Category Archives: Tropical Plants and Food

Pineapple, Papaya, Avocado and September Fun

Our tropical food and other adventures continue daily.

Papaya
Fresh, delicious papaya

This month we harvested our first papayas as well as our very first pineapple. I have never been a big fan of papayas because to me they smell a little like vomit. But this variety was actually pretty good and didn’t have the smell.

Pineapples are probably up there as one of my very favorite fruit, and we’ve had such issues with root rot here that I got so excited I just had to wear our first little harvest on my head along with some home-grown bananas! Haha, poor Britton always has to put up with my silly shenanigans.

Cassie chiquita - Copy
Just call me Chiquita

In addition, it’s avocado season in full steam. Nearly every meal and snack now includes fresh avocados. Each evening and sometimes morning we go scour beneath the avocado trees. We have found four large mature avocado trees and we have planted another 8 or so, that are off-season varieties so (hopefully) soon we will be so overrun with avocados we won’t know what to do! Most days we’ve collected about 5-10 large avos. It’s amazing how much you can extend a meal when you have avocados. We have them with our eggs in the morning, with salads at lunch and with pretty much anything for dinner (nachos, rice and beans, etc).

Scambled eggs
A typical daily breakfast is almost all home grown -avos, mangos, starfruit, and scrambled eggs. We look forward to growing our own peppers soon too

Iguana hammock
Large orange iguana hanging out eating our fruit too- on the parcha vine!

The animals are all doing well. The baby turkeys are now living in the coop in a smaller cage and we take them out for walks daily until they are hawk-proof (about 3 months old). And of the two chicken chicks that survived from the original 6, one was a hen and the other a rooster. The hen is a gorgeous black chicken mix of auracana and Jersey giant and lays really cool  green olive-colored eggs. The rooster is beautiful and huge, working for his place in the pecking order.

Chickens
The birds crowding around Britton at dinner time

There are still four large male turkeys toms, and we need to decrease numbers because they fight a lot. But we want to wait until we have a stove and fridge to properly handle them. In the mean-time they are looking more beautiful than ever.

Pretty turkey
Turkey looking good 

We are in the midst of a large project that I will write about once it is completed, but we have had quite a few days off as well. We have been going to the beach, hanging out, and playing music with friends.

Steps Beach beauty
Afternoon rain clouds form at Steps Beach after we went snorkeling and the water turned an amazing color

September is a quiet month in Rincón. The local Puerto Rican tourists have left and the North American tourists haven’t arrived yet. There are afternoon rains nearly daily, threats of hurricanes, and the heat can be super intense to work outside. (We take LOTS of showers and have all the fans on after sweating outside!) But I still wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Cassie legs
When we’re not working we spend a lot of time just chillin’ in the Big Sky park of our yard with its ever changing painting

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Dragon Fruit Flower

Shortly after we moved here we planted a bunch of trees and plants. We had a huge mess of vines and weed trees to clear out, but we wanted to get started with the fruit trees as soon as possible since it can sometimes take 5 + years to see fruit. One of the things we planted was dragon fruit also known as Pitaya or Pitahaya. It is a cactus-looking plant that, in the wild, grows up the sides of jungle trees and then when it reaches the tops, it drops over the sides and starts flowering.

We planted ours on a fence so that we would be able to harvest any fruit. We have since then removed that fence, but so as to not disturb the plant, we staked it and just sort of forgot about it since it is no longer in an ideal location. Well, lo and behold, I noticed it was forming a flower!

Dragon fruit flower
Dragon fruit flower forming

We were really surprised, because we have not done anything for this plant and I think it could really use a better location than right in the middle of the yard. A couple of days after seeing this bloom form, I went outside to check on it at night and saw that it was in its full display.

Cool dragon fruit flower
In full glory (with a little gecko stowaway)

 


In this short video you can see the size of the bloom in comparison with my hand

It only blooms for one night and by the morning it was starting to fade. It is pollinated by night animals if the bees don’t get it in the early morning. We also collected a little pollen in case we see more flowers come up. It is unlikely that we will see fruit from this particular flower, but we are hoping to get more plants and cross pollinate varieties as well. Dragon fruit are some of the most beautiful fruits as well so we are looking forward to that. Until then, the flower and its awesome aroma was thrill enough.

Daytime dragon fruit flower
Pitaya flower by light of the morning

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Miracle Fruit Taste Tripping

As part of the tropical fruit video series we’ve been doing, I decided miracle fruit should be next on the docket. We have three small trees and recently two of them started fruiting!

Miracle fruit
Miracle fruit berries growing on the tree

Miracle fruit (Synsepalum dulcificum) is a little different from most of the other fruits of the tropics because the fruit itself is not really so much a food as a food enhancer or transformer. It makes nearly anything sour taste sweet after eating just one berry! The effect on the taste buds lasts a little less than an hour depending on the person.

When Britton and I first tried it, we were amazed and astounded that foods like lemons and limes tasted like lemon merengue and limeade. So we brought a couple of berries to a party and everyone who tried it was also wowed by the powers of this fruit. We did learn that not everything sour should be changed however! At the party wine changed to a flat Dr. Pepper taste and Medalla tasted watered down. The reactions people had to this amazing fruit gave me the idea to get a few friends together to try miracle fruit for themselves. This video is the result. Not only does the video demonstrate the magic of miracle fruit, but it also showcases some of the wonderful and adventurous people who live in/near Rincon. Enjoy.

 

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Beginning the Deck

This last week we began the process of building a deck. This first entailed taking down the scaffolding from inside the house and using the materials to build more batter boards.

Inside of house without scaffolding
Inside the house without scaffolding

Batter boards for deck
Building the deck batterboards

Next was to mark and dig the footers and then to pour them.

Down below waldemar and jorgeHello down below! Getting ready to dig the footers for the posts

And then they worked to fill the footers and then the mini-columns that will hold the deck posts.

Deck footers
Footers/mini columns

Next up will be to put up the actual posts, headers and ledgers and then the supports.

In the meantime, the gardens are growing really good. Check out these pitangas we have been gathering!

Pitanga
Pitanga aka Surinam cherry

And these interesting ornamental ginger flowers on curving spiral stalks.

Ginger flower
Unique ginger flower

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