The Tropical Fruit Forum

my two favorites are sissoo and okinawa spinach. sissoo is a bit more work processing because you dont use the stems, however okinawa spinach if you just use the fresh growth tips the shoots are quite pleasant. and taro leaves are incredible, but finding favorable leaf varieties can be difficult and non ideal cultivars can take hours to cook out the itch. check out my blog for other options as well!

https://tropicalselfsufficiency.com/

Hi. This is just a proposition. Ignore it if you want.

Anyway, I was thinking of adding these categories to the forum:
-Ultra-tropical (durian, mangosteen, etc.)
-Mango Corner (Mango questions/comments? Take them here. I notice that there is a lot of mango-related discussion going on on the forum.)
-Zone-pushing (People like me, in zones <10a, who are attempting to grow tropicals at home.)
-Tour (Show us around your garden!)

Just a suggestion.

that sounds like the ideal categories! ive been pondering this a few days and thats actually the same conclusion i came up with. was just going to share the idea but youre already on it!

That's good news to hear it has a long shelf life. I think the market in California would be very receptive 2 Durian fruit with the proper education and promotion. On the other thread not enough talk about durian. They mentioned that Durand is not generally grown in areas prone to Cyclones. Are the trees tall and brittle and is there any agricultural practice that can be used to mitigate high winds. How long is the fruit cycle. And how long from sapling to producing trees. If I remember right from discussions on this forum . Costa Rica is already an exotic fruit travel designation  adding Durian would be a wonderful thing. I will inquire from my in law that have a Fruit Stand in Castries St Lucia if they have heard of this fruit but they may call it by a different name.

certain varieties have longer shelf life than others, some remain closed while others split open. through my research, one of the flavors dissipates after 30 minutes off the tree. very few lucky people will get it at that point. but the other flavors stick around longer. probably picking them would allow the shelf life to be longer as well, but once again the flavors wont be fully developed. but older durian is better than no durian. im sure if the industry was kickin, they would fill airplanes during the season and get them over same day for sale. all we gotta do is get them to san francisco chinatown and los angeles chinatown. the fruits will be sold almost immediately. there are already markets and cultures who want the durian.

winds can be an issue. trees grow large. ive heard from many growers broken branches due to wind and heavy fruit set. this can be mitigated by pruning grafted trees (who arent as strong as a seedling), and thinning fruit set per branch. some farmers prune branches to allow wind to penetrate easierthere are farmers who have this down to a science. if you plant them in a forest they will be protected by the other trees from high winds as well.

flower to ripe fruit is 180 days. seedlings can take 7-10 years to produce, ive heard as little as 5 though. they can drop all their fruits in a few weeks. some hang a little longer. planting a mixed culture will allow you to have a longer season by having different genetics. fruits are normally collected off the ground once they fall so they develop full flavor. the sooner you eat them after they fall the more flavor they have. they typically arent pruned to a particular size because they drop their fruits naturally when ripe.

oh cool you found some genetic variation!! heres my website and some info on cosmos caudatus. ive got some seed if yours dont end up germinating. but they are pretty weedy, im sure youll be fine! please post some photos of the flowers once they start showing up

https://tropicalselfsufficiency.com/cosmos-cosmos-caudatus/

i use cassava quite a bit. they can be topped and pruned at intervals, but the root harvest will be smaller. but you can still get some good gains. especially if you plant quite a few of them and harvest as you need. i have separate plants i use strictly for biomass and cut them every other month down to waist height just to feed the soils. but ive allowed them to grow more than a year so ill never get a non-woody harvest. but im fine with that.
but yes minor pruning and trimming is fine as cassava is so vigorous and carefree it will just keep on going

Quote from: spencerw on February 11, 2021, 07:35:58 PM

marang. champadek. pedalai. jackfruit. durian. salak. chupachupa. jaboticaba. cacao. brazilian cherry. coconut. cupuassu. cutnut. kuini. kwai muk. langsat. lime. Mammea americana. peach palm. breadfruit. macnut.

whats your fruit fly situation? here they are terrible. so id be careful about who goes where and time-frames of fruiting. you dont want a continuous fruit fly cycle going from tree to tree all year. or just stick to thick skinned fruits

Thats a good list i will look into some of those and try taste them first.  Im not 100% sure but fruit fly is pretty bad here well at least it used to be, im pretty sure we have a fruit fly that is native to QLD that does a lot of damage.  I know for certain bannanas get stung 100% of the time unless covered properly so im not bothering with bannana.

yep taste test first before you dedicate space to them. some of the listed ones can be quite variable. so either select quality seeds from a very tasty fruit, not just a random fruit, or get a graft of a cultivar you like and have eaten.

theres lots of things to consider when moving somewhere new. i moved to hawaii about 6 years ago from california, here are some of my insights.

youll need to understand the history in PR.
-what kinds of large scale agriculture happened there? here we have pineapples, sugarcane, and cattle. each for 150 years in different locations. you can imagine the amounts of chemicals poured into the ground and they used to use weed mats in the pineapple fields. so every site that contained pineapples has layers of plastic ingrained into the soil.
-we used to have closed canopy forests that covered the entirety of all of the islands. large scale ag burned the forests and released the cattle. this changed the ecosystem. places that used to have a forest no longer rain in certain localities. do yourself a favor and find the consistent rainfall and live there. life without rain is very difficult.
-our island ecosystem is very isolated naturally. we have no checks and balances for pests. once something comes in, theres no way it will ever balance back out. an easy example is rats. nothing eats them here so their populations just expand exponentially forever, killing our endemic birds. same with snails, slugs, pigs, deer, beetles, ants, mosquitoes and invasive plants to name a few more. are you willing to deal with this reality?
-what kinds of cultures are there? is a mixed or strictly a puerto rican culture? cultures tend to eat certain foods. its hard to get someone to eat different foods from another culture. you need to stick to these crops if you realistically want to farm for profit. sure you may be able to get a culture to like durian, or you could have the culture hate you and your stinky durian trees. so tread lightly on experimental crops in your region. grow whatever youd like for yourself, but dont plant acres and expect the locals to eat from your trees until its tested.
-small places have tight communities. lay low and be friendly to everyone. people talk. if you do good, people will buy from you, if youre a dick youll be outed by the community.
-culturally how to people feel about foreigners? here people dont like them due to our complicated history. be kind and polite, people will usually look past your differences if you give back to the community. being a farmer is an easy way to have a good relationship with a community. even start out by giving your neighbors some of your overabundance for free, this is also a good way to test new crops by giving out free samples and get the feedback from the people. they will talk and youll prob be accepted and maybe even liked!
-whats the agriculture ties to the US? will you be able to export anything? can you bring anything in? were pretty much stuck here in hawaii becasue of Californias agricultural restrictions. everything we export to the US stops in CA first. they reject everything from us because they do not want our pests. we cannot import a lot of things, myrtaceae species got banned last year here. we can only bring seeds for plants.
-can you grow bananas or are there pests and diseases? here we have banana bunchy top virus. detrimental to the species and its everywhere. most people cannot grow bananas because of the proximity to an infected bunch (spread by aphids). a terrible dilemma.

-what is the value for hired labor? is there a minimum wage? i have 12 acres and simply cannot afford to hire any help because of expense, nor pay myself.
-what is the market access? how long will you have to travel to sell your produce? do you even have a place at the market or are all the vendors occupying most easy niches? here people buy greens. but the market is full of vendors selling greens. so even if i took the time to develop a crop of greens why would any customers buy from me if they can get from their regular vendor.
-do people even care about buying fresh local food? or are they more concerned about just feeding people. here we have two different kinds of people. the 'i buy from the grocery store' and the 'i buy from the farmers'. this is usually directly tied to income and access. poorer communities are less likely to be able to tap into the expensive produce that would be local.
-are there any cooperative organizations to help with processing or access to market. we have a small sweet potato farmer co-op here where the farmers share technology (tractors) and have a labor pool they tap into when they need to harvest their crops. there are talks for a cacao co-op here. you grow the pods and bring them into the co-op for processing, they buy your pods and take on the rest of the process. we have a breadfruit co-op that you can drop off produce and they will buy all you supply. as they process and turn it into dried/dehydrated/milled products that have shelf life and then they market and sell. they even have a relationship with a lot of the local schools and are getting breadfruit in the kids lunch meals. awesome. without co-ops farming on your own can be very hard.
-living in an agricultural region has its positives and negatives. most people will be on the same page, soils will be workable and crops will already be tested in the area, but the pests will already be around and soils will be extremely degraded.

lastly dont grow an orchard. grow a forest! check out syntropic agroforestry.

a little food for thought. best of luck!
aloha
 

youre absolutely right. and i do have my moringas and comfreys (dont grow so well without chicken poop because of the infertility at this point) but i gotta work with what grows here. tree farming is all about maintenance and good design . i do not allow the guinea to be in my tree cropping rows and just in my mow rows. would i rather be mowing weekly around each individual tree like most people here do? having a lawn with my 'orchard' of trees at some sort of strange distance from another. then bring in inputs to mulch and fert my trees? nope im trying to grow biomass to feed the soil everywhere to grow a forest. i can mow my entire 3.5 acre plots in 5 hours. doing that once a month isnt such a big deal. especially if i space it out. raking and mulching takes a little longer. thats why im trying to grow my biomass in place so i dont have to haul my mulch.


this was my original system. mowing the wainaku grass. ive now decided to plant guinea in the mow zone to create more biomass to feed my cropping row. coconuts and bananas with edible hibiscus, cassava, sugarcane, coleus, squash, blue basil, bush basil, Plectranthus barbatus and cosmos. the entire row besides the coconuts are used for mulch. add on the guinea in the mow row and i can add 2' of mulch per month to each coconut. now were talking. the border row is full of crotalaria, gliricidia, inga and a few trema. only the trema are large enough to harvest biomass. but the future looks strong for the trees. the cropping row was planted in november 

got the guinea in last week. update will be reported


these photos are younger zones but already planted the guinea in them. just came through last week and cut down all the sunn hemp, cosmos and some of the crotalaria. the trees have been in the system 2 months. replanted with mexican sunflower cassava and a few other vigorous cuttings. we shall watch the progress unfold

im in hawaii so a different climate, but you should plant grasses. the most productive plant on our property is guinea grass (Panicum maximum) followed by mexican sunflower, cosmos, cassava and crotalaria spp. (not sunn hemp- because it phases out too quickly). i can cut the guinea when it reaches 4' every month. no one produces that much biomass!! im waiting for my banana, pigeon pea, inga, trema, kukui, avocado and gliricidia to reach sizeable heights in order to start utilizing them for mulch too. but in the meantime grass is king. also adds a different composition to the soils that younger microbial life in the soils need in order to support more demanding species in the future. also the guinea will phase out as shade and more favorable soils come into the system.
a good rule of thumb when creating your own mulch is to plant 4-6x more support (mulch) species than your 'cropping plants'. yes you need to allocate that much space to growing mulch plants (mulch plants can also be food like cassava). in my system i need to add a 6-12'' layer of mulch per month in order to keep the soils completely covered. otherwise the system digests the mulch and im left with bare soil. i needed to find a solution to keep up on my mulching and it seems guinea at this point is the only species that allows me to do as i need. (in a timely manner too with my little flail mower) with some intelligent organization systems can be set up to fully feed themselves in place without bringing things in or moving things around too much.
of course all the other species listed by other forum members are useful as well, so remember to plant them all! the more biodiversity the more food youre able to feed to the soil in order for the soils to feed your plants.