Glorious South Florida Sunshine

Our "winter" has been unseasonably hot and dry. Yeah, I know, I seem to be saying it every year, maybe we'll need to adopt a new "normal".

We took advantage of a "cold front" passing through and temperatures dropping to a very comfortable lower 70's with no humidity and went to Okeeheelee Park. Rented a paddle boat and canoe for the kids. There are bikes for rent and segways tours also.

It was just plain gorgeous, we sat on the boat and just drank in the sunshine and got sunburnt !

Here's a few pictures of the lake and park.

Beautiful clouds

Pond on the Pine flats hiking trail

Pond

Island in the lake

RFC Plant Sale Saturday March 24, 2012 at the South Florida Fairgrounds. 9 AM to 2 PM.

Mark your calendar, its the Palm Beach Rare Fruit Chapter's Plant Sale Saturday March 24, 2012 at the South Florida Fairgrounds.   9 AM to 2 PM.

I'll be volunteering.

Aloe barberae turns out to be Aloe tongaensis

I bought 3 bare rooted Aloe "barberae" on ebay in 2006.
I immediately planted one at the front of our home, the other, I grew in a container for another year or more, until I had time to prepare the rock garden I had planned.
5 years layer, the one in front hasn't bloomed yet, but the one in the backyard is much bigger and bloomed late October 2011. It was a pretty sight.
One word of advice, these Aloes like drainage, the 3rd one was planted flush with the ground in our sandy soil, yet when the rainy season came, it rotted away.
It's a magnificent plant. Maybe it was a blessing its not a real barberae, as they can get very big.

Aloe tongaensis 1

Aloe tongaensis 2

Aloe tongaensis blooms

Marlierea - not fit for eating

I bought the seeds on Tradewindsfruit.com, germinated and grew the plant in a container, then planted it in the garden 3 years ago, well it's fruiting profusely now.
The shrub/tree is really pretty, with the typically peeling bark of the Myrtacious family, fragrant leaves etc. I was really looking forward to trying the fruit, well, it's a total disappointment.

The fruit looks much like a purple strawberry guava. Like the strawberry guava, 90% of the fruit is infested with fruit fly larvae. The plant itself also strongly resembles the strawberry guava, strikingly beautiful, tough, drought tolerant.

Take a very ripe fruit, if you can find one without worms, bite it halfway, check for any squirming, then place it in your mouth, chew. The first impression is this could be quite good, a nice tart guava like taste, but it quickly gives way to the most bitter after taste, if you have taken quinine before, thats how bitter it is.

Since my gardening space is limited, like the strawberry guava, the Marlierea has to go.
I plan on planting a seed grown Atemoya in its place after all possibility of frost is gone.

I hope this helps anyone else interested in growing Marlierea, for landscaping, fantastic, for edibility, not very good. Other not so good edible plants that will soon be gone from my yard, Suriname cherry.

Marlierea

Fruit

 

Rotting fruit

Peeling Bark

Fruit with seeds

Mango trees in bloom everywhere

This has been a strange year.

First, the rain stopped begginning October, but the heat persisted well into almost early December, then the bottom dropped out and we had the earliest freeze on record here in Palm Beach county, on December 8th.


We also have a record-breaking drought situation. I first noticed mango trees blooming around mid December and thought, wow this must be some new variety that blooms in December, but then shortly afterwards, I noticed my own mango trees pushing out new growth and then not only new growth but flowering racemes.

Now, I have four mango trees in full bloom. Three of them are "dwarf" or "condo" mangos. The forth is a Valencia Pride. Here are some pics of the dwarf varieties.

Lancetilla mango

Fairchild mango, only 4.5 feet tall

Baby mallika mango, only 4 feet tall already blooming!

They normally only start blooming around March / April, some even later.

Aloe Thraskii not only recovers but blooms

First the Aloe thraskii succumbed to  crown rot which I suspect was caused by the venerable aloe mite. I pulled out the rotten crown and expected the plant to rot and die (one of my Aloe marlothi's had snout weevil maggots eat it from the inside and rotted and then died). A few weeks afterwards, once the dry season started and it dried out, it started pushing out new growth.

I had to baby this Aloe thraskii through two freezes by covering it with towels, but it was well worth it.

This is the first time I have seen a thraskii in bloom myself, to boot in my own garden ! And is it beautiful. I walk past it every day and admire it. The bees love it and are constantly buzzing around it. Wish a hummingbird would discover it and grace me with its presence. Not that I've ever seen hummingbirds here.

It is already forming seed pods. I will trade seeds with other exotic fruit/plant enthusiasts.

Akoe thraskii raceme

Aloe thraskii seedpods

Unidentified seed-grown aloe blooming for the first time

Slowly but surely recovering from the freezes

The first freeze in early December was bad enough, but the 2nd freeze sealed the fate of my bananas, pineapples, papayas.

The bananas were almost completely wiped out, I see a few are sprouting again. The sapodilla tree termianted the forming fruits, the papaya directly in the path of the cold wind lost all its leaves. Even our native cocoplum and seagrapes were severely burnt and I will have to do a deep prune to remove the dead wood. Even a grumichama directly in the path was also burnt - and they are quite cold-hardy. The carissa has lots of dead growing tips, but is sprouting new growth.

Burnt cocoplum and seagrape

For a while I thought that I would not see one coffee bean from my catura coffee plants, but this week some of the burnt brown berries seem to be changing color to pink, some almost red, so I might still be able to harvest enough to make a small batch of my own coffee - how cool is that !

Its amazing how the weather can fluctuate here, this week we're having 80+ F temperatures again, with humidity and all.

Some of the cold loving veggies are not loving the warmer weather.

Frozen bananas