What’s Growing Now? Tropical Fruits on the Farm, September Edition
Hi. Welcome to the farm…
It’s been a long time since I’ve done a Home and Country, “What’s growing now?” update. I totally missed the early summer season with our first ever lychee crop. (They were really good!) But moving right along…
Things have been FRUITFUL around here, to say the least. We’ve had bumper crops of so many good things!
Bananas are our main year-round fruit here. We actually grow apple-bananas which, if you haven’t tried them, are the best banana in the world. They are a little shorter and thicker than your typical Chiquita (perfect snack-size!) They are also firmer, and they last really well without getting mushy. Plus they have just a touch of tart to them (thus the “apple” part of the name I suppose?)
But there’s much more than bananas growing now…Here’s a look at the harvest-variety that Dave brought in last week:
(I’m not an expert on all of the varieties yet…here’s what I know…)
Do you just love all of the greens and yellows?! Side story: When I was a little girl, I had a tiny bedroom that my dad built with the coolest built-in bunk-bed complete with a mini playroom underneath it. My folks went crazy decorating the entire room in greens and yellows. There was this to-die-for 70’s wall paper with big green and yellow flowers, and dad made a matching green and yellow flower mirror, and the greens and yellows just went on and on…Oh I wish I had a picture of that bedroom. But needless to say, these colors bring me to happy places! 🙂
Back to the property:
This was our first year of having a healthy crop of mangoes.
And let’s just stop right there. MANGOES? I’m literally a breath away from calling them my new favorite fruit. (I hope raspberries don’t read my blog…)
Mangoes to me taste like the most pure form of fruit…Like what I imagine Adam and Eve living on while walking around naked and happy in that garden. (You know, before…)
I’m super grateful for Dave because as much as I love fruit, I don’t think I would find the time/energy to go out and harvest all of this stuff. He literally gets home from work and heads straight out to the trees. Thirty minutes later he comes in and fills my counters with a bounty. Then he carefully cleans and cuts the mangoes up and freezes them by the bag-full. (Next I need an industrial-size freezer to store it all!)
Oh, and sometimes he juices…
And I fall in love all over again.
Then my job is to get creative with everything. Besides freezing the mangoes and bananas, I bake everything I can think of…(whole wheat, honey-sweetened banana bread, low fat banana chocolate chip cookies, the best ever banana cake, papaya bars , papaya pie….)
And finally, I dehydrate for days.
And days.
And days. 
Best snack ever, right here:
So my friends, that is a little peek at what’s growing now. We still hope to plant a big veggie garden, but until then, I am planting a bunch of seeds in my Tower Garden (which I really love!)
Do you have a garden? What do you like to grow? (Herbs on the windowsill absolutely count!)
What is your favorite fruit? (I’m dreaming of a crunchy apple right off the tree at my home in Washington right now…)
With Aloha,
Monica and crew…
I am done raising my children but enjoy your blog anyway. I love this one about what you are growing on your property. I really enjoyed the tour of your home awhile ago. Hopefully one of these years we will get back to the islands and visit you. I think you went to school with one of my kids, either Deanne or Nelson.
Each time we visit Hawaii and see relatives, they send us off with fresh fruit from their trees. Our boys get so excited! This year one Auntie was feeding the less than perfect mangoes to her guard geese. Yes, guard geese! I thought those were pretty lucky birds. I’d eat fresh from the tree Hawaiian mango any which way- including one with a bruise !
I’ve never heard of pink lemons, I’m intrigued…
Do you grow rambutan? If so, you are one lucky lady!
Sounds delish!!! Have a daughter and son in law living on Maui! They want to grow fruit trees etc. do you give farm tours?
WOW i love all your tropical/exotic fruits! I love mangoes, too, and just recently bought a juicer and I get all giddy when Tommy drinks mango juice because I think of all the good nutrients he’s getting along with that yummy taste!
We have a garden and this year I planted sunflowers for the very first time and I didn’t know which variety to plant, I just chose some seeds and planted them and holy COW three of them came up and now they are easily like 8 feet tall and ginormous it’s really fun!!! We live in town on this postage-stamp size yard–we are very lucky to have any grass at all, actually! most of our neighbors have less space and no grass! and it’s a busy side street where everyone parks to go to the coffee shop or the seafood restaurant and it’s fun to watch people checking out the sunflowers as they pass by. 🙂 we also grow eggplant, basil, gypsy peppers, lavender, dill, cilantro, mint, lettuce, corn and a ton of tomatoes. Like, the tomatoes are overtaking not only the garden but the squirrels grab them and then drop them and then the plants pop up all over our yard! We mostly have cherry tomatoes and I love to pick them and pop them in my mouth when they are still warm from the sun. Gardening makes me happy, thanks for sharing all of your beautiful produce with us!
We have a garden this year! It’s our first summer in our own home and it’s been glorious! Unfortunately, in North Dakota our growing season is significantly shorter than I’d like. And because it was our first summer in our house, our garden wasn’t tilled until June 10th. Oops! But we’ve a had a great cucumber crop so far! We’ve also had green (bush) beans, purple (pole) beans, small onions, LOTS of grape tomatoes, handfuls of jalepenos, and we are still waiting on the rest of our tomatoes to ripen. There’s probably around 60-80! Then when the frost comes, we’ll harvest the rest of our carrots and all of our potatoes. 🙂
Also, mangoes?! One of my favorites and we don’t get them often enough!
Here is San Diego I grow papaya, kiwi, avocado, citrus (Myer’s lemons are amazing), strawberries, and we can now grow mango! Guava are easy to grow and make a tasty smoothie and we now have star fruit and cherimoya along with new arrivals from South America coming each year.
We also have warm-weather apples, blueberries and cherries that can grow here now and of course bananas grow so easily, they become a bit invasive and have to be thinned.
Our local desert (Palm Springs/Indio area) grows amazing dates and the local mountain community (Julian) is famous for their apples.
Of course California is known as the nation’s bread basket and we grow all kinds of greens from lettuce to artichokes and almonds, rice, etc., but those are usually more commercial crops.
I can grow all sorts of melons but I noticed that we have honeydew, and other melons for $.99 each and so it’s easier just to purchase them. It’s still fun however, to grow pumpkins for Halloween!
Wow! All that is in my backyard? Well, not mine, because I have a black thumb. I wish I had a green one.. lime green would be ok… puke green even 😉
Witjh all that produce here in SD county, it would be nice to see it all show up at the farmer’s markets. I only see Nor Cal farms selling.
Looks so yummy! We have the prolific veggie garden going over here in Nor Cal. We’ll have to do some trading. And I too had a green and yellow room in the 70’s! 🙂
Hope you and the family are well. Xoxo
Mangoes are my all time favorite fruit! I love all fruit though but mangoes, they take the top spot. Apple bananas are really good too. What a great idea to dehydrate extras!
Man! That looks good! We do zuchini, squash, carrots, lettuce, potatoes, strawberries, tomatoes and cucumbers here in my Virginia backyard. Cukes and tomatoes love my deck containers. I had good luck with squash this year too.
Choosing a favorite fruit would be like asking a mom to choose her favorite child.
I am wondering if you can smash and fry apple banana’s the same way you can plantains make a puerto rican sandwich with.
wow. That sounds really amazing. and I definitely think it’s worth a try! 🙂
xo
Nice! We just moved to Florida a couple weeks ago so we don’t have our own harvest but already we planted banana and coconut and have been scouring the neighborhoods for backyards laden with fruit. My husband just knocks on peoples doors and gets bananas, coconuts, guava, starfruit…anything he can find, we are already stocking the freezer 🙂 Love it!