Author Topic: Why and when did you start collecting rare fruit.  (Read 12852 times)

LivingParadise

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Re: Why and when did you start collecting rare fruit.
« Reply #25 on: May 16, 2015, 07:12:01 PM »
The reason I started growing rare tropical fruits is complicated, and has some elements of what a lot of other people here have experienced. This story is more than people on an anonymous forum need to know, but some may enjoy reading it and take some inspiration from the role this fruit has played in my life. 

As a kid, I was obsessed with produce. I just had a taste for it. I remember being 2 years old and sitting in the grocery cart, biting directly into onions through their mesh bags. I could not get enough vegetables and fruits, from the beginning. I grew up in the NE of the US, in an area that snowed 8 months out of every year. I got full strong sunlight only about 2 months a year, which I found depressing. Eating tropical fruit was a very rare occurrence for me - I got to try pineapple about once a year, and once every 2 years, a coconut (which I hated but I now understand is because they were always rotten). But I used to adore the idea of tropical living. I had never been anywhere tropical, but from early days I started drawing pictures of tropical scenes on my schoolwork. I knew I wanted to live in a place like that. At the time I was trapped in a very abusive household, so I guess like many people, I also saw the tropics as an escape. I was always planning my future life someday far, far away from where I was, where my parents would never find me, where I could hike through jungle, pick ripe colorful fruit from trees right overhead, and eat them on a beach with turquoise surf. Over time, the thought of tropical fruit in my mind kind of blended with safety.

After years of wanting to be, I finally became fully vegetarian at 12 years old after an unfortunate meat incident that made me put my foot down about what would enter my body, for good. Because of the dietary restrictions, and because I had always had to cook my own food, I became increasingly focused on foods from diverse cultures, many of which were tropical and focused much of their flavors on produce. In the vegetarian cookbooks I found, I realized there were a whole lot of ingredients I had never heard of before. This lead me to search out stores I had not previously been to, where I encountered some fruit I had never seen or heard of in my life. I tended to make up my own recipes, and I adored spicy food, so when I was 15 I got my hands on a starfruit, a persimmon, and a mango, none of which I'd ever heard of before, and made them blackened cajun-style with some vegetables (not sure where I got that idea) - it was one of the best meals I've ever eaten! So that made me a lot more curious about trying new fruits.

At 19, I had already long left that family behind, and I was homeless. I got an opportunity to borrow some money from a friend for a plane ticket to Central America for 4 months, where I assumed it was cheaper to be homeless, while waiting for a school in the Big City to open up their student housing for me. It was there that I first actually SAW jungle, and tropical beach, and tried my first ever guanabana, mora, papaya... and for the first time in my life got to try fresh pineapple, bananas, and coconuts, and realized they are NOTHING like the rotted or tasteless fruits I had tried back home. It blew my mind. Fruit there was cheap or free, so I got to eat it every single day.

When I moved back to the Big City (my plan fortunately having worked out) I immediately found that my favorite place was Chinatown, where I frequently went to try every new fruit and vegetable I could get my hands on. It was in a tiny out of the way Malaysian restaurant that became my favorite, where I had my first ever lychees. And I feel in love... After that I bought them from street vendors whenever I could!

Over the course of a few years I got several degrees, and moved to different cities. My life seemed hopelessly urban, as I needed to be where my academics, and my work, were. I kept dreaming of a tropical life where I could pick that fresh exotic fruit, but it seemed impossible to do it anytime before I reached 80. I continued to travel around the world and try new things, but in the end I always had to come back to the city and to my regular life. I ended up in a marriage that was at first a fairytale, and over more than a decade became a nightmare. I started dreaming of that tropical escape again, just like I had when hiding from my family of origin.

Then, I got sick. It took nearly a year to get an accurate diagnosis, that I was fighting a life-threatening disease - one that had no cure, or even approved treatment. Experimental drugs were extremely expensive. My doctors kept telling me I needed to fill myself with electrolytes - they recommended coconut water as the best source. They also pushed anti-oxidants. These things were outrageously expensive. Each serving of coconut water cost between $2-6, depending on how fresh it was. The fresh produce, especially "super-foods," were also way beyond my budget, and my husband was constantly pushing me to not spend any money on these things that were supposed to help my body fight.  I learned about fruit like Acai, Maqui, Gogi... and realized there were far more fruits in the world than I had imagined!  I wanted to try them all, for the fun of it as much as for the health. I realized that if I could grow my own coconuts, and some of my own produce, I could maybe afford to keep myself alive. I decided that life was short, and got a divorce before I wasted another precious second on someone who was so bent on destroying me.

I was homeless again for a while, and too sick to care for myself. It was scary. I spent a lot of the time bedridden, dreaming of a tropical home where I could grow my own exotic fruit. I got an amazing opportunity through my work, and all of a sudden, that dream had a chance to come true. While I waited to see whether or not I would get this chance to buy my own home in a tropical location, I planned out my dream of what this ideal home might look like. I didn't think I would ever have this kind of chance, but just for fun, I started pasting pictures of tropical plants online onto a document I was making of everything I would buy someday long into the future, if I got to live that long, and if things miraculously worked out. I found that nearly every search landed me on a site called "Top Tropicals," and through browsing their website I came to learn about, and cut out images of more than 100 different tropical fruits I wanted someday, in an ideal life.

Then, suddenly the dream came true. An investment I made proved correct. I was able to buy the house. The house I ended up with had a way bigger yard than I ever would have imagined. The yard had 6 mature coconut trees loaded with green coconuts to give me a near-endless supply of coconut water and young meat. I had just enough savings left to fill that yard with fruit trees. I initially just wanted my first lychee, and no one nearby had one for sale. I was too sick to drive far away. So I looked on Top Tropicals, and there was a Sweetheart lychee. And... there were some other fruits that I happened to have already put on my list. And before I knew it, I was dragging myself out of bed to dig up coral boulders in the yard as my physical therapy. More than 100 different fruit species. I love variety, and the challenge and wonder of new things. I bought many plants that were large size or fruit young, because I didn't know if I would be alive long enough to eat fruit that took several years to mature. I also focused on natives, because they are good for my local environment, and have a lot of medicinal properties so they're good for me, too! I needed things that were either worth the effort physically for my ultimate health in consuming, or would easily survive here and provide me with endless free food. I became too sick to work at all, or to go to the store much, so I knew the produce would be a necessary part of survival, and growing it just steps away from my bed made it easy to feed myself. I grew container fruits out of necessity, because I sometimes am to sick to walk more than a few feet and the food was right there. Also, if there were a hurricane that first year, I could perhaps survive the aftermath with what I had growing just in my house, not to mention outside.

Interestingly enough, the fruit gave me something I didn't expect. I started feeling like I had a need to stay alive, because my plants would all die if I did! I couldn't bear having put in all that work to grow them - literally a lot of blood, sweat, and tears - and letting them all dry up and fall apart, lol! I had a responsibility for all those lives! I also had something to look forward to: if I lived to the next season, I would see my new leaves, or my first blossoms, or my first fruit of a particular species. Then I lived through the first year, and started to get stronger. I'm not cured by any means, I'm still sick and likely always will be unless they find a cure... but I started to get a bit better and I started to want to be around long enough to see more kinds of fruit, and my first big crops of some of the more mature trees. I want to try more and more kinds of fruit I have never seen or tasted in my life before, and that means sticking around for a few years yet to see some of them fruit because for many, I am the only person I know nearby who grows them, or even knows what they are.

Growing these rare tropical fruits has been harder than I ever would have imagined. I naively assumed that if you show up to a tropical climate and start planting tropical fruit, it will grow. LOL! Not so... But, it has been an amazing journey to learn about all of this fruit, and to watch these beautiful plants reach up toward the sky and branch out. Tropical fruit has already brought a lot more to my life than I ever expected. It led me to my current life, it is part of how I continue to keep living, and it gives me a joy that when I'm really violently sick, almost nothing else does. It gives me reasons to live and to plant more seeds, so I can watch them grow the next day.

---
Incidentally, this is an awesome thread idea. I am surprised to read all the different stories, which is why I decided to post mine. It is clear that tropical fruit brings people from all over the world together, across cultures, climates, religions, socioeconomic backgrounds, types of families, across varying politics and different interests. I suggest that someone on this forum put together a book, perhaps soliciting longer-version stories from people for chapters or at least sections of chapters, demonstrating how this common thread to all of us - Rare Tropical Fruit - actually links people all over the world. The stories on this thread fascinate me, and I bet they, and the universal message of how this food (and hobby) connects us, would fascinate others.

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Re: Why and when did you start collecting rare fruit.
« Reply #26 on: May 16, 2015, 08:40:33 PM »
My story begins as a 6 year old, with my father and I starting our backyard vegetable garden.  I always had a fascination with growing things.  My father and I planted  a row of fruit trees across our small backyard once we moved into our second house....that would be around age 8.  In my teens I became a carnivorous plant fanatic and collected a wide range of carnivorous plants.  Then after going away to college and law school, I returned to South Florida to a new obsession......orchids.  Eventually, my 800 orchid plants over ran my townhouse back yard and necessitated the purchase of a larger property to build an orchid shade house.  I purchased my present property with that in mind in 1989.  Orchids remained my passion for about 15 years but I slowly started planting fruit trees on my just under 2.5 acre property.  Citrus and avocado came first.  Then a few bananas and a mango or two.  I went to a Rare Fruit Council meeting and tasted some things.  Then it was all downhill from there.  I took the Sub-Tropical Fruit course 3 successive years at Broward College taught by Al Will and later Bruce Livingston.  The class gave us VIP access to Zills, the Kampong and the Fruit and Spice Park and also Bill Whitman's property.  The addiction swung into full gear and I began coveting and buying every supposedly excellent mango cultivar that was available. And that has been an on gong process now for over 20 years.  I'm probably going to get tired of it all shortly......or maybe not.  ;)
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Re: Why and when did you start collecting rare fruit.
« Reply #27 on: May 16, 2015, 09:27:59 PM »
The reason I started growing rare tropical fruits is complicated, and has some elements of what a lot of other people here have experienced. This story is more than people on an anonymous forum need to know, but some may enjoy reading it and take some inspiration from the role this fruit has played in my life. 

As a kid, I was obsessed with produce. I just had a taste for it. I remember being 2 years old and sitting in the grocery cart, biting directly into onions through their mesh bags. I could not get enough vegetables and fruits, from the beginning. I grew up in the NE of the US, in an area that snowed 8 months out of every year. I got full strong sunlight only about 2 months a year, which I found depressing. Eating tropical fruit was a very rare occurrence for me - I got to try pineapple about once a year, and once every 2 years, a coconut (which I hated but I now understand is because they were always rotten). But I used to adore the idea of tropical living. I had never been anywhere tropical, but from early days I started drawing pictures of tropical scenes on my schoolwork. I knew I wanted to live in a place like that. At the time I was trapped in a very abusive household, so I guess like many people, I also saw the tropics as an escape. I was always planning my future life someday far, far away from where I was, where my parents would never find me, where I could hike through jungle, pick ripe colorful fruit from trees right overhead, and eat them on a beach with turquoise surf. Over time, the thought of tropical fruit in my mind kind of blended with safety.

After years of wanting to be, I finally became fully vegetarian at 12 years old after an unfortunate meat incident that made me put my foot down about what would enter my body, for good. Because of the dietary restrictions, and because I had always had to cook my own food, I became increasingly focused on foods from diverse cultures, many of which were tropical and focused much of their flavors on produce. In the vegetarian cookbooks I found, I realized there were a whole lot of ingredients I had never heard of before. This lead me to search out stores I had not previously been to, where I encountered some fruit I had never seen or heard of in my life. I tended to make up my own recipes, and I adored spicy food, so when I was 15 I got my hands on a starfruit, a persimmon, and a mango, none of which I'd ever heard of before, and made them blackened cajun-style with some vegetables (not sure where I got that idea) - it was one of the best meals I've ever eaten! So that made me a lot more curious about trying new fruits.

At 19, I had already long left that family behind, and I was homeless. I got an opportunity to borrow some money from a friend for a plane ticket to Central America for 4 months, where I assumed it was cheaper to be homeless, while waiting for a school in the Big City to open up their student housing for me. It was there that I first actually SAW jungle, and tropical beach, and tried my first ever guanabana, mora, papaya... and for the first time in my life got to try fresh pineapple, bananas, and coconuts, and realized they are NOTHING like the rotted or tasteless fruits I had tried back home. It blew my mind. Fruit there was cheap or free, so I got to eat it every single day.

When I moved back to the Big City (my plan fortunately having worked out) I immediately found that my favorite place was Chinatown, where I frequently went to try every new fruit and vegetable I could get my hands on. It was in a tiny out of the way Malaysian restaurant that became my favorite, where I had my first ever lychees. And I feel in love... After that I bought them from street vendors whenever I could!

Over the course of a few years I got several degrees, and moved to different cities. My life seemed hopelessly urban, as I needed to be where my academics, and my work, were. I kept dreaming of a tropical life where I could pick that fresh exotic fruit, but it seemed impossible to do it anytime before I reached 80. I continued to travel around the world and try new things, but in the end I always had to come back to the city and to my regular life. I ended up in a marriage that was at first a fairytale, and over more than a decade became a nightmare. I started dreaming of that tropical escape again, just like I had when hiding from my family of origin.

Then, I got sick. It took nearly a year to get an accurate diagnosis, that I was fighting a life-threatening disease - one that had no cure, or even approved treatment. Experimental drugs were extremely expensive. My doctors kept telling me I needed to fill myself with electrolytes - they recommended coconut water as the best source. They also pushed anti-oxidants. These things were outrageously expensive. Each serving of coconut water cost between $2-6, depending on how fresh it was. The fresh produce, especially "super-foods," were also way beyond my budget, and my husband was constantly pushing me to not spend any money on these things that were supposed to help my body fight.  I learned about fruit like Acai, Maqui, Gogi... and realized there were far more fruits in the world than I had imagined!  I wanted to try them all, for the fun of it as much as for the health. I realized that if I could grow my own coconuts, and some of my own produce, I could maybe afford to keep myself alive. I decided that life was short, and got a divorce before I wasted another precious second on someone who was so bent on destroying me.

I was homeless again for a while, and too sick to care for myself. It was scary. I spent a lot of the time bedridden, dreaming of a tropical home where I could grow my own exotic fruit. I got an amazing opportunity through my work, and all of a sudden, that dream had a chance to come true. While I waited to see whether or not I would get this chance to buy my own home in a tropical location, I planned out my dream of what this ideal home might look like. I didn't think I would ever have this kind of chance, but just for fun, I started pasting pictures of tropical plants online onto a document I was making of everything I would buy someday long into the future, if I got to live that long, and if things miraculously worked out. I found that nearly every search landed me on a site called "Top Tropicals," and through browsing their website I came to learn about, and cut out images of more than 100 different tropical fruits I wanted someday, in an ideal life.

Then, suddenly the dream came true. An investment I made proved correct. I was able to buy the house. The house I ended up with had a way bigger yard than I ever would have imagined. The yard had 6 mature coconut trees loaded with green coconuts to give me a near-endless supply of coconut water and young meat. I had just enough savings left to fill that yard with fruit trees. I initially just wanted my first lychee, and no one nearby had one for sale. I was too sick to drive far away. So I looked on Top Tropicals, and there was a Sweetheart lychee. And... there were some other fruits that I happened to have already put on my list. And before I knew it, I was dragging myself out of bed to dig up coral boulders in the yard as my physical therapy. More than 100 different fruit species. I love variety, and the challenge and wonder of new things. I bought many plants that were large size or fruit young, because I didn't know if I would be alive long enough to eat fruit that took several years to mature. I also focused on natives, because they are good for my local environment, and have a lot of medicinal properties so they're good for me, too! I needed things that were either worth the effort physically for my ultimate health in consuming, or would easily survive here and provide me with endless free food. I became too sick to work at all, or to go to the store much, so I knew the produce would be a necessary part of survival, and growing it just steps away from my bed made it easy to feed myself. I grew container fruits out of necessity, because I sometimes am to sick to walk more than a few feet and the food was right there. Also, if there were a hurricane that first year, I could perhaps survive the aftermath with what I had growing just in my house, not to mention outside.

Interestingly enough, the fruit gave me something I didn't expect. I started feeling like I had a need to stay alive, because my plants would all die if I did! I couldn't bear having put in all that work to grow them - literally a lot of blood, sweat, and tears - and letting them all dry up and fall apart, lol! I had a responsibility for all those lives! I also had something to look forward to: if I lived to the next season, I would see my new leaves, or my first blossoms, or my first fruit of a particular species. Then I lived through the first year, and started to get stronger. I'm not cured by any means, I'm still sick and likely always will be unless they find a cure... but I started to get a bit better and I started to want to be around long enough to see more kinds of fruit, and my first big crops of some of the more mature trees. I want to try more and more kinds of fruit I have never seen or tasted in my life before, and that means sticking around for a few years yet to see some of them fruit because for many, I am the only person I know nearby who grows them, or even knows what they are.

Growing these rare tropical fruits has been harder than I ever would have imagined. I naively assumed that if you show up to a tropical climate and start planting tropical fruit, it will grow. LOL! Not so... But, it has been an amazing journey to learn about all of this fruit, and to watch these beautiful plants reach up toward the sky and branch out. Tropical fruit has already brought a lot more to my life than I ever expected. It led me to my current life, it is part of how I continue to keep living, and it gives me a joy that when I'm really violently sick, almost nothing else does. It gives me reasons to live and to plant more seeds, so I can watch them grow the next day.

---
Incidentally, this is an awesome thread idea. I am surprised to read all the different stories, which is why I decided to post mine. It is clear that tropical fruit brings people from all over the world together, across cultures, climates, religions, socioeconomic backgrounds, types of families, across varying politics and different interests. I suggest that someone on this forum put together a book, perhaps soliciting longer-version stories from people for chapters or at least sections of chapters, demonstrating how this common thread to all of us - Rare Tropical Fruit - actually links people all over the world. The stories on this thread fascinate me, and I bet they, and the universal message of how this food (and hobby) connects us, would fascinate others.

Hope you regain all your health. My suggestion is don't wait until "they find a cure". Do your own research. Be your own doctor. The internet is a wonderful tool for research. Don't ever give up on your health.
Your story leads naturally to another topic: which of the fruits are the most healing? I'd have to vote for coconut, papaya, pineapple, avocado, banana, breadfruit. Berries also good for the anti oxidants: mulberry, raspberry, blueberry, cranberry.
I think Max Gerson had some very good suggestions for regaining your health through diet. But there are very many good books on this topic.
About the garden giving you something to live for: i see a lot of very old coots that are kept alive and vibrant through their gardening and fascination for plants. So yes i agree that's a very big help.
Oscar

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Re: Why and when did you start collecting rare fruit.
« Reply #28 on: May 17, 2015, 12:16:52 AM »
My grandfather always had trees he grew from seed, and had stories of mangoes in Cuba, and then in Puerto Rico where he lived before finally moving here to South Florida. He loved all fruits. He had the patience I lack. He would plant seeds and was never worried about "varieties" or "rarities", he just loved his trees, and they loved him by giving him good fruit to eat. He did have his favorites from Cuba like Biscochuelo mango (which I have yet to find here)  and on he called "corazon" it was small, purple shoulders and almost shaped like a small heart, size of the palm of your hand.  He passed a few years back, and I don't know if genetics kicked in, or if he planted a seed in me with all those stories etc... that has finally grown!!  I started 2 years ago with a few mango trees.  I got lucky in that I did not go to a big box store etc.. and went to a decent local nursery where he guided me to a PPK and cogshall as my first trees. Both producing for the first time this year. Then it happened, I found this website, and ventured to Fruit and Spice Park for the first time and that opened my eyes as to the endless varieties of fruit that can be grown here......................the nail went in the coffin.  I am quickly running out of land. While not "RARE" trees, none of my friends know or have heard of most of my fruit trees LOL  I am obsessed with learning, and sometimes I guess I ask too many questions as I have been told by some here.  But that does not deter me and I have been given GREAT guidance by people like Bullie, CBSDavie and Gunnar to name a few.  Several others have answered pms, or answered topic questions and I thank them too!!!  I am saving a few spots for my next trips to my drug dealers.... I mean fruit dealers Bullie at Excalibur and Mike at Benders. Both have been great to me in different ways.  I know I am new, and many of you have been doing this longer than the forum has even been around.  I hope you realize how helpful all your help and information is to people like me. It has made my learning curve zoom.  But best is having met and hoping to meet and see others collections!! It is a real treat to talk to people about this obsession of fruit that many do not understand.

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Re: Why and when did you start collecting rare fruit.
« Reply #29 on: May 17, 2015, 07:35:26 AM »
This story is basically copied from another thread I started about my native plants just with abit added on:)

I think iv always loved plants I just didn't know how much as a child I would mix all my parents fertilisers together, mash up leaves etc and try make a super growth formula that invariably had the opposite effect and killed my mother's plants. I have fond memories of gardening with my Ouma(grandmother) and getting a love for the smell of loam and the wonder of growing from her. Through my adolescent and teenage years I tried very hard to be accepted by my peers I convinced myself I was interested in watching sports(which I hate to watch!) and fast cars etc. I partied pretty hard smoked alot of cigarettes which I only recently quit and drank a hell of a lot all through high school drugs and stupid things like inhailing lighter gas was common too.

So I started growing flowers at about 19-20  on my balcony for various reasons like camouflaging other things I was growing but little did I know how I would fall in love with plants all over again. Not caring any more what other guys would think of a male who loved flowers and especially roses anymore(and my old highschool friends did rag on me alot but I didn't care anymore and good friends should respect your interests loving roses makes me no less manly than loving sports I think and my then girlfriend now fiancee supported my interests and still does she's my best friend anyway:)
After a year or so I started looking at herbs and medicinal plants I also had a keen interest in growing entheogens that I still hold today.
I eventually progressed into vegies and started my own veggie patch this was really where I become a plant fanatic, eating my own vegetables was a feeling I never could have imagined. The pride and sense of accomplishment I received was unbelievable.
The internet and one of those "ten fruits youve never heard of" articles blew my mind it turned a fanatic into the unhealthily obsessed :o
How many other worthwhile fruits had I just not heard of? I started thinking. My ignorant mind had just believed there was maybe a small variation across countries but nothing major and I wasnt really missing out, any fruits I hadnt heard of I thought must be worthless and thats why I had never heard of them.
How wrong I was!!
I desperately started searching out seeds and plants of the less common fruits and getting a pay pal in 2013 opened up a whole new world 8)
Finding this forum around the same rime just pushed my obsessions further still and I voraciously lurked this website for months.
So also a few months after this I started thinking that Marula cant be the only fruit from my region and started making notebooks of species and calling botanical gardens and indigenous nurseries, ordering from silverhill and other sources and trying to get as many indigenous fruits as possible.
Though Im yet to fruit most of them Iv managed to collect and germinate a few as well as buy some older plants of many indigenous fruits:)
I hope to make these plants more widely known in my country one day and maybe even open an edible nursery here, I would love to find nutrition high plants and distribute them freely in the townships and rural areas to increase food security and a love of the plants the people of this country once cherished but now have widely forgotten due to our shameful past.
My passion for exotics has never ceased either though and it's a struggle not to bankrupt myself on seeds some months!
I'm putting all my meagre intern savings into a wedding fund at the moment but still lurk the buy sell trade forum and scoure eBay and the good but rare websites like fruitlovers and availableseeds just to torture myself ha ha!

I know for sure I am marrying the right woman though, for our 9 year anniversary of dating on the 13 of May as a present she ordered me seeds from availableseeds what a woman!
Im 26 years old now and hopefully have enough years to explore my passion alot further!
I would especially love to select out some nicer African varieties and currently have close to 100 Marula seedlings for this ppurpose. Acreage and microclimate will be a big factor in the house we buy:)

I must thank this forum for giving outlet and community for all the fruit obsessed of the world I hope our membership keeps growing and we can spread this fruit love worldwide:)
Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.
-Jean-Jacques Rousseau

LivingParadise

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Re: Why and when did you start collecting rare fruit.
« Reply #30 on: May 17, 2015, 10:34:24 PM »

Hope you regain all your health. My suggestion is don't wait until "they find a cure". Do your own research. Be your own doctor. The internet is a wonderful tool for research. Don't ever give up on your health.
Your story leads naturally to another topic: which of the fruits are the most healing? I'd have to vote for coconut, papaya, pineapple, avocado, banana, breadfruit. Berries also good for the anti oxidants: mulberry, raspberry, blueberry, cranberry.
I think Max Gerson had some very good suggestions for regaining your health through diet. But there are very many good books on this topic.
About the garden giving you something to live for: i see a lot of very old coots that are kept alive and vibrant through their gardening and fascination for plants. So yes i agree that's a very big help.

Thanks. I have researched and been my own doctor every day for 6 years since I got sick. I am very well versed on my illnesses - more so than most people in the world, including most doctors. As an academic, research is part of my daily life.

I would say there is no one fruit that is most healing, given that it depends on what is wrong with the body. Diseases are not all the same, and the properties of plants are very different. Most of the time, vegetables or purely medicinal plants are going to be more healing for those with serious disease. But people have seen some miraculous things with any fruit that has unusual properties or levels of certain nutrients - guanabana, noni, maqui, and so many others, as well as the seeds of fruits, have shown some success in treating certain diseases to a remarkable degree, but of course the documentation and long-term follow-up is very limited. Gerson therapy actually recommends against many fruits, since it is against sugar, is specifically against pineapple and berries, and also is rooted in traditional German diet so has very little tropical produce officially endorsed at all. Any culture from around the world that has more than 1,000 years of testing in treating disease certainly will have some recommendations for natural treatments that are worth taking into consideration, though (Ayurvedic, Chinese, Japanese, certain Native American cultures, etc.). Researching any natural treatments for diseases that have only recently been identified in the world is extremely difficult, and there is no guarantee. One can accidentally make things worse with natural foods just as much as with Rx medications, so there is a lot to consider.

But whether or not one finds fruits that are truly healing to whatever specific ailment one might have, I think just being around growing plants is a very healing experience in its own right.
-----

Just a thought, but what about making this thread a sticky? I think that these stories tell a lot more about members really than Introductions do, and I think that topic would be a great source of support to new members (and interesting for more long-time members). Kind of nice when you're just venturing into reading stuff about fruit-growing fanatics and unusual fruit, to see the many different reasons WHY people get into this stuff in the first place...and if they feel that they found what they were originally looking for. I think it seems many of us found much more than we bargained for!

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Re: Why and when did you start collecting rare fruit.
« Reply #31 on: May 18, 2015, 08:18:47 AM »
None of my ancestors was a farmer, but all of them lived in homes where they could have at least one or two fruit trees. In my grandmother's house, the biggest of the family properties, we had guava, lemon, orange, tomatoes and even a chicken coop. My parents lived humbly but told me stories about their childhood. Fruits had higher prices and pears, melons, apples (just to name a few) weren´t bought frequently. By other side, were common collect fruits like jabuticabas, pitangas, oranges, guavas and others where they played. Fewer buildings and more fields, trees and clean rivers, the opposite of what the city of São Paulo offers us today.
Since my childhood I have always been curious about fruit cultivation. When I was 7 years old, I collected different colors of beans and planted just to see the result (two kilos of beans were harvested), planted fruit seeds to see how was the tree, and so on.
When in sixteen years old I thought about becoming a botanist, paleontologist, geneticist ... but I ended up making me a systems analyst, and between 15 and 40 years old, stayed away from this hobby.
At 40 years old, married and stressed with work and life in the city of São Paulo, I reminded of my childhood and my hobby after a conversation with my children, one of those "Dad, what did you do as a child?". Also rememberede what my parents had told me about their chidhood...
As I had no piece of land for cultivation, I started planting strawberries and tomatoes in pots. My wife also likes plants, so she added some flowering plants to our small collection. At 45 years old, we bought a new house, which has roughly 15 square meters of land, divided into small areas. Then I started researching what fruit could be planted in this small space and even in pots, since we also have a small area, cemented, about 35 meters long by 1.5 meters wide. The result, four years after the initial research, is my collection of over sixty pots with fruit trees, including 5 species non native to Brazil, and six trees planted in the soil.
And in the last weekend, we added one more to our potted collection: a grafted sapodilla that has come with its 5 first sapotis growing. :D
I am 50 years old, and my dream is one day have enough money to buy a small farm.
« Last Edit: May 26, 2015, 09:34:37 AM by Cassio »

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Re: Why and when did you start collecting rare fruit.
« Reply #32 on: May 18, 2015, 12:03:10 PM »
you know...the more I think of it...the more I wish I could divulge...the way I got into growing tropical fruits...it's a story of an obsessive individual, who loves diversity, and everything natural.

It may sound crazy, but I know it's part of a divine plan...I have no control over.

I am not a grower of plants...the plants have been growing me...and changing me as a person.

I am not a an owner of plants, the plants own me.

I am not a caretaker or custodian of plants, they have been caring for me.

It's not what type of plants the person is growing that matters to me, it's what type of person the plant has grown.  (you can quote me on that)  ;)

lol...thank goodness for the y2k scare!

it scared you into assembling one of the best fruit collections in the world!

I started growing stuff gradually...when I first got my own yard to plant in (as a renter, back around 2003).... I remember the first fruit I harvested from a tree was a celeste fig, in a pot.

I used to be obsessed with natives, and foraging for food, then it evolved into a tropical fruit addiction (quite naturally because all of the best stuff comes from the tropics, where all of the diversity is)
« Last Edit: May 18, 2015, 12:04:43 PM by FlyingFoxFruits »
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Re: Why and when did you start collecting rare fruit.
« Reply #33 on: May 18, 2015, 09:51:41 PM »
The reason I started growing rare tropical fruits is complicated, and has some elements of what a lot of other people here have experienced. This story is more than people on an anonymous forum need to know, but some may enjoy reading it and take some inspiration from the role this fruit has played in my life. 

As a kid, I was obsessed with produce. I just had a taste for it. I remember being 2 years old and sitting in the grocery cart, biting directly into onions through their mesh bags. I could not get enough vegetables and fruits, from the beginning. I grew up in the NE of the US, in an area that snowed 8 months out of every year. I got full strong sunlight only about 2 months a year, which I found depressing. Eating tropical fruit was a very rare occurrence for me - I got to try pineapple about once a year, and once every 2 years, a coconut (which I hated but I now understand is because they were always rotten). But I used to adore the idea of tropical living. I had never been anywhere tropical, but from early days I started drawing pictures of tropical scenes on my schoolwork. I knew I wanted to live in a place like that. At the time I was trapped in a very abusive household, so I guess like many people, I also saw the tropics as an escape. I was always planning my future life someday far, far away from where I was, where my parents would never find me, where I could hike through jungle, pick ripe colorful fruit from trees right overhead, and eat them on a beach with turquoise surf. Over time, the thought of tropical fruit in my mind kind of blended with safety.

After years of wanting to be, I finally became fully vegetarian at 12 years old after an unfortunate meat incident that made me put my foot down about what would enter my body, for good. Because of the dietary restrictions, and because I had always had to cook my own food, I became increasingly focused on foods from diverse cultures, many of which were tropical and focused much of their flavors on produce. In the vegetarian cookbooks I found, I realized there were a whole lot of ingredients I had never heard of before. This lead me to search out stores I had not previously been to, where I encountered some fruit I had never seen or heard of in my life. I tended to make up my own recipes, and I adored spicy food, so when I was 15 I got my hands on a starfruit, a persimmon, and a mango, none of which I'd ever heard of before, and made them blackened cajun-style with some vegetables (not sure where I got that idea) - it was one of the best meals I've ever eaten! So that made me a lot more curious about trying new fruits.

At 19, I had already long left that family behind, and I was homeless. I got an opportunity to borrow some money from a friend for a plane ticket to Central America for 4 months, where I assumed it was cheaper to be homeless, while waiting for a school in the Big City to open up their student housing for me. It was there that I first actually SAW jungle, and tropical beach, and tried my first ever guanabana, mora, papaya... and for the first time in my life got to try fresh pineapple, bananas, and coconuts, and realized they are NOTHING like the rotted or tasteless fruits I had tried back home. It blew my mind. Fruit there was cheap or free, so I got to eat it every single day.

When I moved back to the Big City (my plan fortunately having worked out) I immediately found that my favorite place was Chinatown, where I frequently went to try every new fruit and vegetable I could get my hands on. It was in a tiny out of the way Malaysian restaurant that became my favorite, where I had my first ever lychees. And I feel in love... After that I bought them from street vendors whenever I could!

Over the course of a few years I got several degrees, and moved to different cities. My life seemed hopelessly urban, as I needed to be where my academics, and my work, were. I kept dreaming of a tropical life where I could pick that fresh exotic fruit, but it seemed impossible to do it anytime before I reached 80. I continued to travel around the world and try new things, but in the end I always had to come back to the city and to my regular life. I ended up in a marriage that was at first a fairytale, and over more than a decade became a nightmare. I started dreaming of that tropical escape again, just like I had when hiding from my family of origin.

Then, I got sick. It took nearly a year to get an accurate diagnosis, that I was fighting a life-threatening disease - one that had no cure, or even approved treatment. Experimental drugs were extremely expensive. My doctors kept telling me I needed to fill myself with electrolytes - they recommended coconut water as the best source. They also pushed anti-oxidants. These things were outrageously expensive. Each serving of coconut water cost between $2-6, depending on how fresh it was. The fresh produce, especially "super-foods," were also way beyond my budget, and my husband was constantly pushing me to not spend any money on these things that were supposed to help my body fight.  I learned about fruit like Acai, Maqui, Gogi... and realized there were far more fruits in the world than I had imagined!  I wanted to try them all, for the fun of it as much as for the health. I realized that if I could grow my own coconuts, and some of my own produce, I could maybe afford to keep myself alive. I decided that life was short, and got a divorce before I wasted another precious second on someone who was so bent on destroying me.

I was homeless again for a while, and too sick to care for myself. It was scary. I spent a lot of the time bedridden, dreaming of a tropical home where I could grow my own exotic fruit. I got an amazing opportunity through my work, and all of a sudden, that dream had a chance to come true. While I waited to see whether or not I would get this chance to buy my own home in a tropical location, I planned out my dream of what this ideal home might look like. I didn't think I would ever have this kind of chance, but just for fun, I started pasting pictures of tropical plants online onto a document I was making of everything I would buy someday long into the future, if I got to live that long, and if things miraculously worked out. I found that nearly every search landed me on a site called "Top Tropicals," and through browsing their website I came to learn about, and cut out images of more than 100 different tropical fruits I wanted someday, in an ideal life.

Then, suddenly the dream came true. An investment I made proved correct. I was able to buy the house. The house I ended up with had a way bigger yard than I ever would have imagined. The yard had 6 mature coconut trees loaded with green coconuts to give me a near-endless supply of coconut water and young meat. I had just enough savings left to fill that yard with fruit trees. I initially just wanted my first lychee, and no one nearby had one for sale. I was too sick to drive far away. So I looked on Top Tropicals, and there was a Sweetheart lychee. And... there were some other fruits that I happened to have already put on my list. And before I knew it, I was dragging myself out of bed to dig up coral boulders in the yard as my physical therapy. More than 100 different fruit species. I love variety, and the challenge and wonder of new things. I bought many plants that were large size or fruit young, because I didn't know if I would be alive long enough to eat fruit that took several years to mature. I also focused on natives, because they are good for my local environment, and have a lot of medicinal properties so they're good for me, too! I needed things that were either worth the effort physically for my ultimate health in consuming, or would easily survive here and provide me with endless free food. I became too sick to work at all, or to go to the store much, so I knew the produce would be a necessary part of survival, and growing it just steps away from my bed made it easy to feed myself. I grew container fruits out of necessity, because I sometimes am to sick to walk more than a few feet and the food was right there. Also, if there were a hurricane that first year, I could perhaps survive the aftermath with what I had growing just in my house, not to mention outside.

Interestingly enough, the fruit gave me something I didn't expect. I started feeling like I had a need to stay alive, because my plants would all die if I did! I couldn't bear having put in all that work to grow them - literally a lot of blood, sweat, and tears - and letting them all dry up and fall apart, lol! I had a responsibility for all those lives! I also had something to look forward to: if I lived to the next season, I would see my new leaves, or my first blossoms, or my first fruit of a particular species. Then I lived through the first year, and started to get stronger. I'm not cured by any means, I'm still sick and likely always will be unless they find a cure... but I started to get a bit better and I started to want to be around long enough to see more kinds of fruit, and my first big crops of some of the more mature trees. I want to try more and more kinds of fruit I have never seen or tasted in my life before, and that means sticking around for a few years yet to see some of them fruit because for many, I am the only person I know nearby who grows them, or even knows what they are.

Growing these rare tropical fruits has been harder than I ever would have imagined. I naively assumed that if you show up to a tropical climate and start planting tropical fruit, it will grow. LOL! Not so... But, it has been an amazing journey to learn about all of this fruit, and to watch these beautiful plants reach up toward the sky and branch out. Tropical fruit has already brought a lot more to my life than I ever expected. It led me to my current life, it is part of how I continue to keep living, and it gives me a joy that when I'm really violently sick, almost nothing else does. It gives me reasons to live and to plant more seeds, so I can watch them grow the next day.

---
Incidentally, this is an awesome thread idea. I am surprised to read all the different stories, which is why I decided to post mine. It is clear that tropical fruit brings people from all over the world together, across cultures, climates, religions, socioeconomic backgrounds, types of families, across varying politics and different interests. I suggest that someone on this forum put together a book, perhaps soliciting longer-version stories from people for chapters or at least sections of chapters, demonstrating how this common thread to all of us - Rare Tropical Fruit - actually links people all over the world. The stories on this thread fascinate me, and I bet they, and the universal message of how this food (and hobby) connects us, would fascinate others.

[/quoteVery nice and inspiring history, thank you so much for sharing; God bless you!
« Last Edit: May 18, 2015, 10:03:42 PM by Raulglezruiz »
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FlyingFoxFruits

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Re: Why and when did you start collecting rare fruit.
« Reply #34 on: May 18, 2015, 09:57:07 PM »
Raul your idea is a wonderful one!  Let me know if I can help...I have a funny story to tell...I've been keeping a secret for too long   :-X ;)
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luc

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Re: Why and when did you start collecting rare fruit.
« Reply #35 on: May 21, 2015, 06:59:58 PM »
Raul your idea is a wonderful one!  Let me know if I can help...I have a funny story to tell...I've been keeping a secret for too long   :-X ;)


Let’s hear it Adam , everybody loves secrets  :)
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Re: Why and when did you start collecting rare fruit.
« Reply #36 on: May 21, 2015, 07:36:23 PM »
you know...the more I think of it...the more I wish I could divulge...the way I got into growing tropical fruits...it's a story of an obsessive individual, who loves diversity, and everything natural.

It may sound crazy, but I know it's part of a divine plan...I have no control over.

I am not a grower of plants...the plants have been growing me...and changing me as a person.

I am not a an owner of plants, the plants own me.

I am not a caretaker or custodian of plants, they have been caring for me.

It's not what type of plants the person is growing that matters to me, it's what type of person the plant has grown.  (you can quote me on that)  ;)


Lovely. And a great quote!

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Re: Why and when did you start collecting rare fruit.
« Reply #37 on: May 21, 2015, 11:31:13 PM »
you know...the more I think of it...the more I wish I could divulge...the way I got into growing tropical fruits...it's a story of an obsessive individual, who loves diversity, and everything natural.

It may sound crazy, but I know it's part of a divine plan...I have no control over.

I am not a grower of plants...the plants have been growing me...and changing me as a person.

I am not a an owner of plants, the plants own me.

I am not a caretaker or custodian of plants, they have been caring for me.

It's not what type of plants the person is growing that matters to me, it's what type of person the plant has grown.  (you can quote me on that)  ;)


Lovely. And a great quote!

thank you for kind words!

you know what's crazy...i ended up reading your story after I posted this quote above, and realized your story was exactly what I'm talking about...and the plants grew you into a wonderful person!!!  :'( tears of joy  :)

(not that you were not already wonderful!!  :P but maybe plants helped you stay wonderful )
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Re: Why and when did you start collecting rare fruit.
« Reply #38 on: May 21, 2015, 11:39:03 PM »
haha i think maybe one day...

but it's a complex tale...of tomfoolery, and what I like to call "OCDsmanship".

two skills I mastered long before I cared about any plant...or rare fruit.

 
Raul your idea is a wonderful one!  Let me know if I can help...I have a funny story to tell...I've been keeping a secret for too long   :-X ;)


Let’s hear it Adam , everybody loves secrets  :)
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Re: Why and when did you start collecting rare fruit.
« Reply #39 on: May 23, 2015, 09:49:55 AM »
thank you for kind words!

you know what's crazy...i ended up reading your story after I posted this quote above, and realized your story was exactly what I'm talking about...and the plants grew you into a wonderful person!!!  :'( tears of joy  :)

(not that you were not already wonderful!!  :P but maybe plants helped you stay wonderful )


Wow, thank you! But you never know, I could be a serial killer in between my posts on this forum! So in that case, I'm not sure I would qualify for the compliments...   But yeah, plants are awesome.

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Re: Why and when did you start collecting rare fruit.
« Reply #40 on: May 23, 2015, 09:57:23 AM »
LOL

Well even if you are a serial killer (tropical fruit bundy), at least you help out the plants, and they've helped you!

Only God can judge you!!
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Re: Why and when did you start collecting rare fruit.
« Reply #41 on: May 23, 2015, 06:30:07 PM »
-
« Last Edit: June 04, 2015, 09:31:16 PM by Ansarac »

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Re: Why and when did you start collecting rare fruit.
« Reply #42 on: May 23, 2015, 09:33:46 PM »
I grow fruit because there's so many wonderful and exotics fruits in the world but local markets only sell the usual crap: apples, pears, citrus, Cavendish bananas, etc. So I've been collecting and growing good fruit trees whose fruits are simply not sold anywhere around here.

Even as a kid growing up around New England, I always loved picking raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries during the summer. But here I can grow so much more, and I can have at least something fruiting at almost any time of the year.

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Re: Why and when did you start collecting rare fruit.
« Reply #43 on: March 15, 2023, 01:11:08 PM »
Bump!

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Re: Why and when did you start collecting rare fruit.
« Reply #44 on: March 15, 2023, 01:31:39 PM »
Growing up in Vancouver, Canada I was surrounded by other cultures and exposed to lots of different foods. As I became old enough to have some pocket money, I set out to try every single fruit that would come through the local grocery stores, and then found out about a big Asian market (T&T) that had all kinds of even more obscure fruit. I always tried it earnestly, and even if I hated it, I'd try it again later or more or less ripe to try to figure out if it was just me, or if the fruit was really just not that good.

Years later, I started traveling around as a professional skateboard racer and ended up spending months at a time in Brazil where I was blown away by pitanga and jaboticaba... Those stuck with me and I always found myself craving them.

I ended up moving to Santa Barbara, CA and figured I should add some fruit trees to my property and went down to the local nursery. Plums, pluots, figs. That was what was available I felt that it was enough, but then I started thinking back on those pitangas... Could I grow them here? Then I was looking up what a hardiness zone was and quickly became obsessed with collecting. It spiralled somewhat out of control as it does with most collectors, and now I'm honing in on what will really work and really deep into it. What I think really keeps me stoked on this is that I've literally never met a bad egg in the fruit collector community. Everyone is so excited, kind, helpful, and overall positive. It's a community I want to be a part of, and like others have mentioned, once you're so deep into collecting and growing things you become attached to them and it's what gets you out of bed in the morning.

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Re: Why and when did you start collecting rare fruit.
« Reply #45 on: March 16, 2023, 12:22:25 AM »
Love it when these old threads get resurrected.  Similar to others, started off growing salsa ingredients, salad veggies, and stone fruit in the backyard. Then about 10 years ago, discovered different mango varieties and locally grown Cherimoya.  Based entirely on these exotic new flavors, I just had to add these to my yard collection.  I started travelling more for work and pleasure, and discovered the true fruit diversity found in Latin Americas, Southeast Asia, and Hawaii.  Bought property around 7 years ago to expand my acreage, planted what I enjoyed and could easily source, and now I harvest more citrus, avocados, cherimoya, stone fruit, pitaya, passion fruit, guava, and carambola than I can eat.  Soon, mangos will join that status.  Discovered TFF 3-4 years ago and was introduced to the next level of fruit diversity.  Further down the rabbit hole I go. 
Don't get me wrong, I love the occasional mango post and enjoy the hype during the season, but I most look forward to hearing taste reviews and the struggles/successes of growing these recently introduced (and reintroduced) species from Brazil and Latin America, as well as Yangmei from China.