The Tropical Fruit Forum

Sure, make it into a fine powder and put it on, water it in.

Costa Rica coats like Malaysia? Kl has 2 wet seasons and gets about 3000mm/yr, with 170mm being the driest months. Temps are stable and like 33 to 23 is normal and it doesnt often get less than that.

The Caribbean coast of CR has two dry seasons and two wet seasons. Two wettest months are December and July. Two driest are March and September.
Rainfall used to be about 3500mm total. Two of the last 3 years have had barely more than 2000mm. So that what I’ve been talking about it seeming to trend drier. But the overall pattern is very similar to many parts of the Malay peninsula and Sabah which is the other part of Malaysia I have been looking at. The temps are also very stable. It won’t go below 20C and tops out at about 33C

The area with the pattern I am talking about is on the Caribbean coast from the border with Panama and curves around the north to the continental divide at Lake Arenal.
The rest of Costa Rica has a different pattern of a single dry and wet season that ranges from more than six months dry in the northern pacific to more than six wet in the southern pacific.
So, on the pacific they get a single fruit season on a long list of fruits while, with a little luck we have two seasons of durian for example.
Peter

A healthy salacca salacca can have leaves 20’ long.  But if you cut them at 10’ it should still work out.  How much more you can cut them and how it might affect them is for you to experiment with and find out.  It’s not likely that somebody is going to respond that has specific experience of growing salak with the leaves cut to 5’.
Suerte,
Peter

You could cut them at 10’
Peter

The pasture needs direct sun.
Cows will damage tree roots.
Peter

I don’t know if you could really keep salak in a pot. I have several types and they all crawl along the ground never really rising up, erect, like most palms. Hence the top of the stem is always low. So, for the question, you could trim the leaves shorter. Full size salak will easily have fronds of 6m/20’. Those could be cut back shorter I guess. A dwarf salak is still going to have 10’ leaves, at least on my farm.
Peter

We are much drier than normal as well. Here it seems to me as if the dry season is kind of typical but we don’t get a proper rainy season. So, it makes it hard to plant but our production has been great. We just finished a very good cacao harvest I’m getting lots of black pepper, our Mamey, canistel, and sapodilla have been pumping. Just waiting for the durian and mangosteen flowering now.
When I say dry I mean that we are getting about 80” of yearly rain with distribution through the year. It’s dry for us but grass is still green where you don’t water. It’s the same in Panama, the canal is having big problems. We used to get an average of 150” sometimes going up to 220” per year.
It’s also hotter with less rain.
Peter

I’m not interested in figs but the subject does interest me. We like our trees to work a bit when it’s dry, advancing their roots into new territory but, at the same time, have mostly superficial root systems. Our soil is not that good deep down so a deep tap root is not much advantage for feeding. The superficial roots can be fed much easier so we irrigate in the first year during dry spells. I also plant lots of airlayered trees and even cut the tap roots on some grafted fruit trees for this same purpose.
Peter

We grow pataxte, as it’s called in Mesoamérica. We eat the roasted seeds as well as the creamy pulp. Traditionally people use sand to scrub the pulp off and make a drink with the ground seeds. While the roasted seeds are very good the pataxte drink is not nearly as good as chocolate. So that’s a reason to grow cacao, some people like a rustic hot chocolate!
The maintenance might be easier with pataxte since the trees don’t really need pruning and the fruit falls when ready instead of having to manually pick every cacao fruit.
Peter

I’m not sure what you’re calling parasitic plants. Are you referring to epiphytes like bromeliads?  We don’t get a lot of epiphytes on inga here but certainly, inga shade is dense in any case. It’s part of the maintenance to deal with this shade and make sure that the primary plants/trees have the light they need while the inga shades out the peripheral area.
Peter

I have sampled the roasted agave being prepared to ferment for Mezcal. It’s roasted underground for about 4-5 days. It is very tasty. I get the comparison to sweet potato but would say that it is much juicier and has fiber, almost like sugar cane. Surprisingly good!
Peter

I’m curious why you guys use a medium of peat and perlite. What are the roots supposed to feed off of?  We use our potting medium that has clay, sand, manure and coir. No issues and the roots develop in a medium more similar to where the trees will be eventually planted.
Peter