I thought I would blog a little on 'olena. This is a very awesome plant. I don't think my mana'o will do it justice, so, if you really want to learn more, there are choke la'au books in the library that talk about it, you could take la'au classes from Kamakakuokalani or Windward, or if you are lucky enough like me, you might talk with someone who has been growing and healing with this plant for years like Leina'ala. I love 'olena. I drink the tea (obtained from the root section) to help my body recover from a hard days work in the garden or for hard workouts. I love it so much that I also started cooking with it a lot, even bought some kind of organic powder version from whole foods while mine was growing.
So besides my love for 'olena I wanted to share about it because I had committed about a third of my growbed to these plants for the last few months and just wanted to share the progress. They are doing well but at one point the leaves started to look pale with a light green complexion. So I went to my gurus for advice and they said I was probably lacking iron so they suggested Iron Chelate which I found at Waimanalo Aquaponics and easily added to my system by mixing a tablespoon with a 5 gallon bucket of water and added it to the fish tank. At this same time I added Oyster shells in a nylon sock because the ph of my water was dropping every week.
Long story short, with these few adjustments, the 'olena and other mea in my growbed started to thrive again and now the pua 'olena is in bloom. From what I heard after the pua blooms, the plant will start to droop and look like its dying and that is when it is time to harvest. The plant is not technically dying but going into some kind of dormancy and will come back in its season. Though in some aquaponic systems, I have been told, the 'olena does not go dormant but stays upright all year long.
Long story short, with these few adjustments, the 'olena and other mea in my growbed started to thrive again and now the pua 'olena is in bloom. From what I heard after the pua blooms, the plant will start to droop and look like its dying and that is when it is time to harvest. The plant is not technically dying but going into some kind of dormancy and will come back in its season. Though in some aquaponic systems, I have been told, the 'olena does not go dormant but stays upright all year long.
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