Finca is Spanish for farm. My fruit farm continues to grow each time I visit Puerto Rico. Most of my plants come from a local nursery or jardinera. It is adjacent to the owners home. I love that place and really wish I was fluent in Spanish so I could share more stories with the owners. I now have all the fruit trees they always stock. We have used Facebook local to acquire some plants. Once we made a trip to the west coast to visit a tropical fruit farm. And there is also the amazing orchid store owned by an Asian couple, introduced to us by Neftali. They just happened to have a Longan and Rambutan.
More recently I have just gotten lucky at Home Depot. Home Depot has a fairly small plant section with a small table of tropical trees. And on the random times I am in the store, I escape the boring aisles Santosh spends much time studying, and make a beeline to the plant section. More often than not I have been pleasantly surprised to find the exact tree I have been looking for!
So top of my list has been Custard Apple/ Cherimoya/ Sugar Apple/ Sweet Sop. And I found a decent specimen!
I also found a second Lychee variety named Mauritius Lychee. Previously I planted a Brewster Lychee. I decided to make two bets having a fruiting tree, so we have one on each side of the house. We created a shade for this tree also to protect the tender leaves.
I planted a Valencia orange tree. Fresh squeezed orange juice sounded good to me so I added it to the finca. I also added another papaya tree to the mix. So far there has been a lot of flowers but no fruit. I’m hoping I now have the right mix of male and female plants.
I thought we had identified all the trees on the property worth keeping. There was a tree in the far back corner, that I definitely thought was a “weed.” Santosh asked me to save it, just in case. Since it was in the far corner, I let it be. This trip I was clearing out the corner which still holds the flamboyant stump and related debris and I noticed the mystery tree had fruited! Now that I am familiar with Puerto Rican local fruit, I was able to identify these strange looking fruit as guanábana. Also known as soursop. In India, it is known as RamSita or Ramfal. Per Wikipedia, the fruit has a creamy texture, an aroma of pineapple, the a flavor of strawberries, apple, and sour citrus. Guanabana is a popular juice here. I think I need to eat more of this fruit before I can start to appreciate it. Because the inside is very similar to another fruit, I was disappointed on my first taste of the fruit.
I did not realize I had this tree, so I planted one two years ago. So now I have two. Fun.
In the two years of gardening on the island, I’ve learned a few lessons.
Don’t pay for what can be propagated. You can stick a cutting in the ground and it will take root. Especially in the shade and rainy season. (Like the croton above, which would have cost at least $3 in a nursery.) If I knew I would be here for a month, I would be a propagation queen.
The sun is really hot here. I thought the snake plant would be able to handle the afternoon sun in the front of the house, but they look really sad. So I moved them all to the shadier side yard.
All bromeliads are not sun worshipers either. They lose their color and shrivel up. I moved some of these around as well. Since I cannot control the sun or rain (and I am not here to augment the lack of rain), the only parameter I have is location.
Mint thrives anywhere, or so I thought. I planted mint next to a afternoon sun only, downspout hoping for a endless supply for mojitos. It’s been an uphill battle, so now they have a new, shadier location.
I am working on creating more shade. Which is rather odd, as in PA, shade is for people and boring ground cover.
The weed-whacker is a plant’s the worst enemy. It has no respect when it goes after straying grass and weeds. I use short PVC pipes to mark and protect my plants from the well meaning whackman. That works on my tiny papaya, but not on this prickly century plant.
Orchids take patience. Our very first pair are flowering annually but I’m not investing any more money on them till the next eight orchids I purchased bloom.
While it seems to rain all the time, most times it is short. I don’t think the plants get a really good watering. But they seem to survive and thrive.
When a plant is happy it takes off like its on steroids! A neighbor gave me two gandule seedlings to plant. Also known as pigeon peas, it is a local staple. I planted them in the sunny backyard. They grew into 8 foot bushes with a base of 6 inches in diameter. And when the bean pods dried, they looked awful. I got rid of those plants. You have to eliminate the plants that are not quite what you expected, ruthlessly. This applies to all gardens. I am also a ruthless pruner!
Here is another plant that has exploded in size – lemon grass. Enough to make a lot of Thai soups and curries. I’m letting him go for now, as he is not in the way and looks interesting.
One challenge is the leaves of the fruit trees are prone to sooty mold. I keep spraying them but have not figured out how to eliminate this problem.
My papayas are not fruiting despite looking healthy and flowering. I think I have the right combination of males and females now, let’s see what happens.
I found these half planters last Nov, and stored them away till I had the opportunity to create a vertical garden. We have a blue wall that is connected to the house and is a backyard privacy screen. Santosh helped me tape and hang the planters. Initially I had a more symmetric pattern but he suggested this one which turned out even better.
These plants remind me of portulaca – I believe they are of the same purslanes family. They are succulent, so I hope they will be hardy and survive when there is no one watering them. I purchased bright pink, white and a lovely variegation of both shades. I threw in a wild version that was growing at the beach. I said to Santosh “I may be introducing something invasive into my garden.” To which he responded, “Not really, I see them everywhere.” Mmmm, not sure if he was paying attention to me or not.
This new addition added more charm and interest to the ever evolving side garden.
Gardeners love the thrill of walking through their garden and spotting a new bud or shoot. When you have not seen your garden up close in four months, you are a bit anxious. Some plants totally disappear and others take over. Some look healthy and others look dry and parched. This trip was no different. We went out for dinner before coming home from the airport, so it was dark. But nonetheless, I grabbed by phone flashlight and walked around. I made two discoveries. First, I’ve been planting pineapple tops for the last two years. Interesting foliage, but nothing else to see, until today. Does that not look like the beginning of a beautiful pineapple?
Second, there were figs. And one perfectly ripe one. Santosh and I enjoyed that it immediately. Sweet and Juicy!
The next morning, I rose early for a closer inspection and I found a lot more activity. My very first bunch of plantains! This tree is so tall, about 12 feet.
The bottle brush tree bloomed for the first time. The birds are loving this tree.
The cashew nut tree is full of blooms. It will look spectacular when it is covered with yellow and orange fruit.
The longan tree we planted last year has large flower clusters.
Supriya’s orchid in the atrium looks spectacular. Nine blooms.
The cacti bush is full of blooms. Maybe a fruit this time?
Luscious mangos on the tree. The birds are enjoying them.
I was hoping I would find some moringa. Fresh curry leaves, coconut and moringa drumsticks, so yummy!
Bunches of rose apples hiding in the tree.
Acerola fruit we have already enjoyed in a pitcher of mojitos we drank with the neighbors on Saturday night.
Passion fruit and some lovely flowers on the fence!
A pomegranate, so perfectly beautiful!
We love to walk our little gated neighborhood early in the morning. Every garden is different, some are very minimal while others are quite ornate. We are fascinated by the varieties of orchids perched on tree trunks billowing in the wind. I love the varieties of bromeliads, all sizes and colors. We greet our neighbors, hoping they speak some English. The most common Puerto Rican greeting is “Buen dia” which is a shortening of “Buenos dias.” Sometimes it is super shortened to “Bueno!”
On one of these walks, we stopped to admire the garden of neighbor. Their dog started barking and the lady came out to see what was going on. We complimented her on the garden. She said it belonged to her husband. We continued on our walk. We were a couple of streets away, when someone motioned us from an approaching car. It was the lady we had just met. Her husband wanted to show us the garden! We got in the car and went back to her house.
Luckily, he spoke more English than she did. We toured the garden and were gifted with a dozen plants to take back home. What a lovely couple. A week or so later, we dropped of a box of fruit from our garden.
We made another gardening friend on the other side of the neighborhood. I decided bromeliads were the way to go for the front yard. They are hardy and low maintenance. I bought some smaller ones. The larger ones were quite expensive, so I held off. I noticed a garden with a lot of bromeliads. They really looked like they needed dividing. I decided to knock on the door and ask for some that were growing behind a tree. Here again the husband was the gardener. He was beyond generous. See my haul in the first picture! I was overjoyed.
No one likes to ask for things. But when you realize that there is nothing to lose, it becomes easier. What have you asked for recently?
In Zambia, our family friends, the David’s, had a large lychee tree in their yard. It produced big bunches of beautiful red and juicy lychees. Over the years, we have eaten syrupy lychees in cans from Asian stores and small amounts (due to the exorbitant their cost) from the Indian store.
When I was planning what to plant in my tropical garden in Feb 2019, I exchanged some emails with Sadhu of Govardhan Gardens. He saw my wish list and gave me some sage advice – test your soil and measure your precipitation to know what will thrive in your garden. I have not yet done that. The cost of experimenting has not been high.
He said, “Almost all Lychee cultivars are subtropical and therefore don’t produce well/reliably inPR. There are a few exceptions (of truly tropical cultivars) but they are not easy to find here.
He added, “…what’s growing there is just an indicator of what can possibly grow but doesn’t mean a lot yet re. what can actually produce fruit (and at what quantity). In other words, growing and fruiting are not synonymous.”
More sage advice but I am a believer in miracles and outliers. If I find a healthy plant in a nursery at a reasonable price, I am going plant it. And if I find the plant at Home Depot, it must be something I can plant with a reasonable expectation of success, right?
Lychees are not common in Puerto Rico. In June 2019 I found a small specimen. I planted it or the narrow side of the house. I learned the tender leaves of the lychee tree need to be protected from the wind, but I was not sure how to do this. This tree did not survive.
As an aside, note that cute plant tag. I quickly learn that the hot sun and frequent rain destroys the tags. Weeds are quick to overgrow small plants, and humans with weed-whackers can lop off the top of my prized plants.
In November 2020, we made a quick stop to Home Depot to return products we had ordered online earlier in the year during COVID-19 restrictions. I usually check the nursery section just in case there is something exciting. To my delight I found a healthy Brewster Lychee.
I learn that Brewster is the most popular commercial variety planted in Florida. It has a good taste, but a large seed. It will produce a good crop two out of three years.
I planted it on the hillside of the house and my husband built an amazing cabana for it. This plant will grow. But as Sadhu said, it might not fruit. Let us wait and see.
Leave them in a tropical island and see what happens, of course!
In January, just before we left the island, my friend Beuhla and I sowed some red chilie seeds (from the dried red chilies she had brought with her for cooking) right next to the curry leaf plants. Chilies are one of those must-have ingredients in Indian cooking. I always have curry leaves and green chilies in my freezer. In March, these little plants were doing quite well. However, the iguanas discovered and devoured all their tender leaves. I did not have much hope. In November, I found that some of the chilie plants survived the iguana banquet. Surprised, I learned that the chilie plant is not an annual and can grow for many years. I weeded the bed and staked the plants. I am now hopeful for fresh, spicy chilies whenever I need them.
People love tropical islands. Turns out that there are many reptiles that love them too. Our yard was overgrown and iguana’s loved living in the hill. If it was not for the neighborhood cats, we would be overrun with iguanas.
Iguanas as herbivores. First I noticed they loved the tender leaves on the noni trees. I soon decided to cut those trees down as they looked sad and mangled. Next the iguana’s went after the passionfruit vines. I added some barbed wire to the area, which I think mostly hurt me. Luckily the passionfruit got bigger and tougher, and the iguana left them alone. Finally I planted some hot chilies in the garden. I could not believe it when I saw the leaves of those plants chomped.
The iguana’s mostly hide out in their burrows. But they like to come out strutting in the afternoon sun. And they scurry away when anyone approaches them.
We had an unfortunate incident when one got lost and found its way into out kitchen. Reena was in the living room painting a mural. All of a sudden, she sees an iguana coming at her. I was on a Zoom call. She screams “There’s an iguana in the house!” Luckily, it turns around and runs outside, and scurries up the hill! Poor child almost had a heart attack!
