Tropical Gardening: Starting from Seed

Originally Published August 10, 2020.  Updated September 23, 2020.

Mililani Town Center has a Walmart and a City Mill, the local hardware chain.  There is a Home Depot on my way to work.  These 3 shops are where I get most of my gardening supplies including seeds.  You will find the usual racks of Burpee seeds, some Ferry Morse (a Massachusettes-based company that I had only seen on the Eat Coast offered in catalogs and never tried), and a local company: Aina Ola Seed.  Given how completely different Hawaii is from the other States in the Union, I tend to prefer the locally grown seeds.  I just don't see something produced in Massachusettes doing well 6 USDA zones south of its origins.

Aina Ola Seed is apparently only available in stores, the company is based on Hawaii Island.  I could not find a website for them, so I have no idea what their complete catalog is.  I have successfully started their artichokes and papaya.  And I recently started some Toscano Kale, Brocolli, Chinese Parsley, and Chinese celery.

Happy little Aina Ola papaya.  I potted the seeds and nothing happened, so I planted other stuff in the pots and forgot all about them.  A year later I had almost 100% germination, amongst everything else I planted on top of them.  Good thing we like papaya.  Now I have lost the seed packet and I do not remember the variety but I suspect whatever it was it produces 2/3 self-fertilizing plants and 1/3 gender-separate plants.  So I have to wait until it flowers to figure out which to keep and where to finally plant them (both genders side by side will produce fruit on the female).  But they transplant readily by chopping off the top and sticking it in the ground.  This is also a good way to keep it short, since the trunk of the original will sprout from the sides and not grow much taller.  The traditional practice is to top the cut with a coffee can.  Update 9/23/2020, 1 has flowered and is definitely hermaphrodite so can be topped and planted wherever.

Little thistle-like plant is artichoke from Aina Ola Seed.  I had close to 100% germination, then I killed several seedlings through neglect.  They like to stay moist, but not too wet. Update 9/23/2020 - killed this one too.  Just one left in a pot, fingers crossed.

I went looking for some tropical seeds to grow, things I knew were grown here but couldn't find, and discovered the Hawaii Seed Growers Network.  They satisfy several of my horticultural desires: supporting local business, supporting Hawaiian agriculture, supporting Hawaii's attempts to regain food sustainability and redirect our economy away from such heavy reliance on tourism, and food in my backyard.  I ordered Ashwagandha, Love in a Mist (Nigella), Roselle/Jamaican Hibiscus, Ladyfinger Okra, and Vana Tulsi Basil.  Their seed is $4/packet and there are a decent number of seeds per packet, but I'm cheap so once I've invested in a packet, I'll seed save for future plantings.  They also sell small batches so their stuff is often out of stock,  but you can sign up for email notification of when things come back in stock or new stock is added.

Another local seed source I have not yet used is University of Hawaii, which is also small batches and often out of stock.  University of Hawaii College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources (CTAHR) is Hawaii's Ag School, Cooperative Extension, Master Gardener resource, etc.  The seed order form is painstakingly updated by what is available (mainly by striking through the text for what is not available).  Most HGP (Home Garden Packets) are $1.50 each with $1.50 handling charge for the order and no shipping cost in the State. 

I discovered Maui Seed Company through Etsy due to a rather large and soon to expire gift certificate balance.   In Etsy you can sort shops by location so I was able to browse Hawaii-based sellers.  Maui Seed Company is expensive compared to my usual sources and carries a variety of seed for fantastical tropical food stuffs.   Now I am still renting, and anything I plant either has to (1) survive in a pot, (2) be short lived in the ground, and/or (3) be easily transplantable with minimal resprout from the original planting (yes I realize the papaya may be a problem). So I stuck to things we would most likely eat that I hoped would do well in pots.  And then I splurged on scented flowers because, hello, gift certificate - isn't splurging the whole point?  To be honest the whole purchase was an insane splurge:

• 3 types lilikoi (purple, yellow, Jamaican)
• Thai Basil
• Pink and white guava (which are both supposedly Psidium guajava and therefore not on the Invasives list)
• Ice Cream Bean Tree & Cacao
• Calamansi Lime
• Maui Fragrant Flower collection (Ylang Ylang Vine, Night Blooming Jasmine, Stephanotis)
• Curry Plant

All of the Maui Seed Company packets came in little ziplocs with printed labels.  The 3 types of lilikoi (purple, yellow, and Jamaican), Ice Cream Bean and Cacao, Calamansi Lime, and Curry Plant seeds came wrapped in wet paper towel.  The website entries for each seed have some basic recommendations in addition to "look it up."  Pretty much anything you can grow in Hawaii has a CTAHR publication on how to grow it, some of them may date to the 1800s but if it hasn't been updated the information still applies and a PDF is available online.  Maui Seed Company's recommendation for all the wet paper towel seeds was to leave them in the paper towel until they sprout and then plant them.  The assumption is that you are buying them from some location on the mainland or farther away and by the time you receive your precious package most of these will have sprouted and require immediate planting, so you receive multiple emails regarding the imminent arrival of your precious cargo.  Of course being the next island over, the only ready to plant when I received them were the Cacao.  Everything else went back in the little cardboard box and in a drawer for about 2 weeks.  And this weekend I planted almost everything but the lilikoi.  Okay, I planted one purple lilikoi that had sprouted.

Note: Maui Seed Company's stock is constantly changing based on what is available.  If something is not available the entry for it is taken down, which means the information disappears.  Write it down when you order it.  Also, the site is very addictive because it is constantly changing - kindof the Pokemon of Hawaiian horticulture: Gotta plant them all!  

Cacao, Theobroma cacao, little bitty root sticking out on the right.  And they rotted in September, so sad.

Super excited to one day make my own chocolate.  Chocolate covered mango, chocolate covered ginger, chocolate covered turmeric....  This is a growing industry in Hawaii, one of our sustainability and economic rebuilding initiatives.  CTAHR has more information if you are interested.  Personally it is my happy belly initiative.

Directed to keep 1 week in dark as mailed, kept 2 weeks to get it to sprout.  Never heard of this.  Very intrigued.  And they also rotted by September.

Not really sure this germinated, the seeds became very squishy.  But a member of the Mililani Garden Club brings cuttings to meetings at least once a year, and the white rose he gave me is doing beautifully, though not flowering, so I have a source if these don't sprout.  Definitely rotted.

I was warned these can produce 3 sprouts to a seed and I definitely ended up with more sprouts in the towel than the seeds I started with.  The two that had not sprouted yet went back in the bag and tape and box. Chili lemon is something I look forward to making from scratch one day, and honestly you can use any citrus, preferably thin skinned.  It is also encouraged to prune one's citrus to keep them small and have many in the yard.  Citrus is not an export crop in Hawaii, it is more of a household crop.  The little bastards are thorny and make excellent fence-hopping deterrents.  Plus they smell good and provide instant snacks for the kids.  Therefore I want as many as possible. And I have 5 seeds that sprouted producing 7 seedlings.

Only one lilikoi sprouted so far, the brown seed coat splits in half and completely pops off, leaving a white sprout.  The rest went back in their bags, tape and in the box.  Update SEptember 23, 2020: went ahead and planted out the rest of the seed.  Some had sprouted, but very anemic looking.

Dry seeds: White & Pink Guava (Psidium guajava) for food, (yay sprouted) Night Blooming Jasmine (Cestrum nocturnum), and Stephanotis (was Stephanotis floribunda, now Marsdenia floribunda) for scented flowers.  More information about Stephanotis is available from the Hawaii Horticulture blog.

I was intrigued by the Maui Fragrant Flower Collection and had never seen any of the plants (including the Ylang Ylang vine, which is not the essential oil Ylang Ylang tree, and produces flowers that smell like Juicy Fruit gum and watery slightly sweet fruit) but unfortunately Night Blooming Jasmine is considered quite noxious by at least some in the State: Plant Pono.  That appears to be the only seeds I have that are on the Hawaii Horticultural Invasives list., strawberry guava being Psidium cattleianum, not P. guajava. I don't yet know all the synonyms so I may be missing something.  Plant naming is kindof a mess. 

These are probably not the only seed companies in the Islands, they are just the ones I have stumbled across.  Then there are the "found" seed sources.  We subscribed to Oahu Fresh in July and now receive a brown bag of seasonal fresh local produce at our door every Thursday.  Since it is fresh from the farm it is not treated with ripeners or growth inhibitors, which means every seed the kids pick out of their food and stick in the dirt sprouts.  So now we have 5 mango trees (of at least 4 different varieties based on leaf size/shape/color), a yard full of kabocha squash, mellon, and canteloupe seedlings and a couple random citrus sprouts.  Oh, and of course more pineapple plants, 6 more sprouted lemongrass sprigs, 2 more big pots of sprouted green onion ends, and a couple sprouting leek ends (actually from the grocery store).  A member of my work ohana shared her avocado with me the other day and a couple months later now I have an avocado seedling.  Ad a random apple seed thte kids stuck in a pot.  It's from a Fuji, but I'm pretty sure we don't et cold enough here to set flowers.  Still a cool looking tree.

There are also Seed Exchanges throughout the Islands, though most are closed due to COVID-19.