Hi everyone, here is your chance to see a little bit if what it takes to grow kava to get this wonderful root we all love so much. There are 28 pictures and I hope you enjoy them all.
The first thing we have to do is clear the land, that is what the first picture shows.
Then when we have a place to plant the kava we need some cuttings to make baby kava plants. You can get cuttings from harvesting a kava plant and you can get hundreds of cuttings depending on the age of the kava plant. You can also take 1 or 2 stalks from a live kava plant and let it continue to grow.
The next 2 pictures is the cuttings after a harvest.
Then after we get the cuttings we need to put them in a medium to grow, I use moss first but you can also use soil. The next picture shows a bunch of the cuttings in the moss that I use. I keep the moss moist and in about 3 or 4 months you will see some shoots coming out from the moss, you can see this in the picture also.
Here is a rooted cutting-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
After the cuttings have good roots like in the picture then I will put them in planting bags with a soil. They will stay in this bag for 2-3 months and then you will have baby kava plants ready to go in the ground. The next 2 pictures shoe the baby kava plants ready to be planted in the ground.
Now all during this process so far I have started making my compost to mix with the soil. I use a bunch of chipped trees as a base and I add some other things one being seaweed emulsion that I make. I then mix the dark and rich compost with a mix of 50% Hamakua Soil and 50% black cinder to get my final planting medium. The next 2 pictures will show that.
Now after getting all the baby kava plants ready and mixing the compost and soil we are ready to make mounds of soil on the cleared ground so we can plant the kava plants in these mounds. The mounds make it easy to plant many kava plants and also easy to take care of them but most of all easy to harvest the kava plants. The next 2 pictures shows the mounds with some kava in them.
After I plant the baby kava in the mounds of soil I place weed mat around the kava as you can see in the next picture. This helps a lot to cut down on the grass that wants to grow around the kava. After about 6-8 months the kava will be large enough that the weed mat will be moved away from the kava plant because the kava plant itself will shade the area from grass and weeds.
Now we mostly wait, I will take care of the kava and plant more kava while we are waiting for this kava to grow, the next picture show some new kava plantings next to some older kava.
Now while we are taking care of the kava plants and planting new kava plants we are also waiting for the kava to get old enough to harvest. I like to harvest after 4 years. I will leave some kava growing longer, some over 15 years. The next few pictures shows some of the same kava getting older while we wait.
Still waiting, gotta let the kava get bigger and bigger and bigger.
Big like this next picture.
Well maybe I waited too long on that last picture, that is real big. that is actually one of the large Hawaiian Awa plants growing in the wild. I put micro chips in this back in the day when there was a lot of theft of this kava.
The next picture shows the kind of kava I harvest, still big no doubt.
Here we are actually harvesting kava plant. This is a Mahakea. We are carefully digging out the lateral roots before we dig up the huge corm or stump of the kava plant.
Some more pictures in my next post. Aloha.
Chris
The first thing we have to do is clear the land, that is what the first picture shows.
Then when we have a place to plant the kava we need some cuttings to make baby kava plants. You can get cuttings from harvesting a kava plant and you can get hundreds of cuttings depending on the age of the kava plant. You can also take 1 or 2 stalks from a live kava plant and let it continue to grow.
The next 2 pictures is the cuttings after a harvest.
Then after we get the cuttings we need to put them in a medium to grow, I use moss first but you can also use soil. The next picture shows a bunch of the cuttings in the moss that I use. I keep the moss moist and in about 3 or 4 months you will see some shoots coming out from the moss, you can see this in the picture also.
Here is a rooted cutting-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
After the cuttings have good roots like in the picture then I will put them in planting bags with a soil. They will stay in this bag for 2-3 months and then you will have baby kava plants ready to go in the ground. The next 2 pictures shoe the baby kava plants ready to be planted in the ground.
Now all during this process so far I have started making my compost to mix with the soil. I use a bunch of chipped trees as a base and I add some other things one being seaweed emulsion that I make. I then mix the dark and rich compost with a mix of 50% Hamakua Soil and 50% black cinder to get my final planting medium. The next 2 pictures will show that.
Now after getting all the baby kava plants ready and mixing the compost and soil we are ready to make mounds of soil on the cleared ground so we can plant the kava plants in these mounds. The mounds make it easy to plant many kava plants and also easy to take care of them but most of all easy to harvest the kava plants. The next 2 pictures shows the mounds with some kava in them.
After I plant the baby kava in the mounds of soil I place weed mat around the kava as you can see in the next picture. This helps a lot to cut down on the grass that wants to grow around the kava. After about 6-8 months the kava will be large enough that the weed mat will be moved away from the kava plant because the kava plant itself will shade the area from grass and weeds.
Now we mostly wait, I will take care of the kava and plant more kava while we are waiting for this kava to grow, the next picture show some new kava plantings next to some older kava.
Now while we are taking care of the kava plants and planting new kava plants we are also waiting for the kava to get old enough to harvest. I like to harvest after 4 years. I will leave some kava growing longer, some over 15 years. The next few pictures shows some of the same kava getting older while we wait.
Still waiting, gotta let the kava get bigger and bigger and bigger.
Big like this next picture.
Well maybe I waited too long on that last picture, that is real big. that is actually one of the large Hawaiian Awa plants growing in the wild. I put micro chips in this back in the day when there was a lot of theft of this kava.
The next picture shows the kind of kava I harvest, still big no doubt.
Here we are actually harvesting kava plant. This is a Mahakea. We are carefully digging out the lateral roots before we dig up the huge corm or stump of the kava plant.
Some more pictures in my next post. Aloha.
Chris
Last edited:
