Lancetilla Mangos - not the best,but delicious

I had to pick the Lancetilla Mango's - the raccoons started testing them for ripeness by clawing them !

I thought I was going to loose the two biggest ones, but luckily they were green enough to only ooze resin from the wounds and ripen perfectly.

They were huge, in the picture, from left to right: store bought mango, big mango from neighbour's tree and two huge lancetilla mango's on the right. They were so big, I had difficulty holding them in order to cut them. One mango was enough to feed four of us and have some to spare.

The flavour is sweet but every now and then you get a strange spicy bite, maybe not completely ripe in spots or skin not peeled deep enough. Its not really distracting, just something to get used to. I am sure if I could let them mature further on the tree that they probably would have tasted even better.

It is still a winner due to its compact growing size, perfect for even the smallest backyard, plus it shows no signs of any disease, I wish the same could be said for my 3 year old Valencia Pride mango, it set 8 mango's, there are only 3 left, the others have rotten due to anthracnose, a fungal disease that causes black spots to appear on the fruit and then rot sets in.

Chinch bugs

As if the brutal dry season wasn't enough - large patches of my lawn simply died and I was unable to revive it, now the remaining good areas are being killed off by southern chinch bugs !

In the picture you can see the lighter almost yellow colour of the infected area with the dead patches in between.

I despise chemical insecticides - and yes I do occasionally spot treat some of my treasured plants. I've used bifinthrin in the past, but to avoid the Sri Lanka weevils building up resistance to it, I recently switched to sevin. Some of the feijoa's have been attacked so relentlessly by the weevils that I had to start spraying them for fear of the plants dying. My treasured sugar apple has been overcome by three different kinds of scale and I sprayed it with a neem oil/pyrethrin mixture.

I do not want to spray these chemicals on my lawn where my children run barefoot, but I'm at wits end and fear I'll have to spend considerable time and money to restore the remaining lawn to an acceptable state.

Finally - a vegetable that will grow in this heat and humdity

I planted some red cow peas a month or so ago and didn't expect much. Boy did they take off !

We tried to saute some - like we do with green beans. Most of them, even the smaller sized ones were very tough to the point where chewing and swallowing became almost impossible.

This weekend I harvested a heap of peas and while watching TV shelled them. Now I have to figure our what to do with them- I have about 1.5 cups of shelled peas so far.

Growing Myrciara vexator gives new meaning to the word patience

I've been patient with seeds before, but growing blue grape (Myrciara vexator) has pushed my patience to the limit.

I got 2 seeds early January, it has taken till now for one of the seeds to germinate. I placed it under my egg plant bushes and almost forgot about it. When I looked this week I saw a small leaf coming out ! The other seed germinated about 2 months ago and is now about 4 inches tall (2nd picture).

Seminole pumpkins - Our new favourite squash/pumpkin

The Seminole pumpkin seeds I planted earlier, has taken off like rockets. This weekend, I harvested two large ones, they look like green butternuts, a little fatter, but the flesh is paler almost cream coloured.

I decided to treat my wife to a soup - I normally use butternut but decided to give this a try.

I hit a home-run, I can say that this is my wife's new favourite soup. The soup came out thicker than my butternut soup, but much more flavourful.

The vines seem undeterred by the daily rain and high humidity. The only problem I can see so far are the moth caterpillars devouring the leaves, but the vines grow fast enough to replenish, so I haven't resorted to spraying yet.

This will become part of our staple diet.

The dog days of summer

Its that time of year where you get so busy with the routine tasks and trying to survive the intense heat and humidity, that you end up forgetting about everything else.

With our record high temperatures and fantastic daily downpours, I've been spending every spare moment away from work and family just trying to stay ahead of the weeds ! Yes, the picture is not a patch of weed invaded grass, but a huge patch of sweet potato vine patch invested with weeds. I haven't been able to salvage the situation and had to resort in spraying the whole are with weed killer.

Let me tell you its NOT pleasant working outside when its 99 F (37 C) with 80% humidity, yes last Sunday and Monday we broke all previous records, the heat index was 116 F (46 C) !

In Vero Beach a little north from here, they recorded 102 F also an all-time record.

Don't get me wrong, Ive been patiently waiting for the wet season and now that its here at last, its unbelievable how everything has taken off (including the venerable weeds). Last weekend I spent 2 hours spraying the weeds with glyphosphate, unfortunately being the budget gardener, I bought the cheapest brand and that means to be most effective you need to have a day of no rain. The day started out bright and sunny with no indication of rain. I finished spraying at 8AM, then out of nowhere we got a thunderstorm at 10AM and I'm sure it washed off most of the weed killer. Its been raining incessantly since then, so I guess I'm going to have to wait and see if the weeds are killed or not. At least the brand I bought was much cheaper, it makes up to 21 gallons and only cost $14. The other brand I normally buy starts at $19 and only makes 10 gallons at the strength required to kill the weeds on steroids (it is rain-fast in 20 minutes though).

My latest pet project

I've been searching for a sub-tropical nut tree that doesn't grow too big, so far, I haven't found any, the tropical almond grows into a very large tree. I've read that Walnuts do well and there are reportedly very large well bearing trees even as far South as Miami, but they grow into huge monsters.

After reading and researching, I found that the money tree we all know, they are typically sold braided as pictured, also known as Pachira Aquatica, but almost always named wrongly as they are almost always Pachira Glabra instead - Pachira Glabra or the french peanut is a small tropical tree that bears big fruits with seeds inside that when roasted taste like peanuts. Pachira glabra has a caudiciform trunk even in young trees and the small veins on the leaves run almost perpendicular to the main vein.

I've been searching for seeds to buy, but all the suppliers are either outside the US, or out of stock.

I know its tropical, but I found it at Home Depot under $10, so if it dies next winter it isn't too big a loss, if it makes it, it will be a very interesting / attractive addition to my collection of rare fruits.