March 2015 Same Canoe Newsletter Hawaii Island vol. 35
Butterfly and Pollinator News, Straw Bale Gardens, Green Think Tour, Honey on Tap

One Island News

Honey on Tap!

Native Butterfly

Straw Bale Gardening

Butterfly Sightings

Pollinators and Plants

Green Think Tours

Green Tour No. 3

See details below for this March 8th event with a fun Tamale Making Workshop

Honey on Tap

Last year One Island supported the Go Sun solar cooker through Kick Starter and this year we invite you to consider supporting

a remarkable breakthrough in beekeeping and honey production.

We've all been hearing about the threats to the world bee populations. Organic practices are proving to be the most significant help to restoring the bee colonies world wide.

Here is some great news about an ingenious improvement in honey collection that is changing the lives of beekeepers large and small .. and is less stressful on the bees.

Meet the HONEY FLOW

an invention developed by an Australian father and son team.

Green is a Verb!

Flow's Kickstarter Campaign starts Feb 23rd. Support the

Green Economy!

Click here to join our online news & learning community and to receive our monthly newsletter

Meet the Native Vanessa tameamea

The native Kamehameha Butterfly relies on Koa trees for food, as well as Mamaki for egg laying and as food and shelter for the next generation of hungry caterpillars.

"There's a beautiful trio playing in the woods. It's a native trio that has been here a long time. The players are the māmaki shrub (Pipturus albidus), the koa tree (Acacia koa), and the Kamehameha butterfly (Vanessa tameamea), or pulelehua. If you have the right conditions, you can invite them to your garden, especially to encourage the pulelehua, whose numbers are diminishing, to thrive on the islands again.

Hawai'i is uniquely home to the māmaki, koa, and pulelehua ensemble - all three are endemic; they are found nowhere else on our planet."

Click here to learn more thanks to Rachel Laderman's Blog

Straw Bale Gardening

Update No 2

We are experimenting with straw bale raised bed gardening. Our goal is to assess whether investing in the bales can: provide raised surfaces for back ease, offer an easy means to exclude cat / chicken / snail intrusions, grow food and flowers in self-generated soil with healthy microbes, allow for protected growth of hard-to-grow crops like melons (normally hit by pests in Hawaii), and eventually breakdown to create new soil.

Steps one - three were setting up and conditioning the bales.

Step four was planting veggies, flowers and herbs on top of the bales, and adding potatoes down inside the bales.

Bamboo gate and flexible grid fencing

Local Food System

Green Building

Art and Culture

Natural Resources

It's all connected

Butterfly Beauty

Wonder and Gratitude

One Island's farm has been a butterfly habitat for 8 years but not every year sees a steady population of these flighted friends. Times of drought and loss of habitat are especially hard on pollinators. How can we help stablize their populations?

It is happy local news that we are seeing the naturalized butterflies return this year - and a new visitor has arrived that we've never seen before. We often are delighted to find a workshop or a meeting paused by the mesmerizing sight of multi-hued butterfly crossings. Whatever age, there is something very pleasing about watching the butterflies loop through the garden. Pause, wonder and gratitude.

In addition to the beauty of these 'flowers in flight', they are also part of the pollinator cycle essential to plant reproduction and food for us less colorful, earthbound humans.

Butterfly Habitat News

Happy national news is the US Fish and Wildlife pledge of

$3.2 million to help protect key Monarch Butterfly habitat - 200,000 acres, including farms, home and school gardens!

Click here to read more

Butterfly

Sightings

The butterflies and moths most often seen in Hawaii have arrived from distant shores and are considered 'naturalized'.

Examples below are regularly seen in One Island's organic farm and gardens: Yellow Cloudless Sulphur, Gulf Fritillary, Xuthus Swallowtail, Blue Bean, Black Witch Moth. Above is a Copper Skipper.

And new this year, for the first time in ten years of observations, we have an abundance of this brown tipped yellow visitor, a Clouded Sulphur, smaller than the larger Cloudless Sulphur shown above.

Pollinators and Plants

Who are our Pollinators in Hawaii? Butterflies, moths, bees, bats, beetles, flies, midges - they all move pollens around between plants - and so does the wind. Pesticides and herbicides are causing serious mortality problems for the insects we rely on as pollinators around the world. So is vast mono-cropping that is destroying native habitats. The monarch butterfly is being considered for protective status due to loss of habitat and the recent announcement of $3.2 million in conservation funding is a first step toward addressing this ecological danger.

Hawk Moths in Hawaii are sometimes mistaken for hummingbirds

Every farm and garden can proactively cultivate host plants that help our fascinating friends.

For butterflies, there is usually a host plant for the caterpillar, and other plants that the adult butterflies need for nectar. So when you think of planting for butterflies, two or more well chosen plants are important to encourage the life cycle in your garden. Your goal is to establish an inviting host plant for the females to lay their eggs, which is often then the larval caterpillar's favorite food, and you must also provide the showy nectar plants for the fluttering butterflies who then lay their eggs and start the cycle all over again.

Plants for Pollinators At One Island we cultivate Porter Weed, Crown Flower, (shown) Passion Flower, Tropical Milkweed, Citrus Trees, Eldorado, Clover, Mexican Sunflower, Butterfly Bush, a controlled area of Lantana, and even the tiny Noni blossom is loved by the butterflies.

Learn more about butterfly, bee and other pollinators at:

The Pollinator Partnership, Xerces Society, World Wildlife Fund

Protect our Pollinators

Plant their favorites!

Green Think Tour:

Hi'ilani EcoHouse

Honoka'a, March 8th

Tour 2p

Culinary workshop

12-2pm

The boldly dramatic Hi'ilani EcoHouse is our tour site on March 8th in Honoka'a. Built by two sustainability-minded couples who joined forces with an inventive designer, the house employs special green building materials and design techniques to conceive and build a dramatic perch overlooking the Pacific. This 4,000 square foot carbon-neutral home is worth a journey from around the island to see its innovative materials, structural design, interior finishing, energy efficiency, and green living concepts.

Tamale Magic We have a culinary experience to share! We'll be hosting a tamale making workshop using organic grains and foods from noon-2pm preceding the workshop. Yum! Workshop fee is $25 and includes all ingredients to take home four tamales. .

See the Hi'ilani web site for more details about the house.

Second Sunday of March, Tour 2pm

Culinary Workshop 12-2pm $25

Suggested Tour donation, including a tamale plate $25

Register here