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I love gardening and landscaping and am very excited about moving to the B.I. within in the next year. We bought three acres in Orchidland but the soil is close to nonexistant. My question is how do you go about planting trees, bushes flowers when there is so little soil? I plan to use raised beds for vegetables but what is the conventional wisdom for everything else? Do you have soil trucked in? Are there any good landscaping books that are germane for growing on lava? Any garden club links for the East side? Thanks, Glenn P
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I am very interested in this too as my Seaview lot is solid lava. I plan to talk with some nurseries and other folks in the 'hood when I go out in November to get ideas. I have seen plenty of landscaped lots on lava so it is possible.
Glenn - did you touch base with my friend in Orchidland?
Atlanta/Pahoa
Atlanta/Pahoa
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Hi Glenn, Not recently enough I read on one of the forums that if a person buys a bag of compost and a bag of top soil, inter mixes them half and half, cuts or punches drain holes in bottom side and cuts holes in the top side to plant into a tree or bush, then surrounds these with rocks and cinder that a plant will flourish, if mother nature does it's thing and keeps said plant moist. Hope you get the idea and perhaps someone else can clear this idea up a little as it has been quite a bit of time since I read this. There must be other ways of doing this as so many things grow unattended. I would love to get a few fruit trees and a cooks pine going before we finish building.
mella l
mella l
Art and Science
bytheSEA
Very simple. You call up and order a truck load or two or three of soil. Costs about 250 per load for about twenty yards or so. My lot was all lava. If you came by it is now the most landscaped yard in hole neighboprhood, but it took EVERYDAY for a whole year to do what I did. Im still needing soild all the time for more projects. Go to HILO dump. I understand you can go there and get your pickup truck filled with compost I think for free!
frank battaglia
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This is merely my experience after ten years here:
I think composted topsoil is probably very valuable for raised bed vegetable growing. For most other tropical plants though cider works amazingly well. When you first work with cinder you wonder how anything could survive in it but most tropical plants seem to simply love the stuff.
And it is cheaper than dirt. It also makes nice, well drained, walking paths and develops little or no mud.
So I suggest you minimize your importing of topsoil for localized specific purposes. For most everything else bring in cinder. Before you buy topsoil, buy some cinder.
Edited by - Rob Tucker on 08/02/2005 01:57:53
Assume the best and ask questions.
Punaweb moderator
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Very true Rob. If you look around you will notice how plants grow naturely in nothing more the cinder. Even grass establishes nicely on a bed of red or fine dark cinders. As for the mulch you will have to check with the Hilo transfer station. Its my understanding that the chipper is shared with Kona. It is on this side for six months and on the west side for six months. Several months ago when I was down there the mulch was about gone but the pile that was ready for chipping was huge.
Im confused about something. ASctually I was born confused! We all use red cinders on our driveways nd thisn is supposedly good to prevent weeds from growing on the driveway. Yet Im hearing that red and balck cinders are good for growing grass etc? I have numerous garden areas. I have a daily weed picking problem. It seems just as soon as I weed an area, the next day Im back doing it again! In one garden area I put Red Bark. I like the Orchid bark as its nicely squared. This if put thick enough will help. However I thought that putting very thick black cinder in garden areas will also do trick. So what is true and what is not. I have a bad back and need to control these weeds other than laying down protective black sheething.
frank battaglia
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Hi Glenn, nice responses on the Konaweb regarding landscaping on lava. I hope to find a garden group in Mountain View and to take a master gardener class when we relocate. I loved the post about horse leavings and think someone on this forum knows where there are other horse leaving to be had! When do you start? and good luck.
mella l
Edited by - Mella L on 08/03/2005 00:14:38
mella l
Art and Science
bytheSEA
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i have a parcel also on orchid land and it is pure blue lava so i would have to level off areas that i plan on building a pad and having some gardens so i can plant trees, although most of my friends there say that alot of the trees there are on shallow soil and their roots are anchored down into the deep crevices of lava...don't want to go that route with fruit trees if i want to have more bountiful fruit....on another parcel i did have a truckload of 50/50 mix lava and soil from brysons in pahoa and that was $190 with truck delivery for 30 yards which took me a very long time to spread out with one wheel barrow...i'm sure you can use it well to build up beds for producing bountiful fruits/veggies. i plan on using mostly topsoil mix for grass since i don't want to keep replacing my lawnmower on a regular basis since its more common with lawns on pure lavarock.
on a quick survey of gardeners there, it seems like most people tend to gravitate to specific interests like the palm society, orchid societies, etc and im sure they all cover various areas as well.....it would be fun to create a mix of people that are interested in gardening in general to cover many/all topics of interest.
just back from puna and missing it already...
aloha,
noel
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Mahalo for all the good ideas of landscaping on lava. I've been an active gardener for 30 years and I'm very excited about the prospect of learning more about tropical gardening. We plan on a trip over to the B.I. at the end of this month. I think I will include a trip to the local nursery to get more good ideas. This is why I love this forum, so many good ideas that I have been wondering about for a while. I know I have a lot to learn but one question I have is what is blue lava? I have heard it mentioned a few times but I'm unclear about what it is. Could someone enlighten me?
Mella 1 I hope to start gardening just as soon as we get our house finnished. Hopefully we will start building within six months. Our current residence is a boat that we've lived on for the past 15 years. Unfortunately boats don't sell as quickly as houses, so we are in hurry up and wait mode.
Glenn P
