Bamboo and Peach Palm harvest, by Cory

Today we harvested the first bunch of fruit from this peach palm [at the bottom of the blog on the right-hand side].

The only one with fruit at this time, it didn't get pollinated, so seedless fruit.

If they were pollinated the fruit would be larger and have a higher oil content.

 I was told that in Costa Rica most people prefer the seeded fruits.

The fruits with cracks in the skin like these are considered superior.

These did have good flavor, and texture like dry potato, but enough oil that some came out of the fruits while they were boiled.





Met. David is building a nursery project large enough to grow 12,000 cacao seedlings.

The price farmers get for cocoa beans has been high the past few years so many farmers are planting cacao trees in their gardens.

They place stakes at 3 meter spacing to calculate how many trees they have room for before getting trees from nurseries.

He needed bamboo poles for the shade structure so we agreed that he and his work crew could cut part of the bamboo clump in our back yard that is shading a few of our fruit trees.

One is a mandarin orange from South Haiti that we hope fruits soon.

This bamboo is from the government project near the mountain town of Marmelade and was planted about 2010 in a ravine to hold back the erosion.

We are still propagating this variety but there hasn't been much demand for bamboo plants.

Met. David wants a few plants now to put at 3 locations.

We ended up with 3 dozen poles and we had also harvested about a dozen during the past couple years.

We cut less than half the clump. It is amazing how productive bamboo can be.

Several species of bamboo from Marmelade, January '09