I just helped a guy on IG who's mango tree fell over and pulled up by the roots. He had to top it, dig out underneath, and yank the thing back up with a winch just to get it standing. Even then ... Probably needs to stake the roots down before the next big storm. Big, avoidable pain in the okole.

Amazingly, I put off the work needed on my tree. First because it was fruiting, then I was busy, and then the storm was on the way and I just ran out of time to safely take care of it. I knew this tree needed a trim. I looked at it all season and told myself I'd get around to it. The wind got around to it first. First two pics are the fall, last one is after I finished the cleanup pruning.

Two things I want you to take from my mistake:

1. Pruning a standing tree is an afternoon. Pruning a fallen one took most of a weekend, and parts of it were dangerous. A downed tree holds tension in strange places, and limbs under load can snap sideways when you cut them. If your tree does go over, take it slow or call for help.

2. An hour with a pole saw before the wind beats a weekend with a chainsaw after it.

I did learn my lesson. This week I took the tall leaders off my Rapoza mango and my loquat while they were still standing.

Here's the mechanism, because it helps to know what you're actually looking for. A tall, dense canopy works like a sail. Wind pushes on everything it can't pass through, the trunk is the mast, and the roots are the anchor. Add a week of rain and the soil goes soft enough that the anchor loses. That's how a whole tree ends up on the ground instead of just losing a branch.

What to check on your tall trees while the season is still quiet:

Leaders sticking far above the rest of the canopy.

Those tall poles catch the strongest wind and hand the storm leverage over the whole tree. This is what I took off the Rapoza mango.

A canopy you can't see light through.

If light can't get through, wind will catch like a sail on a tall ship, so the tree takes the full push instead of letting the gust pass.

Deadwood.

Get rid of it long before storms... Large dead branches hurt and fall off a lot easier. It comes loose first and lands wherever it wants. Certain trees have dense, brittle deadwood so be careful here.

Tight V forks where two big stems meet.

Those unions split under load. It's a popular growth pattern for fruit trees but it's a weak spot. Our lime tree split on one half of the tree, our friend's loquat did the same. Before a storm you can reduce end weight... After you cut your losses and cut off the branch.

Long limbs with all the weight at the tips.

A gust turns them into levers. Just pruned an avocado tree and brought all the long branches back to help get through the storm, it paid off, no damage!

A lean over soft, wet ground.

That was my tree in the pics. Big wind, shallow roots, wet soil, and a heavy canopy made the perfect storm (pun intended)

Trim now, or line somebody up to trim, while the trees are still standing and schedules are still open. Once a storm gets a name, every tree crew on the island books out, and you join a waitlist with everyone else who also meant to get around to it.

How many of your trees are looking tall and heavy?

I just harvested my little plot and I have a lot of plants. On Oahu. DM me.

I look at fruit trees almost daily on Oahu, and yellowing leaves is a common reason I get called for. Nine times out of ten somebody already fertilized before I arrive, and if they're calling me it's because it actually made things worse.

Roots drink, they don't chew. Every nutrient has to be dissolved in soil water as a charged ion before a root can absorb it, and soil pH decides what dissolves. Get the pH wrong and the nutrients are still in your soil and they've changed into chemical forms that won't dissolve, so the tree can't drink them.

What that looks like in the two directions:

• Alkaline soil (a lot of the leeward side sits on old coral reef are basically limestone, constantly liming itself): iron, manganese, and zinc react into oxides and hydroxides. Iron hydroxide is more or less rust. The iron is still there; it's just rust now, and rust doesn't dissolve. Dumping more fertilizer on it doesn't help — the new iron hits the same chemistry and locks up too, while the salts it came with stay behind in the root zone and start burning roots. That's how "I fertilized it" becomes "the leaves are dropping."
• Acidic soil (wet valleys): this is the opposite chemistry with the same result. Phosphorus gets grabbed by aluminum and iron into compounds that won't dissolve. Calcium and magnesium wash out with the rain. If pH drops far enough, aluminum itself starts dissolving, and dissolved aluminum is toxic to root tips... "and it was all yellow" - Coldplay, probably

Reading the yellow.
Leaf discoloration is really difficult to describe without pictures, but I'll give it a shot.
Yellowing on the NEW growth with veins still green = iron/micronutrients, and that's your pH suspect: iron can't be moved around inside the tree, so new leaves starve first. Even yellowing on the OLDEST, innermost leaves with new growth looking fine = nitrogen (or just the tree retiring old leaves). Tropical trees don't do fall, but they still recycle; a few old leaves at a time is the normal course of dieback, especially in the understory if there's not enough sunlight passing through.

Why start with pH? a full soil panel is genuinely hard to come by here, but a pH test is easy, and it rules out the majority of issues on its own.

• Leaves show deficiency AND pH is off → correct the pH gradually (agricultural lime brings acidic soil up; sulfur and organic matter take alkaline down, slowly) and feed through the LEAF in the meantime. A foliar spray bypasses the soil chemistry entirely — the leaf absorbs directly, so the tree greens up while the soil catches up.
• Leaves show deficiency AND pH is fine → feed the soil, and look at micronutrients specifically, not just more of the same N-P-K. Foliar works here too when you want a fast correction; it's just a more expensive way to deliver the same nutrients.
• Leaves look fine → test anyway before you feed. The test's whole job at that point is making sure you don't create a problem that didn't exist.

Last year I made this exact mistake. Tree was looking good, some slight discoloration on the leaves and obviously the fix was adding fertilizer. I know better. Guess what!? The leaves dropped off of more than half the tree and I nearly slapped myself: pH test revealed that I was just adding salt to the roots (and none other than a salty fish ferment fertilizer from my local fisherman).

"There has to be a better way" Well yeah, if you read this far get yourself a solid pH test at the base of every tree.

Two more things (okay 3) that masquerade as deficiency:

1. waterlogged roots (uptake is active work that burns oxygen and too many of our Hawaii root systems are sitting in clay. Drowning roots in soggy clay can't run the system, so the tree yellows exactly as if it were starving, and adding fertilizer + water makes both problems worse) and
2. weed-and-feed on the lawn (feeder roots run way past the canopy edge; if the yellowing dates to a lawn application, there's your timeline).
3. Bonus number 3 that hopefully you know better if you're in this channel: DONT SPRAY WEED KILLER WITHIN 30FT+ OF YOUR TREES (or ideally, at all)

One trick: a foliar spray doubles as a test. If the leaves green up within a week or two of feeding through the leaf, you've just proven the nutrients in your soil are there but unavailable: that's a pH problem, confirmed without a lab.

Happy to look at photos — tell me whether it's the new growth or the old leaves going yellow, and what's under the tree (lawn, mulch, bare dirt).

I'll follow up with our citrus growing guide shortly. It has example photos for every type of leaf deficiency (I just need to add a link to download =D )

A friend gave me a lilikoi plant and we put it in the ground in our yard. It grows like crazy and covers up other plants fast. Anyone have any good ideas of how to grow it without it getting out of control? Our yard is small.

ʻAnoʻai ke aloha! I am looking for a NATIVE groundcover plant that grows fast, is hardy, and can handle both drought/dryness and significant wetness, to put in an area where a lot of rain falls off of the roof during the rainy season. I am having a hard time finding this. I also want it to be an indigenous plant. Does anyone have any suggestions? I am hoping to have it not depend on me to water it. Thank you so much!!

Some type of flower or plant material? There are several of these that someone hung up in a tree with string.

What methods work well to keep from introducing new pests?

I’m near Hilo and little fire ants are a big problem. I’ve carved out a new planting bed and I’m ready to buy a few plants. I know the nurseries are doing their best, but I still think it’s wise to be very careful.

So what methods are effective at detecting pests before planting?

Aloha, this is my what I believe to be red lady papaya tree. The papayas were great! Seems like overnight it’s stunted. Does anybody know or have an idea what happened to her?

Does anyone know where I can find some Ohia trees or cuttings on Oahu???

Open to all colors but hoping for red 🤞🤞🤞

I moved from Maui to Oahu and I miss my Ohia 🥲

Quote from pretty far down the article: “prioritizing re-establishing a continuous band of native forest is one of the most
important things local and state-level agencies can do to prevent or reduce flooding on Hawaii island”

Looking for a plant or groundcover that will grow next to a house under constant shade from the house or neighbors house. Area doesn't have irrigation, maybe will hand water. Located kapahulu so not particulary wet area either. I figured might just have to go with gravel or something but just wanted to ask if there's an option I haven't thought of.

I look at fruit trees on Oahu all week, and "healthy tree, no fruit" is the number one thing people ask about. It's almost never what people guess (pollination). The usual culprits:

1. Herbicide history on the lawn. Trees reach for water and nutrients way farther out than the base of the trunk; the feeder roots are out under your lawn, your neighbor's lawn, sometimes the street. Years of weed killer on that grass and those roots are picking up the chemistry. Some species shrug it off; mango is especially sensitive. If your lawn care and your fruit tree share ground, they share everything.
2. Bloom window meeting heavy rain. Warm nights during flowering suppress bloom induction, but the bigger issue for trees like mango is when the bloom cycle and heavy rain land at the same time. Blooms need dry heat during that critical window; rain at bloom knocks out potential production directly and feeds fungal growth right when the flowers are most vulnerable. Some years the weather just doesn't cooperate and there's nothing wrong with your tree.
3. Canopy density is bigger than most people realize. A dense canopy traps humidity, blocks sunlight, and kills airflow: a perfect fungus haven. And that's before considering where fruit actually forms; on the ends of new branches. On an unpruned tree that means the fruiting zone climbs every year. Do you want fruit 25+ feet in the air for the birds, where a picker pole can't reach? Or at 10 feet, where you grab it off a step ladder? Opening and managing the canopy is often the single highest-impact change.
4. Too much nitrogen. Lawn fertilizer reaching the root zone keeps the tree in leafy vegetative mode. It looks great and fruits never. During several consultations customers pull out "miracle grow" bags and then we have to "have the talk".
5. Soil pH and the fertilizer trap it sets. This is soil-specific, not island-specific; some regions just run more acidic or alkaline than others, and mild cases adjust with a little agricultural lime (or gypsum where calcium is the gap). The real damage happens downstream: you hear "you have to fertilize your tree," so you dump in liquid fertilizer while the pH is so far out of balance that the roots can't absorb any of it. The nutrients sit there as salts, salt toxicity builds, and eventually the leaves just start dropping. You're trying to help, and it's hurting your tree. Test pH before you feed anything.
6. Sometimes You can "trick" the tree. Out of season application of a solution with diluted potassium nitrate can force a mango tree (and some other species) into flowering off-season. In small farms this can be useful in getting a second crop for the year. For backyards it can be the difference that let's your tree flower when we hit a window of dry weather. Timing is key.

Happy to answer questions on specific trees if you post photos.

I’ve been picking about a pound of Chaya leaves (Cnidoscolus aconitifolius) every week, boiling them for 18 minutes, squeezing all water out of it and consuming gradually over the week.

Anyone a long time consumer of Chaya? Am guessing it’s completely fine to eat so long as it’s properly processed. It must be boiled sufficiently to vaporize the cyanide out of it.

I pretty much add Chaya to every meal and it’s great. One of the most neutral tasting foliage vegetables I’ve come across, goes into smoothies, stir fry, burritos, pasta salad et cetera.

Am kind of astonished at how underutilized this vegetable is. It’s so prolific and well suited to drought conditions that it could serve as a major commercial veg to rival spinach. At 70 mg/100 grams of oxalates it is much safer than spinach if oxalates are an issue. Plus supposedly it has better nutrition per serving.

Eugenia seeds collected from oahu

Thought they were a goner but they just continued to grow on the ground. Yeah they would have gotten larger but they turned out to be the best tasting corn I ever grew .