  Not only do they provide a large shade area for our family BBQs and birthday parties, but their big, dinner platter size leaves are beautiful when viewed through the window and  keep the back rooms of the house cooler.  Breadfruit was carried out into the Pacific islands by the ancient Polynesian, Micronesian and Melanesian settlers.  I think it is a pity that breadfruit has been neglected by modern Hawaiians who put a big emphasis on taro when they also ate breadfruit anciently. Taro, like potato, requires a lot of manual labor to get a good harvest.  An established breadfruit tree is a heavy provider of food for minimal work.  Just pick the fruit and cook it.  It is no wonder that Captain Bligh, of the infamous mutiny on the ship Bounty, was trying to take breadfruit trees from Tahiti to the Caribbean to feed the slaves there.  One breadfruit is the size of a cantaloupe melon and each tree can give a crop of a few hundred or more of these.

Breadfruit provides a fair amount of nutrients if you are eating a slice or two as a substitute for a potato.  However, an average Pacific islander can easily eat a whole breadfruit in one meal.  This not only gives needed energy calories but now the breadfruit jumps up to become a significant source of nutrients to its eater.  It is especially good in fiber, calcium, potassium and magnesium.

The Pacific islanders developed over a hundred different varieties of breadfruit over the centuries.  The type I have growing in out back yard is called Ma'afala by the Samoans.  It is a variety that I would recommend.  Some scientists think that breadfruit should be the crop of the future.  Apart from providing food to the growing hungry in the tropics, flour made from the dried fruit does not contain gluten.  If you want to do more research on breadfruit, I recommend the website:   ntbg.org/breadfruit

Breadfruit trees can grow very tall so when they get higher than  two to three times the height of our house, we top the trees to about the height of the house.  Otherwise we will not be able to reach the fruit and and the ripe fruit will fall with a big plop to the ground and are wasted.   It is sad to chop the tree but they quickly grow back although we may miss a crop.  I guess arborists would be against this, but it is what they do in the islands.  Trees seem to grow well anywhere but will produce less leaves and fruit if they get too much salt wind.  As you can tell, you do need a bit of room in your yard to grow them.

Breadfruit trees do have a habit of dropping their leaves on a regular basis.  Unfortunately this leads to them getting chopped down by grounds crews to make less work for them.  I get so upset when such good food providing trees are lost to the community.  Just expect that you are going to be doing a bit of raking of leaves at least once a week.  You can also do what they do in the Pacific islands....send the little kids out to pick up the leaves every morning.  I just feed the leaves back into the tree by leaving them to compost under the tree.  I have a circle of logs under the tree to hold the composting leaves in place.

Baby breadfruit trees can be grown from seed but will not grow from branch cuttings.  Usually young trees are grown from root cuttings.  Occasionally a small baby tree will grow up from the spreading roots on its own. Let the baby tree grow  a few feet and then it is just a matter of cutting the baby tree away, with a bit of the root included, and getting it established in a pot or prepared ground.

Here in Hawaii, my breadfruit trees usually give two crops a year.  One in July/August and one in October/November.  However I was surprised last year to get a third crop around Christmas time.  To harvest the fruit, we use a very long pole about 13 feet long.  It has a peg of wood tied in place at the tip to form a Y shape.  You use this to reach way up in the tree to twist the breadfruit stems until the fruit drops down.  It is handy to have somebody standing by to catch them, but if not there is minimal bruising if they hit the ground.

Breadfruit are eaten as a cooked starch vegetable, much like potatoes.  You pick the fruit just before it goes fully ripe and soft.  The fruit surface will change from green with small bumps to a flatter surface with a slight yellowing.  There will also be dried white dribbles of sap running down the fruit.  When you pick the fruit the stem will bleed this white sticky sap for a few minutes so it is a good idea to leave them on the ground for few minutes to dry off and then be careful of the sap when you pick them up so you do not get the sap on your clothes.

To cook breadfruit, you peel the fruit and then cut it into chunks.  Then you boil it in salted water until fork soft.  About 15 to 20 minutes.  Then just drain off the water and it is ready to eat.  The fruit core is not eaten so you can remove it before cooking or while eating.  If you want a special treat you could also add a can of coconut cream to your hot boiled breadfruit.  Just pour the coconut cream into the pot over the breadfruit and then put the pot back on the stove to boil for a few minutes to make the cream thicken up.  Onions and salt can also be added to the coconut cream.  Just like potatoes, breadfruit can also be baked in a oven (about one hour) or cooked in a microwave (about 12 minutes for one).  I often boil one breadfruit  to eat hot with dinner and then the cold leftover will be sliced and fried with eggs for breakfast.  I have used cold, cubed, cooked breadfruit in a "potato salad" and guests have been none the wiser.  A special treat for when the grand-children come by is breadfruit chips.  Peel and thinly slice a raw breadfruit and fry the slices in hot oil. Sprinkle with salt and serve with ketchup.  I guarantee your young guests will love them.

If you have not already eaten breadfruit, I hope you will now be willing to try it out.  Maybe you will even become an enthusiast like me.  Aloha

Garlic Chives (Allium tuberosum)

Before I retired and really got into building up a herb garden I only grew one herb.  Garlic chives.  This was because they were so easy that I could not kill them and because they were so useful to have near the kitchen door.  Some people call them Chinese chives.

Garlic chives are wonderful chopped up in tuna or egg salad sandwiches. (For non-Americans, this means canned tuna fish or mashed boiled eggs mixed with mayonnaise and seasonings,)  The chives give the sandwiches some extra color and taste.....although the little kids will sometimes turn their noses up at the green stuff in the sandwich filling.  My favorite way to use the chives is to chop up a big bunch and add it to scrambled eggs.  You first saute the garlic chives in a little hot oil and then when the smell of garlic hits your nose you add the eggs and mix it all together.  The chives can also be used as a stir fry vegetable.

I have had the garlic chives for so long that I forget where I got the starter from but you can buy a small pot of them at Hawaii garden stores.  The most important thing to remember about them is that this plant can be an aggressive spreader so it is best to grow them in a container.   I have mine in an old galvanized tub of half soil and half potting mix. Garlic chives will also self seed so you need to pick the flowers before they seed or you will baby chives popping up all around your container.  The white flowers are pretty and sturdy so that they can make a lovely posy in a vase on your kitchen bench.  I love mixing them with Thai basil flowers.  Of course if you want to grow garlic chives starters for your friends it is easy to collect the seed heads and grow  babies in pots.

Garlic chives like sunshine and to be kept well watered.  Lack of water makes them go all floppy but they will perk up again when they get a drink.  A hand full of balanced slow release fertiliser every three months or so should keep them happy.  I have no problems with bugs on them except  to keep a watch out for mini-snails hiding amongst them or bag worms, looking like little clusters of sawdust, attaching under the leaves.  Hand collection and a squeeze between your fingers will deal with them both.   If the garlic chives get all long and messy looking you can cut the whole lot down to about an inch from the soil and let new growth to give them a perky fresh look.  I usually do this about once a year.  They quickly grow back so that you will have them to use again within the week.