star apple needs well drained soil and full sun to be productive. It is easier to get to fruit than mangos. Producing lots for almost zero upkeep(apart from full sun and well-draining soil). No need to amend the soil in most tropical conditions.
mango is just like star apple, needing full-sun. As for burning stuff directly under mango trees, aka “smudging”, i don’t really see any benefits from the practice. Theory is that burning stuff neath the leaves provide the trees with lots of carbon dioxide, and may also be insecticidal, but mangos aren’t really magnets for pests, and if there might be any, smoking them out probably won’t do much good since once you stop burning stuff, the pests can just come back. Would rather use leaves and twigs as soil amendments/compost, instead of using them for smudging. Mango is a stronger feeder than star apple and will bear more with soil amendments/fertilizers.
it is a veritable giant if grown from seed, but grafting mature budwood to seedlings will produce trees bearing at smaller sizes, and bearing sooner. As with many other species, airlayers will be the most dwarfed, but not as productive as mature budwood grafted to seedlings. Btw, i like the green cultivar better than the purple one.
i see you have breadfruit, so really intrigued as to why jackfruit isn’t popular there.
seed-grown jackfruit may vary in quality and characteristics, but in my experience with jackfruit trees randomly grown from seed, the likelihood of getting a subpar cultivar is actually much lower than getting a cultivar with decent quality. So it is definitely worth trying even if growing from random seed. Of course you could always graft some branches with known cultivars some day, should the trees not produce quality fruit.
have my doubts if temperate jujubes will do well in your zone(considering that you’re also growing garcinia and durian!) but will gladly send you some jujube pits and seeds if you want to sprout some(and if it is not illegal or not needing quarantine). Temperate jujubes can live to a thousand years, but can be incredibly precocious, with some seedlings being able to bear fruits at 6 months of age(and without undergoing chill hours). Most juju seedlings though will take two to three years though before they start blooming and bearing fruits.
I suggest going to a city hall meeting and offering to be a sponsor of a section of the park with goal to make it an organic non-toxic area where kids and dogs can play, and anybody can eat the fruit of your labor.
My belief based on my town’s homeless crisis is if I did so here the city would tearmy work out. They do not want the homeless to congregate or eat in the park, but they do.
Lazy Sunday, not many people out and about at that hour. There’s plenty of activity in the weekdays, but I can’t say I’ve ever seen it crowded, except during special events.
Villalba isn’t really a city, it’s a mostly suburban & rural municipality at the foothills and in the mountains. Those pics are as close to urban as it gets, it’s all suburbs here. The view from the mountains is something special.
Most people grow seed-grown here too, the Ag research station doesn’t carry a lot of species variety, so few get named cultivars - mostly mangoes and avocados.
I haven’t seen the green one around these parts, but I know where I can get it. ¿How does it compare to the purple one? I tried growing Abiu at my grandmother’s once, a tall-ish bagged tree that had survived my neglectful phase. It died spontaneously after a few months, no discernible cause. The soil there was good, and there was no drought at the time. I’m trying Langsat now, hoping it’ll do better.
Breadfruit & Camansi Nut are the Artocarpus of choice here… Anything other than these and Jackfruit are nigh unheard of, save for rare fruit growers. (And most of those are in Mayagüez in the west).
I’m thankful to have known plenty of exceptions, but the rule here is that most people don’t care for exotics. The logic is that if it’s rare, it’s probably rare “for a reason” (implying that it’s of poor quality, and not worthwhile). When you actually get some samples, a lot of people are reluctant to sample them… “I don’t like it because I haven’t tried it”. It’s the stupidest logic, absurd and maddening, but there’s not much you can do about it. Most people aren’t that extreme, but there is a general tone of dismissiveness towards exotics. I’m hoping to play a part in changing that on the eastern side.
Back to Jackfruit, I’ve only had the pleasure of trying it once (during a visit to Minnesota, ironically). I didn’t like it, but I refuse to let that experience color my perception, because I’ve heard that it’s a wildly variable species in flavor profile. The one I sampled had an aftertaste that reminded me of onion, yet I was the only one in the group that could detect it; the others (not that knowledgeable about exotic fruit as far as I know) detected no such aftertaste, and they enjoyed it. It’s weird, I expected to hate durian, but found it more palatable than the jackfruit (except for the texture, but the durian was frozen, so I don’t count it).
The only quarantine plants here are bananas, coffee and citrus, anything else is fair game. I’d love to try my hand at seed-grown jujubes. PM sent!
There’s not many homeless people here, and not many public areas that the municipality actively manages. And actually… I don’t think we have a park either. We have parks in the metropolitan cities, but over here we just have the natural areas in the rural regions (“Toro Negro Forest” in my town).
I’d be interested in a project like that, but I don’t really have the cash for it. If I did, I’d get the rare plants planted everywhere, instead of having to rely on just the easily propagated stuff. A fruit and spice park here would be amazing! For now, it’s just a crazy dream.
These things should only be considered “exotic” to people from temperate climates. Jackfruit isn’t any more exotic than mangoes or bananas. They all come from tropical south/southeast Asia. The soursop is one of the good fruits native to the Caribbean.
Over here, you could say we have two major groups, with a minor group that straddles the line: Traditional Fruit and Exotic Fruit.
Traditional fruit is any crop that’s been grown on the island for a long time, and is very well-known: Mango, Avocado, Breadfruit, Camansi Nut, Banana, Guava, Quenepa (Melicoccus bijugatus), Grapefruit, Barbados Cherry, Soursop, Corazón (Custard Apple, A. reticulatus), Passionfruit, Carambola, Tamarind, Coconut, Pineapple, etc.
Exotic is anything relatively new, or that hasn’t been grown enough to become recognizable by the public… Basically anything that most of the public doesn’t know about. most Artocarpus, Garcinias, Jaboticaba, Eugenias, Lychee, Longan, Baccaureas, Durian, Cupuaçú, Flacourtia, Salak, Loquat, Medlar, any Nuts, almost all Palm Fruits, most temperate fruit (even the low-chill ones that work here), etc, etc, etc (way too many to list).
The mid-category are either traditional crops that have been widely (but sparsely) grown enough to be known by the locals, or new crops that are starting to gain ground and be recognized by more people. Either way, they’re not common, but decently well-known. Pouterias, Pomegranate, Rambutan, Sugar Apple, Spondias plums, Mammee Apple, Ice Cream Bean, Wax Jambu, Dragonfruit, Vangueria, Ketembilla, Otaheite Gooseberry, etc. This category’s a bit ambiguous with the Traditionals, and some fruits could switch lists.
We also have some wild or feral crops that few people recognize in edible capacity, and even fewer use: Manila Tamarind, Sea Grapes, Jamaican Cherry, Cattapa Almond, Coco Plum, Jácana (Pouteria multiflora), etc.
Yeah, the Traditional and Mid-way lists look longer, but you’ll notice they have specific species, the Exotic list has entire genera, and there are many, many more exotics that I can’t remember off the top of my head (the other lists are nearly comprehensive for the island).
Hi Ceasar: From what I’ve read of your comments on a couple threads, I have a link to something I think you will really, really enjoy seeing. As it turns out, there is an international colaboration of folks just like you who have either planted or discovered fruit, nuts, berries, etc growing on public lands/public places and have mapped them. I think there are even 11 or 12 in Puerto Rico (I think that is where you are?) so maybe there are already some close to you. (I saw Mangos, breadfruit, starfruit, and macadamia nuts all shown on the map of PR). You can plant more, then list them and one day contribute to the map.
It isn’t perfect, it isn’t always up to date, the produce isn’t always on truly “Public land” but is almost always a location where its fine to pick it (ie edge of parking lots, trees on private land but with limbs hanging over public sidewalks, etc). In short, it just seems like this map and the idea behind it is right along the lines of what you’ve been talking about and hoping to do. Take a look…I hope you like it!
there will be folks who are satisfied with a limited fruit vocabulary, which, as you’ve described, can be outrageous to folks like us, but i guess that is their comfort zone, and there really isn’t anything wrong(or right) about it. Speaking for myself, i am much inclined to be a citizen of the world, and not just of one country. I guess we’re the type who would like to get to know as many fruit species as we possibly can, and to try as many cultivars if the first one or two don’t impress. If there were fruits growing in Mars, quite certain we’d be interested trying those too Have had a few pointless/meaningless correspondence with folks who seem to be a little too active about disparaging durian, or mangos, or jujubes, or mulberries, or even apples or peaches which can get really old since it shouldn’t really matter if there might be folks who don’t like them, since the goal of any forum is to host correspondence between folks who share common preferences. There will be folks who post pictures of the apples and peaches they’ve grown as being the best fruits in the world, just as there will be folks who think the jackfruit and durian they’ve grown are the best fruits… Just as there will be folks who claim their daughters/sons are the smartest… Well, perhaps the best response to any of those folks would be a nod, and of course, a smile. Acknowledge their love, and let them beam with pride.
hey, i am weird too, but who’s to say who’s weird and who’s not? The sense of taste varies between folks, just like color-blindness, or the inability or ability to smell asparagus-laced urine. I actually think durian has an onion after-taste and jackfruit does not. Regardless-- i enjoy both fruits, oniony or not. Btw, frozen durian does not taste too differently from fresh durian, since it is mostly fat. Simply thaw the frozen durian, and the taste and texture of thawed durian would be practically the same as it was when it was freshly prepared. Jackfruit is a totally different story. If the jackfruit you’ve eaten was fresh, it is more likely to have been picked too soon for the export market. Jackfruit picked too soon will ripen, but far from the quality of itself having matured on the tree. Have noticed though that the chances of getting a close-to-mature jackfruit has been increasing over-the-years. I would say that jackfruit from Mexico will now have a 50% chance of being prime or close to prime(the flesh is meatier, deeper in color, and sweeter). It was only ~ 10-20% chance of getting a good one just a few years ago.
the flesh of green cultivar have tried is more firm. The purple ones have tasted tend to be too mushy for the same stage of maturity as the green one. Incidentally, my heart skipped a beat when you said you’re growing langsat. That is exciting! I hope the cultivar you’re growing is sweet(there are super-sour ones), and hoping they bear fruits for you soon. A good langsat/longkong is as luscious as any other elite fruit species. And so refreshing! Can have it for breakfast and will eating nothing but( even mastered maneuvering in my mouth without biting into the bitter seeds, and swallowing the seeds as well). The trouble with the species is the long-gestation period, as the trees have protracted juvenile stages(just like mangosteen and lychee), and even grafted ones may take a long time, though certainly not as long as when growing from seed. Breadfruit/camansi are delicious cooked in coconut milk, makes my mouth water. And hopefully you’d be able to obtain A. odoratissimus, which is absolute candy. Would love to see your yearly updates.
I don’t have a clue about what works in your zone @Caesar , but I say go for it. You will probably get frowned upon by some people, but you will be doing a great service to others.
Most people in my country don’t know what fresh food is. Many don’t recognise any fruit they find growing, the few who know what they are looking at won’t eat it and worry if they will be poisoned by it or something.
When I was a school teacher I would see kids who were lucky if they got 1 meal a day. They would stop at the plum tree on the way home from school and have a plum fight, but they never ate a single one.
The kids saw me eat the plums off those trees and thought I was insane. As it turns out, they had never eaten any fruit in their life, let alone ate any fruit from a tree. It took a lot of time, and a whole lot of effort, but I eventually got a few to try them. We don’t live in that town anymore but I hope at least some are eating those plums.
I applaud your efforts, Caesar. When I was a young kid in the subtropics, I did a lot of foraging for fruit. I remember picking various types of guava, including what we called strawberry guava (yellow and red) and pineapple guava (feijoa). Also passionfruit, lychee (had to steal that one), some starfruit, tropical raspberries, avocado and mountain apple (Syzygium). Papayas were everywhere too, but I had to lug those home for my parents to prepare. If you can get the local kids hooked, that fruit won’t go to waste.
In southern California and Portland, Oregon, I’ve heard about local guides who take people on tours and show them plants in public places that produce edible fruit. I’ve also noticed that when people see me eating fruit like Cornus mas in the parks here in Oregon, they’ll approach me to ask what I’m eating and will occasionally try some themselves.
Thank you! I enjoyed that very much. Most of the documented sites are up north, perhaps I can find some decent trees to pin down south.
I’m heading over to that Macadamia in July. I’ll make it a day-trip with my parents. The last time I bought a pair of Macadamia seeds, they failed to sprout. With any luck, some of the seeds I hope to bring back will sprout for me, and I’ll still have enough left over for a snack.
I’d like to hear back on what he says. I’ve pitched the idea to my folks and they’ve given me the okay, but I wonder how other locals would take to the idea.
I really like that way of thinking. It’s okay for each person to like what they like and be happy about it. Doesn’t matter of it’s common or rare… A fruit is worthwhile if it makes someone happy.
I expected Durian to be denser, like a thick semi-dry fatty custard. It felt a little slimy, and got slimier over time, which I thought had to do with all the moisture from the thawing process. It was a whole durian, in the husk, and though I don’t remember the instructions, I distinctly remember realizing that I had failed to follow them once it was thawed.
I think Oscar Jaitt from Fruit Lovers Nursery has the green one, along with a few others. I’ll see if I can get some seeds soon.
I actually had A. odoratissimus, and it was one of the unfortunate casualties of my neglectful phase. I do remember it being one of the trees I checked on the most, but it needed more water than I gave it at the time. The biggest regret of that phase was the loss of that particular tree, I was really looking forward to trying it out. I do have A. sericicarpus planted in the ground, a few years older (though set back by a heavy pruning I gave it, no fruit yet), but I wanted to compare the two.
I’m big on zone-pushing. I know the tropical stuff works here, but I had always wondered about temperate climate fruit. I had been told all my life it wouldn’t work. Then I saw a local program focusing on local farmers, and they showed one guy, Nebai Fruit Gardens, who specialized in temperate climate fruit. He knew people who could fruit apples near the southern coast, it doesn’t get more tropical than that here. Peaches, plums, apples, pears, berries, anything you could think of, he was growing it and getting it to fruit, and few of them required any tricks (like winter water reduction or defoliation). For most of them, it was enough that they be a low-chill variety, 250 hours or under. And it worked.
I’ve fruited strawberries and raspberries before, so now I hope to branch out. If I could get a big piece of land, I’d grow everything! Tropical or otherwise.
And a kid that doesn’t even know what a fruit is… It sounds absurd! Even more so if they were poor, how were the parents feeding them? I’ve seen well-off people engage in foraging for the pleasure of it, you’d think in poorer communities it would be common practice. With any luck, you’ve left a lasting impact on those children, and on the community as a whole.
Roseleaf Raspberries were my first foraging experience, and they got me hooked on berries in the first place. I got an Atherton Raspberry out back from the local mountains, I hadn’t even realized there were other species here until years later (I’ve not seen the Mysores yet).
The local experience is pretty much as you describe, and a whole lot of fun! Guavas, Passionfruit, Starfruit, Quenepas, Pomarrosas, and loads of Mangoes! Syrupy candied papaya is practically a national dish here, though we candy it in the green stage (I think the dry candied commercial stuff from the trail mixes is prepared in the ripe stage). I once had my grandma repeat the recipe with Giant Granadilla rind, and it turned out just as well.
I haven’t gone out to forage in a while, the fare I’ve had in more urban regions is usually Manila Tamarind, Sea Grapes and Jamaican Cherry. I actually found a Jamaican Cherry growing as a weed under a fallen retaining wall a couple of streets up from mine. I shared the fruit with my parents and they liked it. I squeezed the seeds out from another fruit and I’ll plant it tomorrow. I think I might check on the tree tomorrow again, perhaps it’ll have more ripe fruit on it. They were pink instead of the usual red, but they tasted the same. Pics:
I have a few extra Paloverde and Desert Ironwood trees that I think would be good foraging fare, but I’m not sure the locals would appreciate them as well as fruit (especially since they don’t even know about these beans), doubly so given their spines. But I might tuck them into a back corner of an open space, like near the roofed bench.
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Also… I hope to tackle the guinea grass in my back hillside soon, but it’s a lot of material to manage. I’d like to turn it to charcoal if I could. ¿Does anyone know how to build and use a charcoal-making drum?
there are denser durian, the rare red-pulped and orange pulped ones which are somewhat different, but they are generally not as in-your-face rich as the yellow and buttery types. In this regard, durian should be treated more like ice cream instead of fruit. At the early stages of growing tropicals outside of their time zones , any cultivar you could get to fruit in your locale would be one-of-a-kind.
same with langsat, getting it to fruit would be an achievement in itself(considering that the waiting time may take at least a decade), regardless of the quality, but still hoping your seed-grown langsat will be sweet. From seed, it will be a fruit tree that becomes an heirloom. The long gestation period is what you will endure, so that your kids and grandkids won’t have to! Mature langsats, jackfruits, lychees are the tropical equivalents of chinese jujubes. Producing delicious, nutritious fruits for hundreds of years.
caimito is another long-lived tree but luckily has a shorter juvenile stage than langsats
the birds probably beat you to the mature red ones. I actually prefer them at the pink stage when the flavor and aroma are not as cloying as the overripe reds, and the flesh is more firm at the pink stage.
Not many commercial farmers deal in fruit over here, especially exotics. The farmers that specialize in exotic fruits live mostly on the west of the Island (Mayagüez, Las Marias, etc.), and they mostly work as nurseries for rare species.
I had once entertained the idea of planting broad swathes of government land with fruiting trees (the idea was as an anti-famine measure), but I ended up dropping the idea out of concern that the increased fruit trees and the fruit-fall would end up multiplying pests (be it rodents, insects or what have you).
Right now, I mainly want to plant some fruit trees in local neighborhoods, to feed the neighbors and raise awareness of fruit. I hope most people aren’t able to trace it back to me… It’d be easier to get away with.
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My mulberries are now bearing well for the first time. It’s probably their age. Nothing impressive, but it’s special to me… The first tree I’ve planted in years that actually bore well for me (the other one was a Ketembilla that was since cut down).
I also put my pair of Maclura cochinchinensis into the ground at my grandma’s place, next to the mulberries. I hope to find out somewhat soon if I have a male & female (or at least a pair of females… Maybe they would bear seedless fruit?).
I plan on taking some cuttings from my Eugenias and Jaboticabas soon. If I can get them to strike, this changes everything!
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I talked to a friend who eats poorly-known local fruits all the time. He brought me a bunch of cashews (overripe, so I’ll be using them for seed-sowing and to graft Cerrado Cashew), and he brought me 9 Sapodillas. 4 were overripe, 5 underripe. I did get to taste a decently ripe chunk from one of the overripe ones, and it was sweet! Like caramel. I tasted an underripe one, latex and all… I regret that. I took the seeds out of the ones I tasted and the other ripe ones, and left the remaining 4 to ripen on my kitchen table. Perhaps I should bag them with an apple?
I also found some of my old potted Sugar Apple trees, severely neglected, but alive and ineffectively flowering. My friend is now on the lookout for Mammee Apple, Custard Apple, Soursop, Caimito, Vangueria Medlars, Passionfruit, and anything else he can find. I’m gonna see if I can go fruit hunting with him this week. So begins the “Appleseed” Initiative.
Trying not to ask a stupid question but what are the restrictions for sending seeds in to PR? I assumed anything you can ship to the US can go to PR with exceptions like the usual suspects citrus etc.
No stupid questions here, I had to ask that one myself a good while ago.
The only major restrictions are Citrus, Coffee and Banana. I think they need Phytosanitary certificates to get in the island legally, though I’m not sure if there are additional restrictions.
those sapodillas make my mouth water! Sapodillas can be difficult to assess by appearance. Am sure you’re already familiar with, but if not, a reliable way to judge sapodillas’ ability to ripen(picked off the tree) would be to scratch the skin and check if the pulp is yellowish(no tinge of green). If yellowish, the fruits will ripen ok. A small scrape does not do much damage due to the gummy latex. Unfortunately an immature sapodilla won’t prosper much even with overripe bananas around it.
love those too. A good cultivar has delicious fruits! or should i say, peduncle(as the cashew ‘nut’ is technically the fruit)
New to me! I actually have more fascination than experience with fruit at the moment… Time will change that.
They’re all green. Some looked more yellowish, but I can’t properly tell. I’ll leave them for a few more days, but I’ll probably have to scrap them and keep the seeds. I’ll see if my friend can take me to the tree in search of fresh ones.
One of my favorite fruit that I’ve had too little contact with was Mammee apple. It’s been a few years, but the texture reminded me of mango, and the flavor vaguely reminiscent of sweet spiced applesauce. My best batch of Kombucha came from that fruit, with a touch of Soursop.
I had taken a bite out of one of the cashew apples, and though overripe, it was aromatic and astringent. I will be keeping some of the trees ungrafted, to have both species on hand. The Cerrado Cashew is said to have superior fruit, non-astringent (and maybe sweeter, I think). Perhaps I could get some breeding work in between the species.
I have eaten 2 maybe 3 diffrent sapotes but I never know which one people are talking about. At least 3 species all get the Sapote name affixed. When you said Mammee apple I though Mamey sapote but looking them up there two totally diffrent fruits.
Mammee Apple and Mamey Sapote look pretty similar, and both are called Mamey in Spanish, but they’re not related (MA is a distant Garcinia relative). The “apple” is rounder, yellowish-orange inside and has a huge, light brown, textured seed, while the “sapote” is more elongate, reddish-brown inside, and with a glossy black seed. Sapodilla is a close relative of Mamey Sapote, called “Níspero” in Spanish (medlar), and similar in many respects, but much smaller and rounder. Not many other sapotaceans actually carry the name “sapote” as far as I can recall (I remember “Green Sapote” off the top of my head, Pouteria viridis). Black sapote is a green-skinned black-pulped persimmon, and white sapote is a green-skinned white-pulped citrus relative.
Have had a few pointless/meaningless correspondence with folks who seem to be a little too active about disparaging durian, or mangos, or jujubes, or mulberries, or even apples or peaches which can get really old since it shouldn’t really matter if there might be folks who don’t like them, since the goal of any forum is to host correspondence between folks who share common preferences. There will be folks who post pictures of the apples and peaches they’ve grown as being the best fruits in the world, just as there will be folks who think the jackfruit and durian they’ve grown are the best fruits… Just as there will be folks who claim their daughters/sons are the smartest… Well, perhaps the best response to any of those folks would be a nod, and of course, a smile. Acknowledge their love, and let them beam with pride.
