The Tropical Fruit Forum

Hi,

I would love to buy a variety of mango seeds you have available.  Do the ones you mentioned in the ad come true to seed?

Thanks,
Matt

I love my chickens, except for the fact that they are free range and can cause some problems because of that.  They can be a bit mischievous lol.

I have been practicing JADAM for awhile now and happy with the results.  Essentially taking crop wastes and indigenous micro organisms and making various solutions.  I also was given tons of fish guts and made KNF fish amino acid (far superior to fish emulsion and hydrolysate IMO).

We have a composting toilet and have been making charcoal for years which gets mixed into the composting toilet with mulch and then ends up on our land 6 months later.

Now we are getting pulses of Sargassum seaweed.  I have found places along the shoreline where it collects and is loaded with earthworms.

These practices give a feeling of sovereignty when living on a small island with limited resources. There is so much more too.  People who live on large continental land masses have no idea how many valuable nutrient inputs just go to waste.

 

Greetings,

Thank you for your interest.  The season is typically September to December.  I will inform you and the others who have expressed interest when they are ready again.   

Hi everyone, thanks for the positive feedback!

Unfortunately, I have decided not to ship Guavaberry seedlings due to problems with customs.  I need to remove them from soil to guarantee they make it there ok and I am concerned they would get too shocked from this.

I should have more seeds available in about a month and will make a new post when I do.

PM sent

That's awesome! She would fit right in here in the Caribbean!

Hey Mr. SXM!  Doing great thanks!

Seeds still available but the one tree I am sourcing them will probably only have fruit for another week.

Yes Guavaberry rum is being made by my wife, but I stopped drinking alcohol so now I just eat the fruits!  So good!

Season's Greetings forum friends,

Tis' the season for Guavaberry in the Virgin Islands.  I have seed packs of 10 seeds for $10 (extras will be included).  This is the purple variety of Guavaberry.

Seeds will be place in moist vermiculite and shipped either first class mail ($6) or priority with tracking ($8) your choice. 

These take about 4 months to germinate but have a very high germination rate so be patient!

Be safe and merry this holiday season! 

PM sent

I see Frog Valley is posting some interesting information although there seems to be a lot of controversy surrounding his posts.

Everyone is entitled to their own life experience and the folks here on this forum obviously have a passion for growing tropical fruit.  The locales vary so methods that may work in one region may need to be tweaked, modified or altered to work in others.

Regardless of where you live and what you choose to grow, it can be done in such a way that is beneficial to your local environment, soil,  water table, surrounding water bodies, and other living organisms in the area. 

Growing fruits in a destructive manner using synthetically derived chemical fertilizers and pesticides is similar to our modern plight of man where we use our left brain of rationality and extreme focus to accomplish a goal.

Being a land steward and using natural farming and regenerative methods is more right brained and looks at the system as a whole.  This is the direction our society needs to head in if we are to survive, and it can all start with how we grow plants and farm.

Soil and microbes are the foundation.  Keep the microbes working hard, give them a nice home, and keep them well fed and they will in turn provide the nutrients the plants are looking for. 

There are many ways to boost microbial activity in soil.  The easiest is to make a Jadam Microbial Solution (JMS).  Essentially you use a starch such as potatoes.  Cook them and then mash them in a paint strainer.  Hang the paint strainer so its suspended in a 5 gallon the bucket of water.  Next collect healthy leaf mold from an undisturbed area and add this to a separate paint strainer also suspended in the bucket (add rocks to each strainer to submerge).  Next add 1 liter of seawater.  Allow this to sit for 24-48 hours depending on temperature.  Outside in the sun is ok. 

You will see a foam form on the surface and once the foam forms a ring, the solution is ready.  The 5 gallons can be diluted 30 times over so you can mix this into 150 gallons of water.  Now you can apply this solution anywhere you want to increase microbial activity.

This is the quick and dirty way to do it.  Its indiscriminate and is like a rock and roll approach.  A more refined way of spreading microbial life akin to classical music sypmhonies is through the Korean Natural Farming method of collecting IMO's and going through the four stages.  I will discuss this at a later date when I have some more time.

Happy Thanksgiving to all and Long Live the Natural Farmer!   
 

I should add that I have been very happy with the results so far!  There is so much more to learn but the process so far has been truly enjoyable.

I had a bag of Osmocote that I gave away and will no longer be buying any fertilizers!

When you live on a small island like I do, it's quite empowering to realize nature provides all the things you need to be a successful fruit grower and farmer. 

Check out Korean Natural Farming (KNF) and JADAM

I am practicing these methodologies and so far have been happy with the results and enjoying the process. 

Syntropic is another practice I am learning more about and trying to implement.

The best part about all of these methods is they free you from buying fertilizers and pesticides.

Essentially these methods focus on building a robust and "smart" soil biology custom tailored to your land.  Then they give you the tools to create solutions from plants and other natural sources to feed the soil biology.  JADAM in particular has an extensive pest management strategy again which you can make yourself with a few ingredients.

Frog Valley Farm and PineIslander come to mind as other forum members practicing regenerative land stewardship and  have some excellent posts explaining what they do.   

My family and I backyard compost on another level.  Since I have built my own homestead from scratch, I decided to forego the septic tank as a way of dealing with our waste.  Right now we have a bucket to barrel composting toilet and use either coco coir or peat moss as the medium to cover the humanure with.  We generally fill up a 55 gal drum in about a months time including other some other green waste and cardboard thrown into the mix and have a rotation of three drums going.  By the time we have rotated back to the third drum, it is well broken down and of excellent quality. 

We also have the urban worm company worm bag with African night crawlers.  Works great!

Next up is a black soldier fly larvae harvesting box for our chickens. 

Eventually we will convert our bucket to barrel composting toilet to either a bio-digester to create our own biogas or improve the current system to a terra preta composting toilet system.

https://www.homebiogas.com/Products/HomeBiogas_Toilet

https://sswm.info/water-nutrient-cycle/wastewater-treatment/hardwares/site-storage-and-treatments/terra-preta-toilets