Tour My Tropical Fruit Farm: 2 Years of Natural Farming for Exotic Harvests

Join me on today's farm tour. I'm going to be showing you all the rare fruits that I've been collecting over the years and just how much they've grown in the past two years. Edible flower ginger. A little sweet, a little tart, delicious. Behind me I got all the dirt and the mulch piled up. Having a nice big bed of mulch keeps the microbes happy. This is our Kerry mango tree, our favorite. This is our sapodilla tree, just starting to give some fruits. Here is our moringa oleifera tree and this is a peanut butter fruit tree. These are the first fruits that I've ever set and I'm going to be trying the first fruit now. The texture is just like peanut butter and the flavor I would say it's very similar to peanut butter. A little less nutty. Has just one seed and a little pseudo seed. This little seed won't sprout. That's peanut butter fruit. This here is our ruby supreme guava. It's my favorite guava variety and it produces so many fruits for eating them almost year round. This is a black sapote tree we planted just two years ago and it has turned into a huge tree and to our surprise it produced a whole bunch of fruits and we're going to be harvesting them in just the next few days. This is the first fruit set on our dwarf green Malayan coconuts. This tree behind me is known as rose apple or pomarosa. Now this tree has only been in the ground for about a year and a half not even two years and it's turned into a big old tree. Mind you when I planted it it only had a couple of leaves and maybe only about a foot and a half foot tall so this growth is just absurd and I'm hoping to get some fruit this spring. Hasn't fruited yet. Most of the trees on this farm they're just starting to fruit now. It seems like a long time but two years for a fruit tree is really a short amount of time. Most fruit trees take about five to ten years to really start production so this farm is still very young and has a long way to go before we reach peak production but the size you know they're really happy with all the mulch I've been putting. The soil microbiome here just is flourishing because I feed it a lot. I make sure the microbes are well fed and are thriving. You can see the trees are just loving it. So this tree behind me is known as green sapote. It's quite a rare sapote. It's similar to the mamey sapote however has a more of a green skin and it's not so sandy. Both Jessica and I agree that this is a superior sapote to the mamey sapote and we think more people should be growing it. It's only been in the ground for about a year and a half and it's already flowered. It hasn't fruited yet so I'm hoping this this season we'll be getting something out of it but it's looking happy. It's looking healthy and it's responding well to all the mulch and all the love we've been giving it. This here is one of the breadfruit trees. This is a ma'afala variety. We have quite a few breadfruits planted however on this on this farm none of them have fruited yet. However they have reached fruiting size so I'm expecting this spring or late summer of this coming season to get some fruit. Now these are looking really nice and healthy and of course right next to the breadfruit we have to have the ackee. So if you don't know what ackee is it's Jamaica's national dish. They have ackee and saltfish for breakfast lunch or dinner and it's an amazing fruit that is poisonous. You can only eat it when it's perfectly ripe. It opens up like a flower revealing the edible flesh. This fruit tastes something in between cheese and butter. It's very fatty, very savory. It's an amazing fruit. I personally love it. I eat it with the breadfruit and they go hand in hand and a little bit avocado or as Jamaicans say some pear. That's just the whole meal right there. And you know the farm needs some variegated Now even the variegated ones make that delicious fruit and it has the variegations on it so super cool. Matt from Uni Farms gave this to us and we're very grateful to him. It's a beautiful specimen. Here we have a java plum. This one's only been in the ground for about maybe I would say about a year and when we put it in the ground it was about as big as one of these branches. Just in one year we have basically a tree. This might take quite a few seasons to give fruit as it turns into a very large tree but maybe in the next two or three years we'll get something out of it. This is java plum which is in the syzygium family. This fruit helps a lot with the blood sugar regulation. It has a lot of anti-diabetic properties. I'm excited to eat this one. So behind me is strawberry tree or motingia. It produces these little delicious berries and it produces thousands of them at a time. Lots of coconuts starting up. Can never have enough coconuts. Here's another rose apple. This is bigger than the other one so you can imagine how much it grew in those two years. That there is a wax jambu. It's growing like crazy. Giant golden pothos completely taking over this royal palm. And next to it is a nice mature coconut tree. This is one of the tall varieties that makes really nice sprouts down here. This here is a red custard apple. San Pablo variety. This is what everybody loves. Anona reticulata. Bullock's heart. So this is one of the favorites red custard apples. I have a few of these planted and they're growing quite big. They're flowering now so I hope to get some amount of fruit off them. They fruit now in winter and the fruits are normally ready in February. So if we do get some fruits I'll make an update on that. This here is an otet apple. Another syzygium. It's one of the largest syzygiums. Then we have the Malay apple and the wax apple next door. I just finished planting these Hawaiian bananas or Hawaiian plantain also known as Hua Moa. And then here we have quite a long row of Cuban red bananas. I just harvested a ripe one. I'll show you later. And then here we have these bunches that are still swelling up. Nice massive flower on these. These flowers are also edible. Now these red bananas take twice as long as regular green bananas. But if you ask me it's worth the wait. There's a bunch that's getting near completion. It's kind of funny because they start off really dark maroon red. Then they go lightening up. And then right before they're ripe they'll actually turn like a light green color. And then as they ripen they turn back to a yellow and red color. So lots of colors on these. Very beautiful. And here we have these monsters. These weren't ripe yesterday. Seems like a rat started chewing on the top one. I'm gonna have to bring that one down. And I'm looking over here and this praying hand is also getting chewed up. So I need to bring these down as well. This entire patch started with just one praying hand that was gifted to me. And it has turned into a monster. This is probably like the seventh or eighth bunch we've already gotten. And like I said it's been less than two years since this has been in the ground off of one pup. Here we have a noni tree. It's gotten quite tall. You can see there's a ripe noni up there. I don't like the flavor of these but I do eat them for health benefits. Here we have two mature lychee trees side by side. These two haven't given fruit yet but I'm hoping this year is going to be a good year for the lychee trees. Here we have some monstera fruits. These probably won't be ready for another 10 to 12 months. They take quite a long time. Here we have an anona purpurea. This is a really rare anona. It's not commonly seen. I've actually never seen anybody fruit this tree here in Florida. Hopefully we'll be one of the first people to get a successful fruit set. But the leaves smell great and the fruit is supposed to be out of this world. Here we have another otetiapple. Much larger tree than the other one. This one's been in the ground two years. Started off as a real small thing and I'm hoping to get fruit from it this year. It's pushing 20 feet already and the leaves are real nice. So this is just like the rose apple. Just like the wax chambu. Here I have some taro planted. This is supposed to be a very good eating variety and behind it is galanga or galangal. This is in the ginger family. Produces a really tasty rhizome that has a lot of health benefits. Supposed to be one of the most important vegetable dishes in Thai cuisine. Really good flavor. It enhances curries like nothing else. Here's another one of the Bradford trees. This one just decided to plant itself here. Had it in a pot and it grew through and instead of killing it I'm just gonna let it let it grow here. I'm just gonna have to keep it small. And behind that we have a very old mature mango tree that came with the property. Must be at least 40-50 years old. That's of the Hayden variety. So it's a Hayden. It's one of my personal favorite varieties. It's very sweet, low on fiber and a heavy fruit set. Last year wasn't so good but the year prior we probably got a thousand fruits off that one tree. Next to it is another mature longan. Also came with the came with the property. It's in flower right now. Really tasty fruits. The birds love them. And then next to that is another Hayden mango tree. Also a heavy producer old tree. I mean let me show you the trunk on this thing. About 10 foot wide. From here to here is about 10 feet. I couldn't hug that trunk if I tried. Our property also has mature wild trees. For instance that's a wild tamarind. We have gumbo limbo. And a couple other native trees like white stopper. We tried to preserve some of the natural trees that were already here. And they produce a nice canopy for us to grow things underneath like our cacao tree over there. Here's one of the old avocado trees on the property. I'm not sure exactly which variety this is. I'm thinking it's a choquette. Maybe it's a choquette seedling. But we're very late into the season and it still has some fruit. So we're very late in the season and it still has some fruit. And they're super buttery like a choquette. So I would guess it's a choquette seedling. This season we probably got about a hundred fruits off of it and it still has. Here we have some Florida variegated bananas. They're not just beautiful they also produce a really tasty fruit that tastes like no other banana. I'm pulling pups off of these and I'm gonna have them available on the website soon. So this isn't a fruit but it's a very interesting plant. This is a south sea south sea salad tree or belly plant. Edible hibiscus. It's very high in protein. Actually two times the protein of spinach and really rich in nutrients altogether. So this is edible raw. It tastes real nice. Try to eat some of this every day. So this giant banana here is a variegated a variegated Thai namua. So it produces bananas with seeds and they're not really edible. This is just a beautiful showcase piece. Behind me I have a row of coconuts interplanted with galanga and it's one of the focal points in the backyard. I really like this space. All these coconuts are just starting to flower. Some of them have fruit set and it's super exciting to be able to harvest my own coconut soup. All right here we have some of the papayas. Now this is a red lady papaya. These are big large papayas and they're super sweet and we have some ready to pick. Now this is just a snippet of what we have on the farm. There's a lot more to show you. A big thank you for everybody who clicked on the video and stayed through to the end. If you want to keep seeing all the cool creative ideas we come up with here then subscribe and stay tuned so you can watch all the videos that we post in the next coming weeks. All right guys thanks so much!