Planning Your Fall and Winter Home Garden in Hawaii

If you want to harvest vegetables from your home garden all Winter long, NOW is the time to plant! 

I’ve been growing a home garden in Kona for the past 46 years, and Winter is my absolute favorite time to grow.  Why?  The nights and days are getting cooler which most vegetables like, especially the brassicas (kale, cabbage, collards, broccoli, cauliflower and of course lettuce), it’s easier to grow crops like carrots, beets, and potatoes, in fact, it’s easier to grow almost anything! There is considerably less rainfall in Kona which means that the soil actually has a chance to dry a bit, and for the rest of you folks, your rains are coming!  Most crops love to grow in the winter in Hawai’i except for corn varieties and watermelon.   What’s not to like about this growing season!

For most growers in Hawai’i, the fall/winter is the main growing season of the year! 

So, if you haven’t gotten organized yet, no worries, take some time to do that over the next 2 weeks and you won’t be sorry.   Here is a short list of considerations to get you ready for a truly successful fall & winter garden.

1.     First, make a list of your winter culinary needs, check your seed box to see what you have and what you might want to order, make a list and order your seed. Take note of which crops will be seeded directly in the soil, and which ones you will start in pots or soil blocks,  and when big enough be transplanted into your garden.

2.     Take a look at your summer garden beds and notice which of crops you are still harvesting, and where your perennial crops are.  Which beds are empty, and what needs to be cleaned up and weeded.  Also, check out the light during the day.  The sun will continue to move toward the South until the Winter Solstice on December 21, so notice if trees will be shading some of your beds, and which beds will be in the sun all Winter.  Vegetable crops love the sun, and won’t do as well in semi-shade so plan ahead.  Taller plants on the North side, shorter plants on the South side. 

3.     While you’re in the garden taking stock of things, are there some summer crops that have gone to seed?  Now would be the time to save seed from crops you really liked to eat and did well during the summer months. 

4.     Take a look at your planting calendar to get an idea of when you might be a good time to either directly plant seed in the ground (like beans, peas, pumpkins, carrots, beets, daikon, cucumber, etc.) or transplant your starts.  Make notes on your calendar.  Look also for a good time for starting seed in pots or flats to plant out later.  That can take anywhere from 3-4 weeks. Often a good planting time is a few days before a full moon.   Also, the holidays are coming, take that into consideration for your planting dates. 

Don’t get overwhelmed by this big transition, keep your plan simple and don’t try to do more than you know you can!  Balancing life and time spent growing for the home gardener in Hawaii is a challenge when you can garden 24/7 365 days a year!  You’ll find your balance, it may take a few years, but trust me you will find it. 

5.     Your summer garden may need cleaning up, edging, remaking beds, weeding, etc. 

Spend time now getting ready to plant, it will be well worth the effort.  Engage your family and friends who want to learn more about gardening, many hands make light work!  Because the light is falling and the days are very slowly getting shorter, the growth of weeds and grasses will also begin to slow down.  For those of you in the Kona area, this means a drier time, you might even have to start watering soon.  For those of you everywhere else, you are ready for those winter rains to replenish the deep moisture in your soils.

6.      Let’s talk about soil regeneration.  Soils can either get too wet or too dry in the summer depending on where you live.  Fall is the perfect time of year no matter where you live to think about feeding your soil.  If you have any compost piles around, go check them out, looking under the dry matter on the top and see if they are ready to sift and harvest.  Get your compost together for the coming planting season and store in 5-gallon buckets in a shady place where they won’t get rained on.  Start thinking about what other amendments you have in your shed.  I like to add a light sprinkling of wood ash from my fires, some form of kelp, and a sprinkling of basalt rock dust from the Kona Quarry.  But a good dried manure, biochar or worm castings or whatever you like to use may be the perfect thing. 

7.     You might want to put a few beds into a green manure crop for a while, adding some nitrogen to the soil.  The Sunn Hemp is a great one for that.

8.     And don’t forget about putting some herbs you like to cook with in the ground, either starting them from seed or buying starts at a local nursery.  Sprinkling some flower seed here and there for our precious pollinators is always a good idea.  If you aren’t growing the Orange Cosmos or Forget-Me-Nots yet give them a try, it’s the favorite of bees and butterflies in our gardens, and they reseed so very easily. 

9.     One more thing, if you don’t have a simple Garden Journal, start one this season.  A simple spiral notebook will last you years and you will look back on dates and use them for planning.  Hum, how long did those onions take to mature after planting?  How many days after flowering were the sweet potatoes ready to dig?  Etc. 

Check out another one of our Blogs from 2020 on this same subject, only from another slant “Making the Big Transition:  Getting Ready for Fall & Winter in Hawaii’s Home Gardens”

       We have something very special coming soon that we are so excited to share with you all! Stay tuned in the coming weeks for a new way to connect and deepen your relationship with locally grown seeds and the farmers at Hawaii Seed Growers Network.

Wishing you all a bountiful Fall and Winter Growing Season!  If you have any specific questions shoot me an email and I’ll try and answer them.  nancyredfeather@hawaii.rr.com

Aloha From All the Growers at Hawai’i Seed Growers Network