What Fruit Can You Harvest in the Winter?

it's been winter for about a week now at sleepy lizard avocado farm and in about another week we'll start spring winter gives us a chance to do a lot of Maintenance and retooling I'll be putting ball joints on this truck tomorrow we do our clearing and trimming fix broken Sprinklers and this year I also have to rebuild the shade house but it's not all Demolition and maintenance there are also tropical fruits that we harvest in the wintertime for the past couple of weeks we've been picking one of my favorite tropical fruits called mam I happen to standing underneath the mamade tree but this one's a different variety this is the mag like I told you this is called the pace variety now these magas will be picking these we started now in January we'll be picking these things into March or April then these past variety pick up in the summertime Mame is one of those fruits that tastes a lot better than it looks I mean this looks like a a football right but the flesh varies from like light pink to like this deep ruby red and it's creamy like pudding I can just scoop it right out of its husk take a bite people like to say the flavor reminds them of a really sweet sweet potato other people say the flavor reminds them of pumpkin pie I see where they're coming from there is a little hint of like a sweet potato flavor in there but to me it tastes like it tastes like cherries and it tastes like a splash of tropical it is just so so delicious I mean it's one of my top five fruits I love it the individual fruits take about 18 months to ripen so you see that little guy there he'll grow into a nice big Mame now the paste don't grow as big as the Magna but this is kind of small as magas go but look it and you'll also notice there's no stem look the fruit grows right off the bark of the tree and it really likes to flower I see flowers on the tree just about year round Mame is an excellent backyard option for people who live in regions where it grows the fruit doesn't all ripen at the same time so you get four to five months of production out of your tree and the way you know if your fruit is ready on the tree is you scratch the skin with your fingernail if you see bright green underneath the skin it has to stay on the tree but if it scratches red or this rust color it's ready to come off we picked this guy yesterday morning Mame has an excellent shelf life of about 7 to 10 days at room temperature you can extend that period if you want to chill it I just recommend you don't try to ripen it all the way in the fridge if you want to put it in the fridge for a couple of days and then set it out at room temperature and let it ripen it'll taste best and the way to know it's ready to eat is when it's very very soft all the way around so when you pick it it's rock hard at room temperature on your kitchen counter it starts to get uniformly soft all the way around and the skin starts to develop wrinkles Brandon at Robert Is Here Fruit Stand told me watch a Mame feel it till it's so soft you want to eat it then wait another day you really want to wait till it has the consistency of an overcooked baked potato and another great thing about Mame it freezes really really well if you think you might might want to try some of this Mam and you don't feel like growing it yourself get it at our website which is guac farm.com guaf rm.com another amazing tropical fruit that picks in the winter time is called sapadilla or in Spanish sapadilla or in India I think you guys call them chus in the Philippines you call them Chicos a lot of people over in California and a lot of people from Mexico call them Chicos people from Jamaica call them Nas berries and my wife is from Venezuela where they're referred to as nisperos I'm aware of about seven or eight varieties of these we grow three varieties of these here on the farm and this variety right here is called a hassia variety h a s y a and I'm also cutting One open to show you what the flesh looks like oh look at that the sapadilla flesh is orange like this now the this is the haia variety the maren variety we grow is almost like a blood red when you cut it open and the makok variety that we grow is more of a yellowish color and these you eat just like a pair you don't have to cut them open you can actually bite right through the skin oh my God that is so good the flesh has the consistency of a pear it's a little bit gritty and the flavor is often described as brown sugar molasses butterscotch some people get a little hint of cinnamon I've had varieties that tasted a little bit like maple syrup you can also make jam out of sapadilla and I learned yesterday sapadilla Jam is delicious sapadilla happens to be a cousin of the Mame that I just showed you and we check it for ripeness the same way we give the skin a little bit oh that came right off the tree that also means it's ripe by the way if it comes off the the tree really easy like that that was going to be the second way I was going to show you um that means it's it's ripe and it's got this little bit of sap that wants to come out you see that there it's bubbling its way out if this wasn't ripe and ready to go that sap would be gushing everywhere and it's like latex but the the other test we use is we give it a little scratch with our finger just like that there and if you see there there's that kind of brownish green that yellowish color that means this guy's ready to pick if that was bright green I would have had to leave it on the tree longer but then again if this was bright green and needed to stay on the tree longer it wouldn't have come right off which is the other way you can test if your sapadilla is ready to pick you can just go up to it and wiggle it a little bit so let's try that on this guy here I'm going to give this guy a little bit of a wiggle see yeah that one's not coming loose yet so he's probably not ready to go and the third and final way to know if your sapad is ready you could just go up to it on the tree and just kind of squeeze it like you might squeeze a mango or other type of fruit and if it's soft it's also ready to pick much like mam sapadilla has an extended harvesting period some varieties have fruit on the tree for 6 months out of the year the makok variety I talked to you about really explodes for me from January through the end of March but I pick fruit off of it year round I'll go out and there'll be the odd ripe uh makok sapadilla but this time of year January through the end of March it just gives and gives and gives that variety is really productive these are also available at guac farm.com during the winter we could come out and pick fruit off our star fruit tree as well and let me show you why we call it starf fruit the problem with starf fruit is it it has no shelf life and as a result it's picked before it's ripe and it's sent up north and you guys find it in your supermarkets very very expensive in fact my my dad gave me a call just a couple hours ago he was at a Wegman's in Pennsylvania he said Tommy they're selling starf fruit up here for $4 a piece I'm looking at starfruit for $4 a piece he said how many are on that little tree in your backyard I said I don't know dad probably at least 30 now that I look there's a couple of hundred starf fruit on this tree right now so if you don't live in a tropical climate and you're wondering why starf fruit is so expensive it's cuz there's really no shelf life so they have to do a lot to transport it and get it to where you are really quick and like I say by the time it gets to you the quality ain't that high but down here it's one of the favorites ordinarily in the winter time all the actions out here in my garden that should be full of okra tomatoes and peppers over here I got some pineapples but normally I grow some peppers and chilies in there but my wife was one of those people who got really really sick in 2020 she almost died and it was about 18 months maybe more like two years before she was even able to get out of bed and drive a car so when you're dealing with that kind of stuff it's kind of hard to come up and keep up with your hobbies and stuff like that and since the garden is really more of a hobby it doesn't have to do with making a living I've kind of let the garden go and it's only now these last couple of weeks that I'm starting to build it again so the garden is back into more of like a maintenance and rebuilding mode but in about two weeks I'll have this raised bed I think I'm just going to well I'll probably put a few different types of tomato and then plant the rest out with okra over here I'll just kind of spot plant a few types of peppers interspersed with all these pineapple I just rebuilt the trellis for my dragon fruit I have a couple different types of dragon fruit I got this guy growing here I got this one here I got this little guy just starting out and this one's starting to grow but I lost track of the variety so I'm going to have to wait till they bear fruit to see what type of dragon fruit is what all right here you see me walking around kind of careful I'm kind of kicking up some leaves cuz I'm hoping to find a a passion fruit this is a a passion fruit Vine right here I can't find any fruit but here's the skin from one so what I'm looking for is this just laying in the ground or up there in the vines but this is one my uh I found and my wife and I shared it uh but this is what it looks like it looks like a beautiful purple little almost like a racket ball like a little bouncy ball and it is so good I don't know if you care but it smells so good right here because of this tree oh wow these little white flowers here uh they start to come out at night in a few more hours you could be all the way over on the back porch of our house and the whole backyard smells like this stuff I probably should know what it's called but I don't here's an interesting novelty this is a seed grown avocado tree and it's actually made it to maturity this tree has given me fruit in the past now what I'm about to say is going to anger a lot of people because they have it in their heads that this this is somehow wrong but I'm going to give you some biological fact seed grown avocado trees are unreliable you don't know what you're going to get they might not even produce fruit if they do produce fruit you don't know if it's going to taste good you don't know if it's going to taste bad they might give you a ton of fruit one year and no fruit for 2 or 3 years this particular seed grown avocado tree has given me fruit four times in 13 years and the avocados this tree gives me are beautiful they're pearshaped and they're shiny and green but they're Bland they're not bad tasting but they're definitely not good tasting they're not avocados I would sell they're not even avocados I would give away and I told you in 13 season this tree has produced four times one year it gave hundreds of fruit then it took a year off then it gave hundreds of fruit again then the following year it gave exactly two avocados then it took a few years off and then one year it gave one avocado the rest of the year it gave zero so I'm in the process of what's called top working I've cut the stump I'm going to come back and cut these branches and then when these branches start to sprout New Growth I will graft cuting from better performing avocado trees onto this one and I'm probably going to do the Lula variety let me show you what I'm talking about this tree was also grown from seed this is a mango tree the one I just showed you was an avocado tree and like my seed grown avocado tree this tree is also a poor producer in the 13 Seasons I've been here this tree has only produced mangoes two times I personally did not like the taste some of my friends liked them a couple of my friends actually L the flavor but even if it was the best mango I ever taste that I need a tree that produces more often than once every seven years and there's a way we can change the variety of mango or avocado that A Tree Grows and to do that we use a technique called top workking now let me switch into Old Man mode here and you'll see here we've got I I cut this I took my chainsaw and I cut this down to a stump and then we waited a few months for these new shoots to grow out the side of the trunk once they grew and they were bushy and they were full of Leaves we came out and we prepped them we took the leaves off and we cut them and we inserted cuting from another tree out in my Grove and the reason we took the cuting from that tree is because it produces every year it produces big fat juicy good tasting mangoes every year and it also happens to produce starting in miday so it's an early season producer which is something that's sought after all right this brings us to bananas and oh o okay okay okay so I was going to show you a tree that got blown down that I propped back up with bamboo but I could see my bamboo props also got blown down but I didn't know I could use a machete Lefty look what I just found oh yeah my wife is going to be happy I didn't even know these were here I swear I didn't plan that I was just going back to show you guys that tree and here was this beautiful bunch so let me peel this guy this is a the normal size for this banana I don't know the name of the variety these were here when we moved in I didn't add these I think they might be monzana they taste a little like the monzana variety whatever the name they're so good all these are good yeah I think it's a monzana they call it a monzana because monzana means Apple in Spanish and these do have a little bit of an apple flavor sometimes if you go to like a farmers market that's really english- speaking which you don't see a lot of down here it's mostly bilingual around here but uh people will call them apple bananas oh so good you know I'm going to have another one here I don't think I'm going to have dinner tonight I think this is my my dinner all these fruits I'm eating but if you you look behind me there's more bananas back there different varieties I've got plantains I've got one variety back there behind me called the gross Michelle which is what banana flavoring tastes like like if you eat like artificially flavored candies or ice cream or something you get that banana flavor when you bite into the gross Michelle banana you'd swear it was man-made and not nature grown as I was walking over to show you more bananas I came across our mulberry tree you see these blackberries well there they are they're green when they first start then they start to kind of turn a little bit red and then once they turn black they're ready to eat they are so sweet and again like the star fruit and this applies to the banana also and also the mberry these aren't necessarily winter fruits uh fruits the Mulberry also fruits for us three times a year and the fruit kind of the fruiting period lasts about 3 or 4 months so we almost always have mulberries on the tree too except for once a year I do come out and give it like a really severe haircut and it might be 2 or 3 months before we get more mulberries but like with the star fruit we always have Bunches of bananas so you saw I got that ripe Bunch right but then right up here above my head you'll see there a brand new bunch of bananas just starting out see it these are my Brazilian pygmy bananas and we got a bunch going here too see if you could see those I hope you saw those this here is one of our piles of vines this is just one pile and while it may not look like a lot that's about seven pickup truck loads say about 500 lb each so that's probably 3500 4,000 lb maybe two tons of vines and that's just from this one section here Vines are a NeverEnding problem on a tropical fruit farm here's another winter fruit tree this is called a JuJu bee and here's what the fruit looks like I hope you could see that I don't want to rip these leaves off I hope you could see that it looks like a like a tiny little apple and this will grow to maybe three times that size this variety of JuJu be gets to be about that big and they are like an apple they're a very mild flavored sweet it's like biting into an apple and getting the flavor of honey and it's still a little early in the winter we're usually picking fruit off of this guy in February and March this is a Valencia Red Mango Tree and I feel like yesterday morning when I went out the driveway there was no flowers on it when I came home yesterday afternoon it was starting to flower oh look at this here's another Valencia Pride tree I thought he was kind of slow to get started but actually no he's starting to produce his flowers too won't be long all these mango trees will be loaded with flowers and they'll be starting to pop their little fruit and then behind me here in the Grove all the avocado trees will be loaded with flowers beautiful yellow flowers and then in about I'd say about 70 to 90 days they'll start popping their little fruit it's a great time of year now we're going to harvest another bunch of bananas you can see it right there you might see some of the yellow bananas on it but this variety of banana is called Blue Java I think it's also called ice cream but let me show you why it's called Blue Java I don't know if the camera captures it but in the early morning and in the evening like right now the sun's starting to go down and it's a little bit overcast but the the skin when they're green takes on a little bit of a of a bluish Hue and these bananas are known as blue Java okay there we go so there's a bunch of blue Java you see some of them are already starting to ripen I saw yeah I saw one on the bottom and I saw these ones on the top here if you think about bananas no one will ever tell you a banana is their favorite fruit you know no one's ever going to walk in your house and see a bunch of bananas on your kitchen counter and go like o bananas you know and I think that's for two reasons number one the uh the Cavendish is the the variety of banana that we get in the grocery store and it's just it's kind of bland it's pick Green I think it's gassed and chilled till it's imported in the United States and then people take them home and they don't let them ripen properly so if you look at this skin look at it a lot of people would kind of be like e I'm not eating that banana um bananas you want to let them ripen until they start to get some spots on the skin that's when they're at their sweetest and in fact some varieties you even wait until the skin starts to split so I wouldn't eat this guy if it was just a clean bright yellow I'd give it another couple of days but let me take a bite I I I I can't wait to take a bite of this oh oh yes oh even the texture of the blue J oh my God M the texture of this banana is so good it's like soft I don't know if those are seeds on the inside or what that is it's a little different looking but you bite in and there's almost like a little core like it's a little more dense in the center of this variety banana oh that's good here's another big old Bunch we have growing in these are the the namwa varieties that's probably 40 or 50 lbs of banana up there above me they'll be ready in another couple of months we're about to lose our light which is okay cuz my feet are starting to get a little bit sore you learned a little bit about what a tropical fruit farmer does in the wintertime you might have been exposed to some new fruits you never heard of before and you saw what kind of fruit grows in the winter time down here in Florida I mentioned earlier if you saw some fruit you might like to try you can buy it from us at guac farm.com guaf rm.com keep in mind tropical fruit is seasonal you might go to the website and we don't have something just come back in a few months and see if it's there we do sell our t-shirts and baseball hats year round now I got to go back to the house and open the door and I get to be a hero cuz I'm walking in the door with two bunches of ripe bananas my wife is going to love me while I go do that you go to guac farm.com and I will see you on the next video

Channel: SleepyLizard

Views: 17,942

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Id: u1YFwEGCmAU

Length: 20min 42sec (1242 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 23 2024