Category Archives: R&D

Company News, R&D, Taro/Poi

Poi

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While we’re on the topic of new things happening at Hamakua Springs, here’s something else coming up that is very interesting: The farm is planning to start growing taro and producing and selling poi.

Why poi? I asked Richard.

“You know when we had that last cookout, the big deal was the smoked meat,” he said. “That’s the sort of stuff we eat and like. We also like to eat poi. I feel like we’ve gotta go do it. There’s a poi shortage, for one.”

He stresses that the poi production, like everything else at the farm, will be taste-driven. “We really need to find out what taro makes a really good poi, and then we’ll grow that,” he said. “It won’t just be who happens to have some huli we can get. We’ll go with what we think is the best tasting. We’ve gotta make ourselves happy first and then go from there.”

Kalo
taro leaf photo by Macario

He plans to grow the kalo in the traditional wetland style, but will depart from tradition by pumping the water back up after it runs down through the lo‘i. “The water won’t just go into the stream,” he said. “We’ll have our own electricity and we can pump it back uphill. Using the traditional along with the modern.”

“Hawaiian style was all about sustainability,” he said. “If you weren’t sustainable, the race would perish. We’re still thinking along those lines today. I don’t see it as much different. We’re doing with what we have.”

I was fascinated when he told me this, and started to say something about how I’m sure the Hawaiians would have used a similar technology had it been available to them.

But then it occurred to me: They are. He is. Richard is Hawaiian (as well as Okinawan and Korean), and he is using the traditional style while adapting it to modern conditions. Bingo.

I asked Richard how far he planned to go with growing taro and producing poi, and he said it would be largely demand-driven. I thought about how many times I’ve stood, staring at an empty supermarket shelf where the poi would be if there demand didn’t far exceed supply. The demand is there. Like with the farmstand, I think this, too, is an exciting avenue for Hamakua Springs.

Stay tuned for more info. – posted by Leslie Lang

R&D

Five-a-Day

Purple caulifower? Orange cauliflower? Who knew!

“It just feels like trickery,” laughs Charlotte Romo, the farm’s hydroponic crop specialist. She says her work in the farm’s “Variety Garden,” where she is experimenting with growing interesting varieties of vegetables, feels like playing.

charlotte

 

 
Charlotte with some of her vegetables

“I was telling one of my old professors from the University of Arizona about my job and she said, ‘You just lucked out.’ You know, I can even see the ocean from the greenhouses.”

“Richard and I kept getting these ideas,” she says. “Can we grow this? Let’s try.”

They are interesting varieties that she is growing—not much in the Variety Garden is run-of-the-mill. There are things like tiny carrots that are purple outside and orange inside; beet sprouts, which taste like beets and are a fuscia color; beets with a pink and white spiral inside; sweet golden beets, which are, you know, golden; pea sprouts; and lots of different squashes.

purple-carrots

Purple carrots

There’s also eggplant, and a bi-colored sweet corn, and peppers—hot peppers, bell pepper, all kind of in-between, white bell peppers. And there are tomatillos, and also more varieties of heirloom tomatoes, some of which are just starting to ripen and soon be ready to taste for the first time. “It’s so exciting,” she says. “I really like it.”

“With heirlooms,” she explains, “they are the true, naked, ancient seed, so they don’t have anything built into them as far as resistance. Some turn out to be just too much trouble. It’s all about trying them out.”

She explains that her job is to figure out which of these experimental crops grows well, how to water it, what each one’s obstacles are and how to overcome them. She grows a crop for at least one cycle, makes adjustments to her methods as needed, and then grows it out again.

Vegetables“It’s so fun to grow something for the first time,” she says. “It’s all this different, funny-looking stuff, like stripey vegetables. A lot of these carrots we’re growing are higher in Beta-carotene and Vitamin A than the usual. In the stores, a lot of farms tend to do just one variety based on performance and disease-resistance, rather than color. We will be accomplishing the goal of getting more nutrients out to people by growing these varieties.”

She’s even got really sweet poha berries (“husked tomatoes”) growing in the Variety Garden. “They’re one of those things that has kind of disappeared as people have built where all the wild bushes used to be,” she says.

Charlotte explains that the goal to try different crops and be able to provide more diversity locally, as well as supplying produce to chefs. The plan also includes selling some of these seasonal products in our open-to-the-public farm stand, which is coming soon. More details about that here soon – stay tuned! – posted by Leslie Lang

Melons, R&D, Travel

Stonehenge

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Stonehenge

Richard Ha writes:

A couple years ago June and I wanted to learn more about hydroponic vegetable production methods in a place similar to drizzly, rainy Hilo, so—logically, right?—we went to England.

We bought that French melon, which had been grown in Israel, when we saw it at a local market. Back home we were really determined to grow French melons.

And Stonehenge had really captured my imagination since the time I was a young boy, so I couldn’t have just an ordinary photo taken of us at Stonehenge.

I had to take that melon with us to Stonehenge and have this photo taken as proof that we were in England doing R&D because of its similarity to Hilo.

I just love having taken that melon with us to Stonehenge and getting that photo. It makes me chuckle every time I see it.

And now we are growing the French Charentais melon, which is considered the premium French melon. It’s so sweet it cannot travel far. It’s the only type of melon we grow, and we chose this particular variety because it’s the very best tasting.

Alan Wong, R&D

Germinating

A couple of days ago an idea just came to me: Why don’t we dedicate a couple of our growing houses solely to Research and Development for our partner-in-good-food Chef Alan Wong?

Most of the time we focus on growing what we think might be popular in the supermarkets. But here we will plant things strictly for fun; just because we’re curious and because Chef Alan might be able to use them in his restaurants. He will make suggestions and we’ll try other new and interesting things as well. He is excited about this project and so are we. This is going to be great fun.

Today we started looking at what we could plant. How about long, short, round, striped and mini eggplants to start? What’s a tomatillo, exactly? Let’s try all the types. What about peppers—hot, sweet, long, mini, chocolate, white, whatever. Colored beets. Asparagus—thin, stout, purple, green and white. All things bean. Different colors and textures. Whatever else strikes our fancy.

Tomorrow we start germinating seeds. I’ll post here periodically about how our Chef Alan Wong R&D project is coming along.