The Tropical Fruit Forum
Tropical Fruit => Tropical Fruit Discussion => Topic started by: BluePalm on January 15, 2012, 06:51:50 PM
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I have an Emperor lychee in a big pot (probably weighs 150 lbs) and today I wanted to move it to a sunnier spot in my yard. When grabbing the top of the pot through the hand-truck to get it to lean back, the pot quickly slammed back into the top of my hand trapping it between the pot and the crossbar of the hand-truck; not fun. That got me to thinking...what are your fruit related injuries: pulled backs from moving pots and soil? Falling off of ladders? Spider bites? Let's hear the stories...
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I cut my finger open last week grafting Jakfruit with Murahilin!
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i climb to the very top of my ladder to place footies onto my apple, peach and nectarine trees. often i am perched with one foot on the ladder and one foot against a wall or a gate-its an absolute miracle that i have not fallen yet, but it is definitly a matter of time. as i'm falling, i will be thinking, oh f**k
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So far today- Fire ant bites. They set up farms around some mealy bugs in a mango tree and do not like being disturbed. Sorry guys- you and your mealy bug farm have to go!
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Recent injury about 2 weeks ago, was walking fast through the garden and kneed into a Stenocereus stellas. Knee was swollen for 4-5 days, a few spines broke off into the knee (plucked all of them out). That was no fun, it caused a minor histamine response.
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Gwennin, last year I was standing under my Dot mango and was inspecting the tree for pests and unbeknownst to me I was on top of a fire ant nest that was obscured by the grass. Needless to say I got both of my shoes and socks off in less than 4 seconds!!
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One of the contenders for winner in this category would have been Sleep from the GW Forum. He stabbed his thigh with a nice new grafting tool, sending him to the ER for stitches. Speaking of which, I need to drop him an e-mail to let him know about this new forum.
As for me, my worst injuries have involved a slight slip of the grafting knife carving a nice slit into my thumb. Or then there was the time that my back went out after trying to lift a large stump. Or maybe it was the time that I got into a hornet's nest and got stung about 15 times by the nest's unhappy residents. I have had the obligatory standing a fire ant mound enjoyment, of course. I am sure there have been others over the years, but the mind tries to forget pain.
Harry
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We call it "the fire ant dance"- where you hop around on one leg as you stamp the other foot on the ground while trying to get the shoe/socks off to wipe away the ants. It is quite easy to recognize here- everyone in "el campo" does it....almost as popular as Salsa!
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the absence of fire ants is the first decent perk ive heard, for living in NYC
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Don't worry, Gerry, they are heading your way!
Harry
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harry- more like, im headed their way- very excited to see your garden (and you of course!) on sunday and i should have a goody to bring you. did you get the honey by the way?
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(http://janeheller.com/confessionsblog/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/cutfinger.jpg)
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(http://janeheller.com/confessionsblog/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/cutfinger.jpg)
"Fruit" injuries, not vegetable injuries... :D
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X
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I got clobbered on the head from a dropped coconut. A friend of mine was up on a tree dropping the drinking cocos laden with water from the tree crown. I was a bit anxious because he was dropping them into tall grass and worried i wouldn't find them later. I ventured too close and whamo! I saw stars but no serious injury. Yes i have one hard head because that was a direct hit from 25 feet! It happened many years ago, but i still remember it clearly somehow. ::) :o It knocked some sense into me. ;)
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The very first mango tree I brought home was from Del Mar Fairgrounds Home & Garden Show - a 15gal Haden. I was carrying it back to the car and, while wearing flip flops, managed to drop it from about 3' up onto my left foot - smashing my big toe. It was squirting blood all over the place out of the side of the nail - straight out of a Quentin Tarantino film. The nail turned black a day or so later but never fell off... 6 years later, I still have a big black mark on my left toe under the nail.
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I've almost lost an eye, reaching down to grab a 3 gal pot...not realizing there was a bamboo pole in the pot.
I got my forehead gouged...but it healed quickly.
I think I remember cookiemonster devised a unique solution for this problem...he took used water bottles (most common size bottle, 500ml), turned them upside down and put them on the ends of all his bamboo poles.
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I got knocked out by a mango tree when I was younger. We used to play football around a mango tree in the middle of a 1/4acre grassed area at our old house and I jumped for a high ball and woke up 5 mins later with a nasty gash on the back of my head.
I also cracked a front tooth while pulling out an unwated canistel with a healthy taproot. I'm a teeth gritter.
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Just yesterday I was plating my mangosteen and forgot about a metal rebar in the ground. The bar was a little sharp at the edge and went straight threw my jeans through my underwear into my thigh... haha it was an immediate trip to the ER for a tetanus shot! And today I was picking some strawberry papayas and the milk/sap dripped straight into my eye. As we speak my eye is red and swollen... The things we do for our fruit trees are just incredible!
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The fruit gods aren't quite as demanding of a sacrafice as the construction gods, but I have a drop of blood on most days I log time playing in the dirt.
I think it occurs somewhere in the dee-da-dee-ouch-da-dee.
Fire ants, ya, I'm becoming immune to them especially after last year when I sat in a pile of them with shorts. No joy in pimple butt.
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A few years ago I attempted to climb a coconut tree...
It had about 15 ft of trunk and I was able to make it to the top but then I realized I did not know how to get back down. I ended up sliding down and the tree scraped a bunch of skin from the bottom of my feet.
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Centipede attacks, they lay stealth in mulch. Neighborhood chickens are now welcome in my yard.
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Don't know if this counts as a "fruit" injury, but when I was building my greenhouse, I got my hair caught in the drill as I was, literally, putting in the VERY LAST screw. My hair is pretty long, and when my ponytail came out of the holder as I was leaning into the drill (self-tapping screw into a steel post...), it got sucked into the drill so fast that the drill flew up and slammed into my face before I could do anything. It broke my cheekbone, and I woke up my husband and half the neighbors at 6:00 on a Sunday morning as I screamed bloody murder.
The only thing the ER doctor asked me, after laughing his fool head off, was "WHY were you building a greenhouse at 6:00 on a Sunday morning???".
He just didn't understand...
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Don't know if this counts as a "fruit" injury, but when I was building my greenhouse, I got my hair caught in the drill as I was, literally, putting in the VERY LAST screw. My hair is pretty long, and when my ponytail came out of the holder as I was leaning into the drill (self-tapping screw into a steel post...), it got sucked into the drill so fast that the drill flew up and slammed into my face before I could do anything. It broke my cheekbone, and I woke up my husband and half the neighbors at 6:00 on a Sunday morning as I screamed bloody murder.
The only thing the ER doctor asked me, after laughing his fool head off, was "WHY were you building a greenhouse at 6:00 on a Sunday morning???".
He just didn't understand...
Ouch!! I'm sure the ER Doctor didn't understand, but most Tropical fruit lovers do...:) Sometimes my days are long, so the only time I get to play with my plants is as the sun is going down, or coming up... It really is a nice peaceful time to check on how they're growing.
I hope you recovered well from the fracture. Breaking your cheekbone must have been really painful!!
Welcome to the forum. :)
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Got stung by Scorpion the little yellow one ,feels imediatly as if you put your finger on a hot burning stove,
after one hour the tongue is swelling and your face feels full of ants.
Went to the Hospital where they took care of me inmediatly. still no feeling in my Finger.
4 days ago
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Don't know if this counts as a "fruit" injury, but when I was building my greenhouse, I got my hair caught in the drill as I was, literally, putting in the VERY LAST screw. My hair is pretty long, and when my ponytail came out of the holder as I was leaning into the drill (self-tapping screw into a steel post...), it got sucked into the drill so fast that the drill flew up and slammed into my face before I could do anything. It broke my cheekbone, and I woke up my husband and half the neighbors at 6:00 on a Sunday morning as I screamed bloody murder.
The only thing the ER doctor asked me, after laughing his fool head off, was "WHY were you building a greenhouse at 6:00 on a Sunday morning???".
He just didn't understand...
That's much better outcome than wearing a long sleeved shirt that gets your arm pulled into the wood chipper. Or the same but getting pulled into farm machinery.
Everyone-- DMSO can help a lot with injuries. There is very good seller on ebay I can vouch for and he is in South Florida. http://www.ebay.com/itm/DMSO-Dimethyl-Sulfoxide-99-99-Pharma-Grade-One-Gallon-Glass-Jug-Odorless-/161071400784?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item25809a8750 (http://www.ebay.com/itm/DMSO-Dimethyl-Sulfoxide-99-99-Pharma-Grade-One-Gallon-Glass-Jug-Odorless-/161071400784?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item25809a8750)
He sells it in various sizes.I have bought twice from him. Always good idea to add 25% pure water to it. I learned the hard way. Add some Epsom salts to the DMSO + water for more healing action. You can also put arnica herb (good deals on ebay) into DMSO for a few weeks to make an arnica tincture
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I have a fondness for working in flip flops, you can't imagine how many i have scrapped, banged, and pierced my feet. But I always say that the i stop wearing flip flops is the day i take off a toe with my machete.
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Well, certainly for me over the years I couldn't even count the cuts, scrapes, muscle pulls, back spasms and the like, but nothing was as bad as whatever bit me next to my ear a couple of months ago. I assume it was some kind of spider, never really remember feeling the bite, but I ended up in emergency, having minor surgery to drain the infection. That was scary stuff. But it's all part of working outdoors and living in the subtropics.
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I piled up a bunch of bricks for the edging around my newly planted mango tree and as I walking up to the tree with a hammer to knock in a stake to hold the tree I trip on another stake I'd forgotten about. I did one of those slow motion tumbles and scraped the $#$#$%# out of my forearm on the pile of bricks. Lots of band aids were needed, but no trip to the ER like the time I tried to take my eye out by not wearing safety glasses when using my weed whacker.
I think the reason I switched from roses to subtropical plants was that I lose less blood this way.
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One of my lychee trees didn't like the radical prune i did on it with the chain saw and decided to take revenge by having one of it's big limbs fall in the opposite way i had predicted, and right onto my big toe. Ouch! Lost the nail, took a year to grow back, and 6 years for black mark under my nail to totally disappear. Doesn't help that i always only wear flip flops. No more cutting this particular tree without steel tipped boots. ;)
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Whoda thunk that fruit gardening could be so dangerous???
My cheekbone did heal, but whenever I played my bagpipe for six months afterwards, my face made a squealing noise... It was sort of a "party trick" for a while.
I do go barefoot ALL the time, so I understand the pain of the folks who have stepped on things, or broken/skinned/stubbed toes!
And at least my trees are still small enough to not kill me with broken limbs or falling nuts. The bug bites in REAL tropical areas are frightening! At least the worst we have here are black widow spiders, which really never bother me. But scorpions and centipedes and ear-biting mystery bugs - YIKES!!!