The Tropical Fruit Forum

Season's Greetings forum friends,

Tis' the season for Guavaberry in the Virgin Islands.  I have seed packs of 10 seeds for $10 (extras will be included).  This is the purple variety of Guavaberry.

Seeds will be place in moist vermiculite and shipped either first class mail ($6) or priority with tracking ($8) your choice. 

These take about 4 months to germinate but have a very high germination rate so be patient!

Be safe and merry this holiday season! 

Greetings,

I would like to start a thread discussing Korean Natural Farming, JADAM, Syntropic, and other regenerative practices.

I have so far made all of the solutions for KNF.  I did have to purchase the Oriental Herbal Nutrient and Fish Amino Acid solutions because they take about 6 months to make.  I have them fermenting now.

I have also successfully harvested Indigenous Microorganisms (IMO) from the forest edges of my property and went through the steps all the way to IMO #4.  I will be applying IMO #4 to my row crop beds soon.

As for JADAM.  I have made the JADAM Microbial Solution (JMS) and applied to all my fruit trees and row crops.  I also have a fermented fruit solution I made about 6 months ago with genips, water, and JMS. 

I also farm earthworms, have 12 free range chickens, and my family and I have a bucket to barrel composting toilet system.  I gather seaweed, forest humus, an logs for soil building.  I also have an occasional stream/river flowing through my property and collect the course grain sediments for mineral inputs. 

It has become quite a fun process to not only produce food in the form of fruits, vegetables, and roots, but to also produce the food for my food! 

I'll add to this thread in the future and I hope others can chime in on their regenerative practices. 

Hello everyone,

I have several Guavaberry sprouts for sale.  These are the purple variety, there are also orange ones but purple are considered the best here in the Caribbean.

If you are unfamiliar with Guavaberry, they have a unique flavor with a pronounced spice.  The tree itself is beautiful with a peeling, multi colored trunk, beautiful dark green foliage that flushes with a fluorescent green.  They are also fairly drought tolerant. 

In the Caribbean, the tree produces fruit around the fall time of year and its very common to see folks gathering buckets of these berries to make Guavaberry rum, tarts, and jams. A 5 gallon bucket of berries goes for about $500!

I was selling seeds back in September 2019 so some people on the forum may have some babies.  The seeds take 4-6 months to sprout.  I have patiently waited and now have several sprouts for sale.  They are about 3-4" tall but definitely ready to be re-potted and will then take off!

I am offering them up at (3) for $20 plus flat rate priority shipping of $10.  Sorry, no shipping to California. 

I will be heading to Costa Rica the week after next for a little family surf trip.  We will be on the Pacific side probably starting in the Nosara region and working our way south.

Would love to sample some rare fruit along the way if possible.  Any suggestions on farms or can't miss type places?  By the way...what's ripening down there at the moment?

Good day,

I have a beautiful Eugenia on my property here on St. Croix.  Its very hard to discern which type. I'm leaning towards Eugenia Rhombea or Eugenia Confusa. But perhaps its Eugenia Psuedosidium?   

Any Eugenia experts here that can help?  Berries are small and red when ripe with a sweet taste.  NEw growth is pinkish red that turns to green.  Trunk is mottled. 

Does anyone have any sources for Cambuca seeds?

Thanks

I have a few potted comfrey plants that are quite happy.  I've read about various ways to use comfrey but not sure what is the most effective.

Looking for any suggestions on how to use comfrey effectively.

I also have tons of stinging nettle on my property.  So my thought was to fill a 55 gallon barrel with drain spout on bottom.  I would fill the barrel with water and place comfrey, stinging nettle, sargasso, seaweed, etc and allow to sit for awhile.  Then drain the liquid from the drain spout and apply via watering can.  Or I could strain what comes out of the drain and add that to totes which I use for gravity drip irrigation during the dry season.  A bit labor intensive but sounds like a good idea right?

So I have a couple Genip trees that I chainsawed down to stumps and I am planning on planting a grafted Butler Avocado close by where the stumps are.  I have tons of Genips on my property so I have been eliminating some of them to have more diversity.

The Genips would grow back if I let them because they shoot up new growth at the stumps all the time.

If I leave the stumps, would they cause problems for the Avocado?  It seems like they could actually be beneficial by pulling up deeper moisture with their intact root systems.    But then again, perhaps they would cause unnecessary competition for moisture and nutrients.

Any input is appreciated.

Thanks

Greetings everyone,

As you all know the Caribbean was hit hard this year.  First our sister islands of St. Thomas, St. John, and British Virgin Islands took a serious beating from Hurricane Irma.  St. Croix was the hub for relief efforts to those islands and many of us donated our hurricane supplies to them.  We had just come down from the stress of barely being missed by Irma when Maria showed up on the horizon.  Everyone hunkered down and while the entire island was spared a direct hit, the west end suffered extreme damage as the northern eyewall scraped by. 

My property is on the north side of the island and I estimate about 15 miles from the eyewall.  Needless to say, the island got severely damaged and my property was thoroughly shredded.  Luckily much of my plantings are juvenile so not a complete loss as I could stand them back up.  But my beautiful genip forest was hit hard and several large lignum vitae trees on my property were uprooted and never to be seen again.

I was in the process of building a house and all my concrete forms and rebar got blown down along with the electrical conduit I had worked hard putting in place.  It's going to be a long road to recovery.  6 months before I expect to see electricity again.  We are grateful though for health and life!  We are also better off than Puerto Rico because most houses have cisterns and generators.  I also run the reverse osmosis water plant for the public drinking water supply and we had our system back up 48 hours after the storm so both St. Thomas and St. Croix residents have access to potable water which is something PR is struggling with.

If anyone has extra seeds they would be willing to send my way I would be very very grateful.  This severe pruning event gives me an opportunity to replace some of the surrounding forest with more fruit trees.  Any seeds, scions, or small plants are very welcomed.  I would be willing to pay the shipping via paypal but can't afford a lot right now as much money is needed to redo what was lost on my construction project.

You probably don't hear much about the Virgin Islands in mainstream media but our territory was hit with two CAT 5 storms while PR was hit with one CAT 4.  So its bad here.  There are 300+ year old Mahogany trees uprooted which says a lot about the strength of the storm.  Hugo decimated the island in '89 as a CAT 4 and those trees survived that storm.  So Maria was significantly more powerful.  I could write so much more about the before during and aftermath of the storm.  It's been a whirlwind of emotions and the ups and downs fluctuate daily.  But the community is strong!  And me and my family are survivors!  We harvested fallen coconuts, I've been spearfishing which is a passion of mine so we have plenty of fresh fish, and we are good friend with some folks here that teach survival skills classes so we know what and where to forage wild greens to add into our staples for vitamins and taste.  Its like long term camping!

Purchased a one acre property on St. Croix about 2.5 years ago.  Started with clearing by hand with machete and chainsaw. 

This is what it looked like in March 2015:


We have come along way with just my wife, six year old son and myself doing all of the work.  Now in the process of building a house.

Here is a video I made this morning:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3i_F2zogAJI

After learning about this forum, I have done lots of reading on here.  After doing keyword searches, I recently started on the last page of this forum and am slowly working my way to the beginning.  Not reading every thread, only the ones that pique my interest. 

There is so much great information in this forum and so many great members!

Has there ever been a forum meet and greet?  Would there be any interest?  Something like a seed and scion exchange and an opportunity for forum members a chance to meet and arrange trips to come visit each other's fruit paradise. 

I know there are a lot of FL members on here and you all probably know each other already.  I am originally from Lake Worth but have been in the Virgin Islands for over a decade (with a brief respite when I spent a wonderful year in Kauai).  But I would definitely make a trip somewhere for something like this!

Just throwing it out there to see if there's much interest.

Hi everyone,

So I started planting up my property here on St. Croix a couple years ago.  Started with raw land and carved out areas by hand with machete and chainsaw.  We started with grafted mangos and avos, guavaberry, carambola, tangerine, and lots of dwarf coconuts and along several other species available here on island.

Lately I have really gotten into buying seeds from forum members here and also a recently placed order with Fruit Lovers.  So now I have several Pitanga seedlings, Sabara, the Boca Snob Jack fruit, Miguel's 'Neylita' Jabo, Mangosteen, Blue Jabo etc etc etc.  Its such a rewarding feeling seeing those seedlings pop up through the dirt!  I know I will have to wait 10 years or more on some of these but that's ok I'm still in my early 30's  .

Fighting the urge to buy more more seeds   I have a dream of one day having this great variety of fruit trees with lots of rarities that no one on St. Croix has- much less even heard of.  I am also germinating more seeds of each species than I will be able to plant so hopefully can recoup some seed costs in a few years as they mature.

Until then, does anyone have any tips on how to maintain my growing collection?  I am starting them all on a covered lanai with a few hours western sun exposure before it sets in the evening.  I am having good success with germination.   As the seedlings grow and mature, I re-pot them into bigger pots and move them outside to my "nursery".  The nursery is a table under some large Moringa trees which provide dappled sunlight and also drop their blossoms into the pots which seems like it could be beneficial.  I have a worm inn and put the vermicompost on top every couple weeks.  Besides re-potting when it seems they need it, providing adequate water, and topping off with vermicompost, is there anything else I can do to ensure vigor and health? 

As my collection grows, I will start segregating like species together since they will start to have different needs.  I sort of fantasize about the idea of having a small rare fruit nursery one day and be able to offer these hard to come by species to other residents of St. Croix.  Any tips on how to do this are much appreciated!