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.
http://www.fruitlovers.com/seedlistUSA.html
My langsat is seed-grown, from a fruit I ate at Vivero Anones. That was years ago, and I still remember it was very sweet, very good!
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:
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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?
