The Tropical Fruit Forum

Tasty small fruit from a cute, small tree that tolerates shade. While I was harvesting some of the fruits this morning a red poison dart frog cruised through and you can see him in one of the photos.
Peter

We’ve cleaned some very nice red jakfruit to sell at the farmers market tomorrow. This stuff often sells out at the beginning of the market, mostly sold to other vendors.
It comes from a grafted tree I got from Gary Zill several years ago. I believe it’s a selection that was made from seedlings he planted at his project here in CR.
Peter

A new fruit for Finca la Isla, tampoi, has entered production and passed the test. The test is to determine commercial acceptance in our market. Nobody at the farmers market was familiar with it but on sampling pretty much everyone bought some. This contrasts with our other baccaurea, dulcis, which has a poor reception. Although it’s called ‘dulcis’ it’s much more acidic than the white fleshed tampoi that I introduced today.
Baccaurea are dioecious and the trees were planted out as seedlings some 4.5 years ago. In the pipeline is also a yellow fleshed tampoi. 
The fruit season is waning here and the stars like durian and mangosteen are no longer part of our offer I did manage to have rambutan, duku, Rollinia, champedek, and some mamey sapote.
It’s pretty exciting for us still when something comes into production for the first time here. Inevitably the workers haven’t ever tried these fruits and often our family hasn’t either. To introduce something that will grow well here and be easily accepted is what it’s all about for us.
Peter

So, we’re calling garcinia lateriflora sour pear now. It’s been an impressive harvest and the fruit is interesting but...
A lot of fruit people have tried this fruit and are impressed by the interesting complexity of flavor within which there is a very distinctive pear flavor. But, the tasting experience finishes sour. It’s funny how at first it’s not that sour but then acid dominates. It’s nice to sample but I don’t think anyone could eat very much of this fruit.
The tree is beautiful, dioecious, and the fruit has wonderful presentation.
Peter

Overall we are off to a great start on this fruit season. Certainly one of the highlights is the durian season!
Peter

We grow s. Salacca, s. Affinis, s. Walllichiana, and what was represented as a Bali salak. So this is about the ‘Bali’ version.
The fruit is very similar to salacca. But individual plants seem to be diocious and have flowers that look quite different, especially the male flowers. In the photos you see a male plant and in the other a receptive female cone that we have pollinated by tapping a picked male flower on the female and leaving it there.
What salak is this?

So this is a fruit that I originally got my material from Jim West several years ago when he stayed on my farm for a few days. I admit I wasn’t very convinced by this fruit the first time it produced but now it seems pretty good. It reminds me of some tampoi I had in Malaysia. As you can see it’s an abundant producer. Now that the mangosteens are done I’m going to promote this fruit at the farmers market. It’s not mangosteen but not bad either!
Peter

Something exciting for us that stands out from the incredible fruit harvest we are currently getting is the harvest of safou. It’s fascinating how these beautiful fruits take about 6 months to develop into a bright pink oval shape, then slowly turn into a dark, royal blue. We pick them at this stage and let them ripen like avocadoes which is kind of what they are like, with an olive like after taste. Quite good.
Peter

So, the first two photos are of safou which is something we’ve been waiting on for about 5-6 years.  It’s another thing that we’ve never really eaten before.  Every year we keep planting new stuff and, in many cases, we haven’t eaten the fruits until they bear here for the first time.

This is a 3 year old, planted from seed, baccaurea motlyana.  I have 6 of these diocious trees planted together and I’m hoping another one will help this one out with a few flowers.

My son and I recently made a trip to Malaysia, something I’d been contemplating for awhile.  There’s a lot to experience and  I wanted to prioritize learning about growing fruits from people who have been growing them for generations, see the fruits in the markets, then eat the food, see some nature...
With this thread I’d like to report on this trip over the next days  and hear from others, share their experiences from S.E. Asia..
The first day we met up with Lindsay who was guiding another forum member, Micah and his wife Nicole.  We were East of KL in Hulu Langat looking for wild durians.  The area is hilly and replete with small durian farms. The locals bring durians out of the hills loaded in baskets on the back of motorbikes.  There are several fruit stands along the winding roads offering mangosteens, Langsat, durian, etc.  As soon as the durians come in they get sold by the piece to people like us or by the pickup load to an intermediary.
Besides D101 we had some nice kampung durian and a good amount of durio oxyleanus and durio lowianus.
This was the perfect start to our more tha 3week trip.  In KL we were still getting used to the 14 hours of difference between Malaysia and CR when we headed up to Penang.  We had been told that the durian season was finished in Penang but decided to go anyway.  Over the course of this trip we were advised off and on by Lindsay and we connected with her friend Eric at Greenacres farm on Penang for an extraordinary day sampling fruits at his place.  Besides excellent pulusan and one of my favorite durians of the trip, Goldfish, he had some interesting concoctions, many made from nutmeg husk.  A nutmeg cold drink, a cider, etc. 
From Penang we rented a car to drive across the peninsula to the east coast, looking for more fruits. That report to come...

Cherapu is something I've been working on for a few years, there's not too many fruit trees that are slower growers than this.  We're still trying to decide if it's better to graft prainiana in the pot or, maybe grow them out and then top work the extra males.
Anyway, this is the second time this tree has produced and the first time it has really loaded up.  There can still be flowers appearing as the more mature fruits ripen.
I have my cherapu trees in what passes for full sun on my farm but at a friends farm in a drier part of CR the ones he has in partial shade are doing better than the full exposure planting.
The flowers are pollinated by our stingless melipona bees.  As you can see they are very efficient.  Hopefully, I'll be able to take a quantity to the farmers market in the coming weeks, see how they do.  We're doing nicely at the moment, eating this fruit.

I am wondering what this bush is. The fruit is sweet, maybe 3/8", 1cm, with greenish citrus like seeds that are similar to the seeds of lime berry. As in the photo the fruit is black and does not taste like lime berry although there are similarities. The small bushes are about .5m tall.
Thanks, Peter