Puerto Rico has an ideal climate for growing tropical fruit. All of the tropical standards found in grocery stores can grow right here: pineapples, mangoes, bananas, avocados, and citrus. And of course there are all of the lesser known exotic fruits that are quite delicious but maybe not as suitable for long distance travel to stores all over the globe.

In our garden we have many different tropical fruits. Recently we harvested some mandarin oranges.

A handful of mandarins and the tree behind it

Puerto Rico has been hit with a variety of diseases that are harmful or deadly to citrus including citrus greening which is simply devastating to crops. When we began clearing we saw the remains of probably 5-6 other citrus trees, but these 3 mandarins were the only mature ones to survive. We have since then planted more citrus varieties (kumquats, Buddha’s hand, lemon and lime, orange, grapefruit, etc), but it will take a while until they are full-sized and producing fully. So far, it has been a little over a year in and we really haven’t lost any citrus trees, so we will continue doing what we’ve been doing.

The next thing we recently saw was a banana flower with little bitty bananas growing!

Turkey photo bombing the banana flower!

These banana flowers are so huge and beautiful. We have planted a large number of banana “hijos” or sprouts of various cultivars, but these ones over by the turkey coop really took off. We think this area may have slightly better soil than some of the other areas (and more fertilizer for sure). We are super excited to eat our own bananas from the land because bananas are something we eat every day.

Pineapple plant, banana tree and chicken

We are also super excited to grow our own pineapples. We planted probably 20 pineapple tops, but we only have about 5 remaining. Most of them succumbed to root rot. We are trying a new technique and are hopeful that it works.

Gardening in February…never ceases to amaze and delight me.