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Messages - pineislander

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851
This is how it works:
Quote
In 1968, scientists isolated the active protein responsible for making things taste sweet. Because of its miraculous way of making things taste so good, the protein was dubbed miraculin. When miracle fruit is consumed, the miraculin in the berry binds to the taste buds on the tongue. A person has receptors on their taste buds that identify sweet, sour, bitter and savory tastes. Normally, if you were to eat a lemon, your sour receptors would start firing. You can learn more about what happens in How Taste Works. Under the influence of miraculin, however, the sweet receptors start signaling and suppress the sour tastes. The miraculin rewires the sweet receptors to temporarily identify acids as sugars.

If someone didn't get the effect they may have swallowed too fast or not  separated  the pulp from the seed and swished the pulp around in the mouth enough to coat the taste buds on the tongue.

Quote
When the berry is consumed, it may not taste like much; it's been compared to a less flavorful cranberry [source: Farrell, Bracken]. Much of the berry is a bitter seed, but the little pulp that's there packs a big punch. To get the full effect, the berry's pulp should be held in the mouth for a minute and spread all over the tongue.

https://people.howstuffworks.com/flavor-tripping1.htm

852
The white/buff skinned mottled/purple fleshed Okinawan sweet potatoes don't sprout very well. I eventually got some going by slips from somone else. The vines, however, are vrey difficult to ever remove once they get going every piece left keeps on growing.
https://www.friedas.com/products/okinawan-sweet-potato/

This one should work:
https://products.wholefoodsmarket.com/product/organic-stokes-purple-sweet-potatoes-f547ec

853
My neighbor has an intermedia(lemon drop) currently ripening fruit. I had some during the summer and maybe at other times I can't remember. Achachairu in Fort Myers was ripening late summer maybe July-August, but I don't recall the actual bloom times for either.

854
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Vietnam super early Jackfruit
« on: December 04, 2019, 07:25:59 AM »
Lots of videos on this. Maybe it is true but I've seen some deceptive claims before so beware some have commercial reasons to exagerrate. You could translate and find out the story, looks like a good mystery which I love seeing solved.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=vietnam+early+jackfruit+plant+in+kerala+

855
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Purple passion and lilikoi in half shade?
« on: December 03, 2019, 08:00:18 AM »
Have you ever considered planting in ground within the greenhouse but letting a vine run outside the house once weather warms enough?

856
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Organic Orchard Floor Management
« on: December 02, 2019, 08:30:21 AM »
I'd love to see a video showing the details it would help a lot of people. How many thousands of acres citrus do we have mowed or sprayed at great expense? Let me know if you need an online host for the video I could do that.

857
Both quality and flavor have been excellent. I brought a box of 20 to the family reunion up north this week and everybody is happy.
Those who like Hass are impressed with flavor and the size is larger than the Hass they get in the market.
Nice buttery pasty is the way they are describing them. I will have some for sale next week at the farm on Pine Island.

858
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Carambola Problem
« on: November 29, 2019, 03:27:05 PM »
http://www.birdsandblooms.com/blog/yellow-leaves-and-green-veins-iron-deficiency/

Carambola is sensitive to iron deficiency.
This one is available in Florida, even at Lowes/Home Depot.
https://southernag.com/residential-products/chelated-liquid-iron/

859
My two Nishikawa trees have grown well. Each is over 8 feet tall and spread. They are in a row with many other varieties treated the same and are better than some on growth. I picked about 20 a week ago and they are starting to ripen today.

860
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Dragonfruit Skin
« on: November 28, 2019, 09:28:37 PM »
Speaking of dragonfruit skin I followed this recipe for using dragonfruit skin to make a sweet liqueur using rum and it is as advertised. Guests enjoyed it in clear soda with a squeeze of lime if they don't like sweet drinks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zW-B8k60Zpo&t

861
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Carambola Juice
« on: November 28, 2019, 09:14:57 PM »
Left to ripen on the tree its a wonderfully refreshing fruit served cold as a juice or out of hand. There's no reason to be put off by this thread.
Agree totally. Many fruits vegetables and herbs are dangerous if not consumed properly or if a person has an abnormal health condition. Star fruit is one of them, cassava another, and Akee another. The list could go on and everyone needs to have education about what they might eat. The video is unnecessarily alarmist for normal people, and the man giving the advice has been known to sensationalize issues like declaring Mad Cow Disease "The Plague of the 21st century".

862
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Carambola Problem
« on: November 28, 2019, 08:49:08 PM »
It woud help if you showed the whole tree. Most leaves look good is this just one branch with the veining?
Is it potted, what soil is it growing in, what area? Any deficiencies in other trees, plants, etc? What do the Ixora plants look like in your area?

863
There isn't much excuse for Whole Foods to not find a supplier since plenty are grown in Florida. However, try putting ripe star fruit in a box, ship it to the Whole Foods distribution center for a week then again to a store and you will probably find something not any better than the green ones, maybe pretty rotten fruit. Large chain grocers like that usually defer to buyers who seek to source a grower they know wil ship something every week and give them a constant secure price. Whole Foods likely doesn't deal with small growers. That is just the state of things with this fruit, very soft and nearly unshippable. Brooks Tropicals grows 40 acres here on Pine Island and supplies much of the US market, but all are picked green. At that stage they are mainly a decorative item like kale used to be 20-30 years ago where it was just a garnish to be thrown away, many didn't even know it was edible but compared to the bland Iceberg lettuce it may have been the healthiest thing on a plate of salad.

This is what Brooks did last year when the fruit could not be held on their trees any longer and ripened fully:



864
I cast concrete posts and tops then put 4 cuttings on each. Using the posts gave me plenty of room underneath for pineapples, I've even grown lettuce a few times there. If I had used a trellis there wouldn't be room underneath.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1bAZqhqw2U

More recent:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y20U4UJFV-U

865
I see no need for fencing what you need is strong vertical support for heavy plants. Chain link fencing doesn't hold anything up it must be held by horizontal piping.
In Taiwan they have gone to trellis in a linear form. The plants are spaced closer along the row than post culture but probably need more pruning work, maybe between every crop cycle where you might get several crops on a post culture before hard pruning. Post culture gives you four plants/post, so 680 posts/acre x 4=2720 plants/acre . Linear trellis gives you four plants every 8 feet or so along a row, so do the math to figure how many plants per area.

What really matters is support for the heavy weight especially if you have strong santa ana wind/typhoon/hurricane to worry about. Posts are pretty resistant but some of Gray Davis' trellises collapsed which looks like a nightmare needing to start over.
Taiwan:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT6NPpVq8bM

866
I think it depends how much room you have for bananas and how much light you want coming through. I started with bananas between newly planted fruit trees so unless I remove pups the mat will end up with 3-4-8-10 stalks and expand too wide. When that happens, bunch size and competition for light begins to create limitations, bunch size decreases and plants grow taller and skinnier seeking light. Over time the mat grows vertically and pants are more superficially rooted with thinner taller pseudostems, leading to breaking over and even uprooting with loss of the bunch.

Some of this depends on variety. My main crop is Orinoco tall, it sends out 4 or more pups after every bunch so by the 3rd season if none get removed you could have more than a dozen trying to fruit. I also have plantains and a few dwarf bananas and letting them have multiple stems leads to leaf disease they like more air circulation.

The last concern is because my bananas are interplanted between fruit trees they are beginning to limit light to the trees as I head into the 3rd year. I'll be re-working all my mats down to one stalk on the mat and replanting to start over this year. It might be the last year for the interplant between trees. However, last year I planted bananas in rows between fruit tree rows, so those will become my new mats. As they are already limiting light to the fruit trees I am being more selective in culling pups. My new method is just cutting off pups when they get about 3-4" diameter at ground level, then using a long kitchen knife I core out the growing center of the pseudostem to kill off the corm without actually digging it up. It seems to work. Overall the bananas as intercrops gave me a lot of production over the years as main fruit species grow up. They also created a lot of biomass leaves and stems wich are now enough to mulch around the fruit trees constantly. It has been a win-win and I know things will change. I've only plated half the farm so It looks like I'll have 6-10 more years where I can keep the cycle up doing the same as I plant more land. Eventually bananas will become secondary and probably just for personal use instead of something the land produces every single week, I generally have 30-100 pounds every week and it is still increasing.

Looking back at the original post I no longer leave 3 feet of stem at harvest I cut everything as low as possible to get mulch for the trees. 

867
If they are just flying around why are you keen to get rid of them? I can't identify them without a better photo.

868
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Brogdon Avocado - branch dieback
« on: November 21, 2019, 06:24:11 PM »
I get this too an old timer told me to cut them off since they remain as a disease reservoir so I do that. Your tree looks healthy but best practice seems to be regenerating part of the tree annually by pruning to keep it healthy and control size for picking. Pruning stimulates growth and should be done asap after fruiting to set up the fresh growth ready to flower in spring. When you prune now you will be amazed at how it suddenly will bud out fresh. I did some 2 months ago which have flushed 2 feet of new growth. I cut some tops, some tips and a few branches 1/2 way, but all immediately began to grow fast. Don't be afraid to prune avocado unless it gets close to January.

869
These are some of the air potato bulbils that came off a bulbil or two I got from Caesar. The ground tuber has grown to about 4 inches, 100mm size. The plant suffered a little because here in Florida we have an invasive inedible type air potato which has become a problem in our native areas. As a result, a non-native insect which attacks the air potato was introduced and I can see it has attacked my plants making the leaves look like someone shot them with a shotgun.
I will probably trial these for a few more seasons to see what happens but since ordinary D. alata is unaffected by pests it seems to be the better choice for my area. These bulbils are really only suitable for replanting and don't represent what might be expected from a more mature plant and one which hasn't been under attack. I will show what happens next year.


870
Tropical Vegetables and Other Edibles / Re: Gamthi Curry Leaf Tree
« on: November 20, 2019, 05:43:49 PM »
I was able to find two seedling trees which are consistent with what I have seen as the Gamthi variety. The leaves are very broad and thick, it is rather slow growing. A one year old tree is 3 feet tall. Same fragrance as the regular form. It just happned to be what was available. I don't have any available for sale or trade yet. I sourced them from found seedlings at the Florida Gulf Coast University Food Forest. They may not even know what they have but it is special. They have a website and are probably looking for opportunities to get revenue. A year ago there were numerous seedlings coming up so if you can look up the cooordinator they might offer seeds.

871
My neighbor has a sour variety Star fruit you absolutely cannot eat at any level. After eating the miracle fruit it tastes better than ordinary Carambola.

872
Guillermo:
http://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=33104.msg362030#msg362030

Quote
Guillermo ilama seeds available again, this tree consistently yields 40-60 fruits a year, tastes like raspberry cheesecake.

Photos of the above tree from seller Koryph here( if he reads this please PM me!):
http://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=16891.0

873
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Any Info on Cotton Candy Mango?
« on: November 19, 2019, 08:21:14 AM »
So next summer should be the acid test when you finally get to taste it!
I have five trees like this and may get a few but I have been pushing these and just tipped them so I'm not sure. If I get more growth but no fruit on the second year-in-ground that will be OK for me. 

874
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Carambola Juice
« on: November 19, 2019, 08:15:18 AM »
If you read those studies the cases usually involve people with prior health complications, who were fasting, or took the juice in an unusual context.
Turmeric and Cinnamon both contain more oxylate than ripe sweet starfruit, and spinach, beets and chard are very close.
Vegetarians/vegans ingest far more oxylates than meat eaters just because most veg contains it.
Even if oxylate is present in a substance, some of the oxylate can be soluble and some insoluble, for instance the oxylate in turmeric is almost all soluble and available for uptake, levels in cinnamon are only 6% soluble.
Calcium in the diet tends to bind to oxylates making them less soluble, so using high oxylate foods in a low calcium diet means that more soluble oxylate will be present.
In the gut, Oxalobacter formigenes, a common part of the internal microbiome breaks down oxylate, but the presence of that bacteria varies in individuals and may be totally absent  after antibiotic use or during certain disease states.

I read a few publications on oxylate in general and found this one directed at vegans to have some good information.

https://veganhealth.org/oxalate/#vegetarian
 

875
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Any Info on Cotton Candy Mango?
« on: November 18, 2019, 06:24:09 PM »
Cotton candy has been a fairly quick and erect grower for me. This is 1-1/2 years in the ground from a Zill 3 gallon.
the flushes this summer went straight up.



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