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Greetings! Although I have 'met' a couple of you already, it's been suggested I make a wider introduction being that I'm a new member. I'm confident that any interest there may be in getting to know who I am will be completely overshadowed by the fact that my wife and I bought the Sullivan's property in Kapoho earlier this year. I'd like to start off by letting you all know, as there is a lot of interest in this property, that it is our intention to restore this garden. This will involve commissioning a new catchment and irrigation system as well as solar systems to help us reduce our reliance upon local utilities. It is also our intention to construct some eco kit cottages on the property, made entirely of bamboo, to accommodate visitors. About us: My name is Mark and my wife is Larissa. Until recently we were living in the UK where we have been for many years despite both of us growing up in the SF Bay Area. During our time in Europe we bought and restored a farm in Tuscany where we produce chestnuts for flour, olives for oil, and manage bees for honey. We also converted an old barn there into an accommodation for visitors. It is common for small-holding farms in Europe to accommodate tourists interested in farm holidays. We are hoping to do the same in Kapoho as having two lines of business is more robust than the single, agricultural line, particularly for the small-holding farmer. In many cases, the accommodation aspect saves the bacon of the small farmer – no pun intended. We had no plan for returning to the US until earlier this year when we decided to move Larissa's mum in with us, as she now needs our care. She didn't fancy the climate in the UK or the language issue in Italy. I'm not sure how Hawaii came up but she jumped at that as she has friends here and so do we. We came out last March for a look and caught the magic of this place as soon as we entered the gate. We all moved into the house here in Kapoho in October and live here full time. So, while we don't know much about palms, we do know a bit about olives and chestnuts and bees and the economics of small-holding agriculture in the 21st century. We are very eager to improve our palm knowledge and have begun by reading everything we can lay our hands on about palms and this property in particular. Our hope is to make the property as sustainable as possible in terms of utilities, carbon capture, soil fertility, plant nutrition, and economics of course. Of course we have lots to learn and hope to do so with your help. For instance, we will need lots of help in identifying the trees here. I have a feeling that the biggest question many people will have is, 'what's the condition of the trees?' I've been told that nothing's been watered or fertilized for a number of years but I cannot verify this. There are holes where a few trees appear to have been dug up and removed, a few are dead in situ, and a few more are dying. A large percentage of the remainder are showing signs of dehydration and likely K deficiency. But many trees are looking relatively healthy and would simply benefit from a bit more water and feeding. I'm taking advice from local experts who you all know, as well as some folks at University of Hawaii, Hilo who are running tests on some soil samples I have provided. In the short term I will do my best to check in here as frequently as possible. If I'm a little slow it's just that we're in the middle of removing many trailer loads of fronds to the mulcher in Hilo, and bringing back fresh mulch for our composting piles. We're also in the process of designing and deploying a new water catchment and irrigation system suited to the garden as it is today and hopefully will be in the future. Oh, and there are several million man-hours of weeding in our immediate future! In an effort to help keep friends up to date on our progress, we've created a blog page on Facebook called Project Ho'oponopono (https://www.facebook.com/projecthooponopono). My palm naivete is there for all to see so be gentle. I welcome you to 'like' the page so you too can see what we're up to without me interrupting proceedings here too much.

It's alive and well!

Thank you all so much for the lovely welcome! I'm trying my best to keep a pretty regular stream of stuff going on the Ho'oponopono fb page but I will try to do the same here too. Before I say one more word, I want to reassure you that the Voanioala Gerardii is alive and well and bigger than in all the other photos I have seen of it. I shall post one a bit later when the rain eases up. I forgot to mention in my intro that we feel we ought to be budgeting at least 30 minutes each day to some kind of rain dance until we get the irrigation situation resolved....Thankfully, last night the clouds opened and continue to pour their (free) liquid bounty upon us. I'm sure many of you have experienced the following phenomenon but it is new to us - there is a relatively constant whisper across this place as the leaves rustle against one another in the breeze. Then, as rain approaches, the rustling increases and then roars as the fat rain drops hit the leaves. When standing outside, all the sound comes from above as the rain makes little sound when it finally hits the cinder, but the roar of the leaves is amazing. It's like a chorus singing, "finally, a drink!" I know how they feel... Sorry, I shall try to spare you from such waxings in the future.... and fail of course.

Also 9 of the ten hottest years since records have been kept are in the 21st century. The other one is 1998.

Excellent..Pot them up....I love Bizzy's ....my favorite marginal palm.

My wife showed this to me about a week ago, of course the first thing I saw was "hey nice CIDP with lights on it" it took me a few seconds to "notice", my wife laughed that I am such a palm nerd that I couldn't see past the palm, whereas she noticed immediately.

Ohh,that's messed up Harry! Sorry to hear all these! Young,thin palms blowing over is pretty common with strong winds,you then wet the soil and righten them back up,tying them to a couple strong poles and after a year and something they are strong as ever again most times! Did the Butia survive the crash or was the trunk and meristem damaged badly? Jubaea seedlings just need great drainage,a mix of mostly course river sand and some cactus soil in a tall and narrow pot(such as a 1,5l bottle cut above and with holes for drainage),would provide that or you could go for a mostly pumice mix with some cactus soil and sand as filler. They do fine with plain cactus soil but you must be careful when to water! They can take drying out fine and just start closing their leafs if you overdo the dryness and open them up again when watered. With overwatering,they close their leafs with wet soil and just die... Most of these happen to everyone at one time or they other but you had them all together,which feels quite bad! I wish you good luck from now on and as long as you keep up the preventive protection of the palms from borers on a good schedule,you shouldn't have any problems with them again

Let round 1,009 of the Rob verses Dean fight begin

I've got this in my garden in Perth. The stems have gone bright red but no flowers yet. Flowering in NZ!!!! I'm taking this one down to my Albany property at 35S. My Hot Rio Nights has just flowered. I'm ecstatic about that.

I think AEAE stands for "Although Exquisite, Abnormally Expensive"...