Update On Fruit Trees as of March 12, 2021

We're nearing the end of winter here in central Florida, where it's 77 degrees F right now.....  It's the perfect weather to go for a walk around the five acres and experience the beauty, and to check on all of the delicious fruits and vegetables growing.  My goal has always been to have fruit on trees outside, covered with fruit, ready to taste, and it's been challenging to find the right trees that flourish here.  I've had some successes, and all signs indicate that 2021 is going to be a good growth year for the fruit trees.

50 Pound Banana Bunch!

 

Bananas 2020!

It's been an epic year for bananas.... with the mild winter, the mats exploded with a zillion bunches.  We have had non-stop ripe bananas for many weeks, and there's no end in sight since there are about 10 "almost ready" bunches still on the plants.

This batch is special, as it's the first REALLY NICE bunch from Blue Ice Cream!  They are not quite ripe, but they look like they'll be amazing.  They're about 6" long and plump.

The other bananas are from various other super high producing banana plants. 

I've had so many ripe bananas, I invented a delicious new recipe:  Use a fork to smash VERY ripe bananas, mix with a little flax seed, freeze it, and slice it into little mini ice cream bites.  No other ingredients, and it's stunningly good!  WAY better than just eating a banana!

Blue Ice Cream bananas harvested 7/18/2020

Another view of Blue Ice Cream.... not the biggest bunch ever, but wow it's going to provide 40-50 bananas, all ripening within a few days :D

All of the current harvested bananas on the ripening hooks.

P2 Update - Lots of Amazing Stuff Happened Today - Friday 12-27 2019

Today, Friday, December 27, 2019, we had some critical memorable milestones!

1. Mark made a new seat for the weight bench
2. Swamp baby baby (in the 2019 garage banana patch) put out a flower
3. Pip pup air layering success
4. New scanner for art

I'm particularly thrilled about the air layering success, as today's identification of the first roots is the critical initial step to creating air layered papaya plants with fruit and leaves at human levels.

Here's the story behind each of the four milestones...

After four years of using our olympic weight bench, the seat plywood interior had dissolved from the moisture and humidity.  No problem, a new weight bench cost only $149 on Amazon.  Here's the new one.

New weight bench.... lovely and not rotten :D

We used the new seat from the new weight bench to create two patterns:  a shape pattern and a hole pattern.  Then Mark cut out the seat from 3/4" birch plywood.  Here's the new seat.  Now we just need to add upholstery and a nice vinyl cover, and we'll have two perfect weight benches in use.

This is the old rotten seat with the underside peeled back to release the rotten wood and show the foam. 

Swamp King is one of the original 2016 tissue culture cavendish bananas I bought to get this madness going.  I harvested the pups from Swamp King in December 2017 - this is one of them, named Swamp Baby Baby.  I put Swamp Baby Baby in the ground by the garage within the last nine months.  And today - flower!

I think the garage looks beautiful with the bananas in front.

Tada!  The flower.

The label from the harvesting of the pup.

Now, on to Pip.  A few years ago, two papaya trees sprouted up behind the nursery:  Pip (female) and Pop (male).  Pip has been incredibly prolific and her fruit is delicious, but she's REALLY tall now plus she's covered with branches.  The branches have fruit, but the whole system is overloaded and can't really mature edible fruit until I cut off the excess branches.  I've been studying air layer using sphagnum peat moss in a bag over a cut into the arms like Pip has.  In September, I launched a bunch of air layering, figuring it wouldn't work since we were going into fall and winter.  This is Pip and all of her arms... she has about 8.

A lower view of Pips multiple arms/branches.

The air layering section on Pip, which is essentially just the branches I can reach from the ground.  The others are 10' plus up in the trunk.

The air layering is simple.  Cut into the branch, wrap plastic filled with moss around the wounded section, and wrap around.  Florida takes care of the watering and humidity (this would never have worked in So. Cal!).

And here they are:  FIRST ROOTS.  They're big, healthy, and meaty.

Another view of the thick roots.

I love that the papaya trees are a habitat.  Here's a little tree frog living up high, eating bugs.

Close up of the froggy.

Another happy guest...  anole enjoying the papaya habitat.

And finally - my new scanner!  I love it - my art will look perfect.

Four Banana Bunches on One Plant... New Record! 11/5/2019

Ho 2 has four banana bunches on one plant/mat.  Amazing!  These three Home Depot generic banana plants (probably dwarf cavendish) are incredibly prolific, but four on one is amazing.  And they're 35 pound bunches... not 50-100 lbs, but I'm glad because that would be WAY too big for me to harvest!

Banana Count

This post is all about answering the question "how many bananas"?  But first a few things....

This week was an epic milestone... I got my first offer to buy some P2 bananas!

Plus our friend Bruce asked Mark "how many banana plants do you have"?  Mark's answer was "I have no idea" LOL.  I actually had no idea either!

On Thursday Brock of Florida Fields to Forks brought my delivery of produce share and fruit share, and asked me if I have extra bananas to sell.  I'll have to admit, I have been struggling for years to get past hobby banana grower and to a point where I could reliably have fruit to eat all year.  With the warm winter we had 2018/2019, the bananas at P2 are doing AMAZING.  We had some high winds in a storm yesterday, bringing a banana bunch to the ground so I had to go harvest this morning.  When I went to pick up the banana bunch, it was VERY HEAVY.  I used all my strength to lift it up into LEM's trailer and get it back to the screened in porch so it can ripen safely away from the deer and squirrels.  Once I got in back, Mark and I weighed it... 35 lbs!  Weeeeeeeeeeee.  This bunch is from Swamp Baby, which is an offspring from Swamp King.  Swamp King was once of my first bananas that I bought online.  I put the bananas in several different locations at P2 as kind of a science experiment to see how they did.  Poor Swampy got stuck in 100% water in a very wet location.  When I rescued him a year later, he was just fine, and spent some time in the pool cage before he got a place of honor in Palm Beach.  Anyhow, Swamp King's baby (Swamp Baby) has made some incredible bananas.  35 lbs!

So, how many bananas?  I did a walkabout and counted this morning.  Every pup counts as one.  We have 200 banana plants!  So yep, I think it's highly likely that I'll have some extra bananas to sell or barter very soon.  The banana log will help me to know when it's time to harvest them.

I did a bit of research this morning, and wholesale prices for specialty organic bananas are about $1 a pound.  Not bad!  

WILDLIFE, FRUITS AND PLANTS

Another beautiful day here at P2. These photos were taken Sunday, November 19th.

Look at all that fluffiness

Two boys wandering our farm

A mallard going into breeding colors

flowers in the Fall

Pip, Pop and Peep the papayas

Date palm continues to get more healthy

Mary reveals a freshly emerged banana flower

The trunk of the banana plant must be big enough to pass the flower out full size

the flower bends over due to weight

Note how the bananas start out red when the flower petal peels back but then they turn green

A Home Depot banana making bananas, now that's a good deal

Big Mike, stands sentry duty by entry gate to our property

We also planted three banana plants and two bamboo plants today. The bamboo were propagated from our "original recipe" bamboo that came with our property. We had forgotten them and they were lost in some tall grass. In spite of no water and being in pots these two plants survived so we gave them a wonderful new home. Photos to follow.

Mary's Update Monday, November 20th:  One the way home today, coming up the driveway, I glanced over at Home Depot 2 (lovingly called Ho2) and was stunned to see that the very upright flower shown in the above picture emerging very high out of the plant (where I had to reach up and pull a leaf aside to see it) is now hanging over, ready to start making bananas.  This is one day of change!  You seriously have to look every day or you miss the magical evolution of the flower turning into bananas.  Love it!

Two New Banana Flowers! October 29, 2017

Two more banana trees have made flowers, and one of them is proudly kicking out lots of bananas!  The other is in the flower stage still but will soon have bananas.  And... I have no idea what types of bananas they are!

When I bought each tiny tissue cultured banana plant starting in 2016, I carefully labelled them with a tiny plastic label stuck into the ground.  Little did I know at the time that the mat of each banana plant would be 2-3 feet across and that the plastic plant label would be lost in the mat.  So although I remembered my favorite bananas, I've forgotten a few of their names.  These guys could be Goldfinger, Gran Nain, Cavendish, or Mona Lisa... who knows?  But they're gorgeous.

Here's the one that flowered a couple of weeks ago and is now covered in bananas, very similar to the size and magnitude of Ice Cream's bananas.

The close up of the hands is beautiful, so perfect and aligned.

And the EXTREME close up is pure art.

The trunk of this banana plant is a foot across, hard to tell from the picture but he's a meaty banana plant/tree considering he started about 6" tall and 1/2" thick.

And of course, the magnificent flower with it's strong fragrance is so stunning.

The 2nd banana plant is about 12 feet tall, so it's really hard to get close enough to see the flower right now before it turns up and over.  It's still sticking straight up over the banana plant, ready to turn over soon.

This view shows the beautiful red/purple color of the flower.

And here's the whole mat, with pups ready to take over when the flowering banana is done.

Remember Mona?  Here she is today, pups well on their way to make fruit.

I love this picture, as it shows the original Mona truck chopped off about 6" off the ground.  Once the trunk has flowered and fruited, it's done!  Pups, your turn to make fruit.

And finally, I have found plant tags on Amazon that last forever.  I read a review about them by a scientist in Alaska who tags plants with these aluminum write-on tags stapled to wood stakes, and when he comes back year after year they're still there and still legible.  I was sold!  So I'll never forget my bananas' (or any of the other fruit trees soon to be planted!) names again.