This is a public-interest archive. Personal data is pseudonymized and retained under GDPR Article 89.

Re: tillers

Actually, there's very little fear of bits of corms being mixed in when the
winter air temperature drops to 0-5 degrees and the soil freezes solid.
I'm still waiting to see if my experiment to see just how zone 7'ish my
colocasias truly are.  We had a 7b-8a winter yet I don't see a hint of
growth where last year's colocasias used to be.

>
>You may want to forego the tiller entirely. On the Pacific atolls where some
>of the varieties you mentione are grown as food crops, they also have a
>sandy soil. They dig a pit and throw in organic matter, then plant. The
>compost is concentrated in the planting hole, where the plant needs it.
>Tilling would disperse it. Another problem with tilling (here, anyway, where
>the winter does not kill off cormlets), is that tilling spreads bits of
>corms and other remnant bits of the last crop, which then sprout. That mixes
>varieties in the bed.
>
>Then again, I cannot expect everybody to do their gardening with a stick.
>
>Aloha,
>Maurice (Stone-age, no,  Wood-age Gardener)
><<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<mo>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>Maurice Major				mmajor@bishop.bishop.hawaii.org
>Department of Anthropology			Phone:	(808) 847-8282
>Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum		FAX:	(808) 842-1914
>1525 Bernice Street
>Honolulu, HI 96817-0196
>
>
>
>
Other Mailing lists | Author Index | Date Index | Subject Index | Thread Index