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.

New Gator!

In the middle of the night, Mark and I were sitting in the kitchen watching fish leap out of the pond and back in...   upon further looking, we found a new gator.  This guy is HUGE.  When his back surfaces out of the water in addition to his head, he looks easily 10 feet long like a crocodile in the movies.



We're going to call Scott, Gator Man, this morning!

June 29, 2020 Baby Racons!

Another great baby racon pic. I hope they come every day!

First Baby Racons 2020

Today, June 29th, we got greeted this morning with our first baby racons (raccoons :D).

Mom and four babies came to "hunt".  We love P2 baby racons!

Alligator!

We have a new gator this morning...   he'll be gone by tomorrow, way too big and too dangerous to keep as a "pet".

 

 

Vultures

Sent from my iPhone

Just Display'n

200 Black Bellied Whistling Ducks

...or "peep a peeps" as I call them.

This was an EPIC bird day.  We had:

200 black bellied whistling ducks
100 sneetches

but very few peafowl.

The sound of the peep a peeps was insane... the whistling at this level was loud.  I love their calls, I hope the neighbors do LOL.

Whistling Ducks and Mottled Ducks sharing breakfast with the squirrels

The "peep-a-peeps" and brown ducks invaded the squirrel seed breakfast. The squirrels seemed happy to share, and I love seeing the ducks up close :D

Peacocks Displaying

It's January 14th, and we are in full male displaying time of the year.  By about January 10th, the males had their massive feather trains in place.  In late December, they were long but not 100%.  Now, OMG, they fill the whole area when they display.  The males are still getting along together - later, territorial behavior will have them arguing and chasing each other.

So for the record, January 10th begins official male peacock display time.

Night Racons

NIGHT RAKE'ns

GROWING & HARVESTING BELLPEPPERS IN MIDDLE OF JANUARY👍

First evening peacock calls tonight, May-Ya May-Ya. Lots of owl hoots tonight too. A beautiful evening here in Florida.

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.

28 Peafowl here at P2 today, 28!

A new record max at one time

Mark Feeding The Sneetches

MAKING SLURM LOCO

It's the extremiest!

CHOMPY MAMA
and her five babies

RINGO THE RACCOON PIGS OUT

RINGO THE RACCOON PIGS OUT

Today at P2

Here's a quick video update.

Angel (our little wood duck) was here visiting, enjoying corn, swimming around with her friends.  We hadn't seen her for a few days so I'm glad to see she's happy, healthy, and hungry!

We stock SUPER LARGE marshmallows as a racon treat...  here's why!

Peep A Peep!

Peep A Peep at 0:18.  Naturally since I was recording them JUST to hear their sounds, they were quiet.  Usually it's non-stop peep-a-peep!

Male Peacocks Getting Long Feathers Now - Nov 1 2019

Early November is when the male peacocks start growing in their incredibly beautiful long feathers.  They're only half length, so not as impressive as a full set, but since they're brand new and compact, the depth of the color and the number of eyes is amazing. 

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!

Smile for the Camera, Blacky!

I passed by a black racer snake this morning, and I swear he smiled real big for me...  or was he being aggressive...   He's cute either way!

Beach!

11/1/2019 - Beach temperature was 73 degrees, with wind out of the NE.  The cloud cover was just about 100%, and without the sun it just felt COLD.  We walked the beautiful beach for 20 minutes and called it.  It was a beautiful day, just too cold and windy to hang out for hours.

11/5/2019 -

ANGEL FLEW TODAY

Our little wood duck, born and grown up on the P2 pond, flew for the first time today!

BANANA HANGERS

HANGING BANANAS UP TO RIPEN

We've struggled with ripening bananas. If they sit on a table then ants get on them. Opossums have climbed up the supports in our pole-barn to eat our delicious yummy fruit.

It takes a while for the bananas to ripen, sometimes a month or more. So what to do with them while we wait, we don't have space in the kitchen for several 30-35 pound bunches of bananas.

The solution, while simple, involves a little bit of backbreaking labor.

The short answer is, we embedded "Shepherds Hook" plant hangers in concrete which was poured in Home Depot 5-gallon pails. Each bucket has roughly 80 pounds of concrete in it to make it stable with bunches of bananas hanging on the hook.

A design trick I borrowed from the Butterfly Sanctuary in St Martin, I placed the hooks out away from the bucket side so that we can put two-inches of water in the bucket after the concrete set up. The water creates a barrier that ants hate. Mary and I have a $100 bet as to whether the ants will swim the short distance to get to our yummy bananas. Only time will tell.

Mary cuts the "hands" of bananas and then puts a long wire-tie through the hand so it can easily be added to a "Ripening Hook".

When we first started growing banana plants we never thought we'd ever be eating our own bananas. We're growing the best tasting bananas available anywhere. They are so flavorful and sweet, much more yummy than even the organic bananas from the grocery stores.

We're currently in the testing phase to evaluate how this system works.

Advantages: Portable, low cost, easy to use

Disadvantages: Heavy, not easy to move

Two Inches of water in top of bucket keeps ants away, they hate swimming :-)

Hanger post is 3/4" away from bucket, there is clear water on top of the concrete to create an Ant Free barrier
Without the water ants will find there way up the hook to the bananas above

The hooks are only rated for 10 pounds of weight but in this setup we've hung 30-35 pound bunches

China Labor Cost

A very important chart:

Source:  https://www.ceicdata.com/en/china/standard-of-monthly-minimum-wage/standard-of-monthly-minimum-wage-beijing

Bananas!

BANANAS WE GREW IN 2019
This is not all of them but WOW. At $2/pound we made $80 of organic bananas in this bunch alone