Growing Your Own Food on Maui Can Be Fun!

Grow Your Own

These days everyone is thinking about growing some of their own food for many reasons, and it’s good that kids should learn where their food comes from. Maui elementary schools are embracing the gardening concept and the students love to get their hands in the dirt and participate while they learn. This gives them a better understanding about food and nutrition, and also gets them excited to eat what they have produced. Grow Some Good is a Maui non-profit organization that has been connecting schools with a gardening program since 2008. It started with one school in Kihei, and now it’s really taking off and the benefits are showing at multiple campuses.

Baby cucumbers grown in Haiku Maui

Many regions of Maui make it easy to grow your own fruits and vegetables, flowers and herbs, all year long. Some areas will be better for tropical plants due to high levels of rainfall, while drier areas will favor plants that can withstand drought conditions. You only have to visit one of our local farmers markets to see the vast array of plants being grown on Maui. We are very lucky to have such diversity of climates that enables all manner of growth and sustainability. You can even grow your own coffee!

What kind of fruit trees grow on Maui?

• Bananas of many kinds
• Citrus fruits
• Lychee and rambutan
• Dragon fruit
• Peaches and plums
• Papayas
• Starfruit
• Cherimoya

Coffee beans growing on Maui

Backyard Chickens

Who doesn’t want some farm fresh eggs? You don’t need a lot of space to raise a few hens, but you might need permission if you’re in a subdivision with rules and regulations. Many CC&R’s in planned communities will state no chickens, or at the very least, no roosters, but if you’re lucky enough to live where there are no rules, go ahead and get yourself some chickens.

Egg laying hens in their coop

If you start with little chicks, it takes about 5 months until they start to lay their first eggs, and you’ll get eggs for years. Spring and summer production is good, but in winter months you might not get any eggs, so be prepared to have some feathered pets. A good, safe chicken coop will keep out predators like neighborhood dogs, but the sly mongoose will soon learn where he can get a meal of eggs. It soon becomes a challenge to get the eggs before the mongoose does and sometimes measures need to be taken to keep vermin out of the chicken house. It’s all part of the fun of living off the land!

Farm fresh eggs

Flowers

Many types can be added to your salads to brighten them up: sunflowers, hibiscus, marigolds, and nasturtiums for example. Of course, you can also just grow beautiful flowers for the sheer fun of it. Flowers for leis are always popular, as well as fragrant flowers that will remind you of the islands.

Find a home for sale on Maui where you can start growing your own food and flowers.

If you have questions about growing a garden or raising animals on Maui, let me be your guide.

Sunflower garden in Haiku