Da Trees! Da Trees!

Da Trees! Da Trees! was Originally Posted on September 27, 2011 by lavarock

I’ve been asked to post the list of trees I have planted. That is somewhat easy, however here is the list I started with:

Jobatacaba

Atemoya

Rollina

Breadfruit

Kumquat

Rangpur Lime

Tree Tomato

Valencia Orange

Washington Navel

Star Ruby Grapefruit

Meyer Lemon

Tahitian Lime

Kaffir Lime

Pummelo

Clementine

Dancy Tangerine

White Sapote

Longan

Mamey Sapote

Miracle Fruit

Mountain Apple

Mango

Sapodilla

Soupsop

Starfruit

Fig – White Kadota

Acerola

Cinnamon

Clove

Pepper

Cacau

Oro Blanco Grapefruit

Calamondin Lime

Abiu

Fig – Brown Turkey

Allspice

Clove

Nutmeg

Curry

Mango – Keitt

Turmeric

Mango – Brooks Late

Coconut Palm

Thai eggplant

Plumeria

Paklan

Some of the items were not in stock and some did not make it. The day after I planted all of the trees, my irrigation pump broke. It took me a while to freconfigure things so that I could use county water pressure to temporarily irrigate.

I use a spreadsheet to map where the trees are. It also counts each tree and gives me a total in the column next to the name. I can’t easily copy that info and paste it here, so some of the above were not planted.

In all at the moment I have about 130 trees in the ground with 180 planned. There are not more than 10 of any variety and in some cases just 1 tree. Most of the trees are citrus, however as you see, I started planting some spices too. I did this because visitors cannot bring in nor take out fruit easily from Hawaii. We have strict agricultural controls and even with our best efforts things like the coqui frog and coffee cherry borer got in.

A few notes about the above list are that the cinnamon all but died but is coming back slowly. Also you may notice a couple of ornamentals thrown in for variety.

The cacau (think chocolate) died and may not come back. It needs lots of water, which it got little at first.

The fige (2 ea of each tree) are quite prolific, however the birds eat the fruit the day before I want to pick it. I may have to throw nts over the trees and they definately will have to be pruned constantly.

The acearola was one of the first fruits (lots of vitamin C), however I have yet t osee a second fruiting yet. I have recently seen flowing though.

I also have seen 2 fruitings of Miracle Berry/Fruit which makes sour things taste sweet (for a while). It fools your tongue.

The Improved Meyer lemons afre producing and I have already made lemon bars from them and my friend used some on fish or in some dish. I have 10 lemon trees and that may be plenty. I have about 50 lemons at this point in various states of ripeness.

I have had some tangerines and the clemintines are doing well. I am seeing the grapefruit start to turn colors which is strange because they are the size of walnuts at this time.

The curry bushes are doing fine and so are the spices like allspice and nutmeg.

I have had 1 calamondin lime (I thought it was an orange or tangerine because it had turned orange). I hope for more soon because I need to test it in some gin and tonic water!

The mangos are doing OK, but will take years to produce. That is the same for many of the things I planted. These trees have only been in the ground less than a year so I was surprised to get anything yet!

As I tell people, I chose fruit and spices instead of another 1600 fruit trees because at the time I needed to quickly plant the rest of the property. We were beginning to see coffee insect damage across the region and the fruit trees were cheaper to plant and require less skilled labor to harvest. Coffee pickers here can make $100 to $200 a day if they are fast and efficient. You may have many pickers on your property for days at a time every month. Thus if I can pick fruit myself, I see an immediate cost savings.

Visitors to the island can take coffee and spices home, but as I say, the fruit is another issue.

The other issue with fruit vrs coffee is I would have had to plant 1600 coffee trees at $10 per tree including the cost of digging the hole, buying the tree and labor to put it in the ground. The fruit trees required a larger hole and more dirt per hole, but a couple friends helped me and we were done in like 2 days $16,000 for coffee vrs $6,000 for fruit. Hmmm, let me decide

As I say coffee is lots more labor intensive as you saw in a previous blog entry.

Because many of the citrus strees look similar, I decided to label the rows. The little plastic plant markers fall off the trees easily and I didn’t want to make wooden signs. I looked abound and fould some clear ziplock envelopes and will print the names of the trees on paper and put it inside. The bags will be attached to the trees with Velcro strips so that as the trunks fatten I can unzip and rezip the strip to make it fit.

So there you have it, a quick listing of fruits and spices already planted or in the ground.