Early-May Off-Grid Jungle Garden Journal: Food-Forest Snapshots - GaiaYoga Gardens, Lower Puna, Far East Big Island, Hawai'i - Friday, May 5, 2023

Warm greetings fellow plant-and-garden-lovers! 😁🙏💚✨🤙

It's the beginning of May already, much to my astonishment, and with that another #GardenJournal round comes onto the scene! I always seem to be late to the party with my Garden Journal posts, but I work with the time I have, so I'm doing one today!

Since I'm in far East Big Island, Hawai'i, we don't really have pronounced seasons, or very noticeable flushes of growth, flowing, or fruiting. There is increased growth with longer days and more light intensity, but things tend to be a bit more evenly-spaced and spread out in time here.

Living in a 16-acre off-grid food-forest also means that what we harvest is spread out in space too, from all over the property. There are a great many fruit trees of all sorts, with some like bananas, papayas, and avocados dominating because of their importance in terms of consistent food production.

I've been mentioning that I've been wanting to show y'all more of what we've got growing here, aside from what's in the fenced garden, of which you've already seen a good bit. With that in mind, I went on a walk yesterday in the afternoon sun to see what I could find that might be interesting to share. Let's see what I found!

The Jabuticaba/Brazilian grapetree - Plinia cauliflora is one that has many flushes of fruit per year. They don't fruit at the same time, but do so more asymmetrically, so at least some fruit can be found at any particular time. We can sometimes collect very large quantities of fruit, filling both bowls and tummies!

Mangoes are coming into season again now, and we have several trees producing good crops this year. Mangoes generally don't fruit well here because it often rains too much while they're flowering, so when we have a good crop it's something to celebrate! We do also have two species which are able to fruit under our wetter conditions consistently, and those are being planted and grafted extensively.

Avocados are also coming back into season, with many trees beginnning to produce hordes of fruit. This is also something to celebrate this year, as a new pest, the avocado lacewing, as definitely had an effect on the growth of most of the trees on the property. While they seem to slow the trees down, they don't stop fruit production, very thankfully.

This is one of the large melon-like fruits of the giant lilikoi/passionfruit - Passiflora quadrangularis, hanging from a mango tree. We've been planting them more often lately, so we have many more of their curious and delicious fruit popping up all over. They really do look like a melon. The flesh even taste like one too! The pulp around the seeds has the characteristic sweet-and-tart flavor of most lilikoi/passionfruits.

We have papayas planted everywhere, as they are very fast-growing and productive plants. They're definitely one of the staples here! These are in the citrus orchard.

While we do have many coconut trees planted all over the property, we don't have enough producing nuts yet to sustain the community yet, so Ano goes out every Friday (like today) with one or two people to free-climb several trees to collect their nuts. He sells some at the market, and the rest are used by our community for the week to drink and eat. Older 'shaker' coconuts are collected and put in multiple coconut-sprouting beds, like this one, where they will sit for months until they sprout and grow a little. Sprouted coconuts are another staple food source here. For those that have never tried it, it's kind of like sweetish styrofoam.

Bananas are another solid staple, and are planted everywhere in many varieties. Different varieties have wildy differing sizes, texture, taste, and colors. These are some of the small finger bananas, which are very sweet and bit-sized.

This rack right in a trail, and you have to duck to get past them. I've whacked my head on them multiple times!

We have many jackfruit trees - Artocarpus heterophyllus planted everywhere, that produce often huge fruit throughout the year. The fruit pop out all over along the branches and trunks.

Did I mention that some of these can get quite large, indeed?

This is a bed of poha berry/Peruvian gooseberry - Physallis peruviana that I planted a few months ago, and which are finally beginning to produce fruit. This is an easy and productive plant here.

Around the same time that I planted the poha-berry bed above, I also planted this bed of red/purple cassava - Manihot esculenta. We're just beginning to grow and use more cassava.

Here's some lovely pods growing on one of the cacao - Theobroma cacao trees in the old bamboo nursery. I have many sapling cacao trees in pots in my nursery that I grew from seed.

This plant, katuk - Sauropus androgynus, is a nutrient-dense green that we have planted, and which seeds itself, all over the property. It has curious and lovely white fruit that are tinted pink when young.

The star apple - Chrysophyllum cainito is a tree which is producing fruit heavily at the moment. These are in the star-apple orchard. The leaves and fruit of this species are both lovely, and the fruits are quite delicious indeed.

The undersides of the leaves of star apple are an amazing gold or bronze color and the fruit are purple when ripe.

I'm very excited for this tree to finally be planted in the ground. It's a very rare fruit tree from Perú in the Annonaceae family, Porcelia nitidifolia. This was planted on Earth Day, on Ano and Elohi's (Ano's son) birthday. It's fast-growing, gets about 60-feet tall, does well in very wet climates, the fruit can ripen off the tree, and the fruit has orangish-yellow flesh. It's a totally new species for both me and the property.

This is a tree that I grew from seed, and planted on Thanksgiving last year. It's a red form of mountain/water apple - Syzygium malaccense, that is planted in the one of the new orchards. The fruit are kind of like sweet styrofoam, and when cooked actually do taste like apple sauce.

This is a purple lilikoi/passionfruit - Passiflora edulis naturalized in the new orchard, growing near my mountain apple. Like many lilikoi/passionfruit, this species seeds itself quite prolifically. Their fruit are delicious! The flowers are also gorgeous too!

That bring me to the end of my Early-May Off-Grid Jungle Garden Journal entry! I hope that y'all enjoyed this food-forest tour! There will be more to come later! Until next time! 😁 🙏 💚 ✨ 🤙

All photos were taken with my Motorola G Power Android Phone.

Thank you all so much who have helped me get to where I am today, and allowing me to share more of the beauty and magic from my life and my world with you, and for your continuous appreciation and support! I am truly deeply grateful! 😁🙏💚✨🤙

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