New Peach Palm Garden.

Costa Rica

Peach palms were a staple food of Native Americans.

They remain popular in some countries of Central and South America.

I, Cory, enjoyed them in Brazil in the early 90's.

After trying many seed suppliers without good results, I finally went to Costa Rica Spring of 2014 to get good seed.

Costa Rica fruit market

Close to 700 seeds grew to a good size in the nursery and a few hundred wait to be planted.

The new garden had been growing mostly sugar cane and rice.

The owner does not live nearby and sharecrops with some local farmers.

With the purchase just finalized last week,  the local farmer was still in the process of hoeing and planting.

 Rice and corn are just coming up.

3 truck trips to bring 170 peach palms

8 wheelbaro loads the first day, 2 on the 2nd day.

 Rice will do well if wet weather dominates, corn if the area remains dry.

The local farmer will continue care for this year's crops and harvest them.

The damage we did to his crops planing the trees will be compensated with part of our percentage of the harvest.

 He already asked about continuing to work the land next year.

This will be decided at a later time.

Annual crops will continue to be practical for at least two years.

Some of the palms may start fruiting in three.

 The land is medium fertility and part can flood, but peach palms do well on wet land.

The poor drainage area would be a problem for most other crops, but peach palm and acai palm should do great!

 A few rambutan and other fruits will be planted for trial in the higher part of the garden.

Four people planting on 2nd day, should be done the 3rd day

The best tasting and best producing peach palms will be left to cross pollinate and provide good quality seeds for nursery production and establishing the crop in our area.


The amount of food produced per acre by peach palm tends to be better than corn, where hybrid seed and fertilizer are not available (as is the case here).

The fruit are also more nutritious than corn, with good amounts of protein, oil, starch, and vitamins.

We are praying for a rain soon to soak them in, it will be hard work watering them from the river if it gets dry, a 10-15 minute walk each way.

Some of the nearby farmers are counting on regular rain as they are planting upland rice on hillsides.

Costa Rica East Coast

Black sand beach, Puerto Viejo

Commercial banana plantation

Saw semi-trailers full of pineapple. Dole refrigerated containers

Jungle at the Finca la Isla botanical garden

Poison dart frog, saw several red ones.

Huge tree fern from the Pacific.

Araza, a sour fruit good for juice.

"Old man palm" must grow "hair" constantly to keep looking so fresh in humid rainforest.

Actually near San Jose


This will probably be the last post for several days as Kris does final studying for boards.

Will try to post from the Dominican Republic. Will travel on Monday, looks like a 9 hour trip to Santa Domingo. Thank you for the prayers. Happy Easter.

More photos from CATIE

CATIE Tropical Agriculture Experimental and Teaching Center. Click image for larger size.

Turrialba volcano letting off some steam

Black Sapote/Chocolate pudding fruit - a sweet tropical persimmon.

Huge bamboo

Pride of India bloom

Peach Palm with bird nests

Cooked Peach palm at fruit stand near East Coast.

Will be heading to the Dominican Republic the day after Easter. Looking for more plants, fruits, some family time and Kris will take her Family Practice recertification exam on Wed. April 23.

Last Day in Costa Rica

Short update from Cory today. Tomorrow they should be leaving Costa Rica shortly after 8 a.m. With almost a 2 hour layover in Panama they should be getting into Port about 3:40 [Lord willing]

Cory will pick up the truck and they will drive to Tom's where Cory plans to overnight.

Tuesday morning Cory plans to meet up with a group that wanted to visit our place on their way to Cap Haitian. Will plan on serving them lunch on Tuesday.

Looking forward to Cory's return as I push during my last 2 weeks of study.

Eli and Anna took great care of me during Cory's absence.

Thanks for the prayers.

Back at the hotel. Great drive again, about 4 hours plus some stops, beautiful country. 

Got some more fruit at a huge fruit stand that tourist busses were stopping at. Will try to get Tom's photos onto my computer. Need to finish cleaning seeds first.

Miss you all. Wish you could all help us eat rambutan. Right up there with mango as a delicious, sweet fruit. 

Also glad I planted a sapote in our front yard. Very sweet like canistel, similar flavor but different and very good, not pasty, more like sapodilla.(laGonave front yard).

Cory

Saturday in Costa Rica

Another great day in Costa Rica. Roads very good, 3+ hour drive to Puerto Viejo, south of Limon, on the coast. Really an isolated but tourist place.

The mountains were beautiful, then came to the plains and banana plantations. Bought one more bunch of red peach palm fruit. The big bunches have a few hundred fruits/seeds.

They sell for $1-$4 per 2.2 pounds, depending on quality and the price is less when buying a whole bunch. A 22 pound bunch and the red one at about 15 pounds were about $10 each. It has been interesting to see how the palm does in a lot of climate zones. Seems to do well wherever coconut does, except that it isn't on the beach.

Just before Puerto Viejo we saw a rambutan fruit stand in a yard and bought about 7 pounds for just under $6. Sure is better than Spanish lime, very much like a big sweet lychee. Wish we had more time to feast on all the fruit.

Toured Finca la Isla botanical gardens in the afternoon. Lots of bromeliads, poison dart frogs, fruit trees, ornamentals and jungle. Tried some more new fruits for the first time: Araza (sour, good for juice), langsat (another lychee-like fruit), and champedek (very sweet, soft, and fruity, similar flavor to Juicy Fruit gum/jackfruit). It was good to see what many of the young fruit trees we are growing will look like when mature.

Finca-la-Islas-Botanical-Garden

The hotel is nice, Tom is sharing rambutan, avocado and some other fruits to others with a request to return the seeds. We offered the 10 or 15 pounds of peach palm to the owners but they didn't think they would cook well split and without the seeds.

We checked some of the souvenir merchants and finally splurged a bit on a very tasty, spicy supper.

We haven't spent much at restaurants with all the fruits, avocados, peach palm (like potato) and local cheese.

Tomorrow we head back to San Jose.

Cory

Tom posted some pictures on Facebook which I then shared on my page so you can see too if you're my friend.

The kid's and I spent the morning each studying, the kids did some cleaning this afternoon and then had free time while I studied some more..

Friday in Costa Rica

Hi,

The weather is great here. Breezy, often overcast, and at 2,000 feet is cooler than what we are used to in Haiti.

Saw smoke and steam at the top of the Turrialba volcano this morning. Most of the time the volcano is covered by clouds.

Bought a few sweet rolls from a vendor, shopped briefly at the CATIE visitor center to get chance in local currency and then went to the town farmer's market. Very clean, well presented produce.

Bought several pounds of peach palm and a 22 pound bunch of yellow peach palm. They have huge peach palm here compared to Santarem, Brazil when I lived there. Some of the fruit are medium apple size.

We also bought mango, guava, nance, tomarillo? avocado (zucchini shape with small seed and very good flavor) and local cheese.

After a brunch feast of fruits and cheese we headed to the botanical gardens until mid afternoon.

We went back into town after some much needed rain fell and found a small restaurant, good supper for just under $5.

Also went to the peach palm vendor to get the seed he prepared for us.

Tomorrow we plan to head to a botanical garden on the Caribbean coast.

Cory

Cory's Second Day Report

Cloudy day for our studies today but a bit over an hour of government power. Thankful that Cory can E-mail us with updates and advice about the electric!

Tour went well today, saw a lot of peach palms, thornless ones with good fruit. Don't have a lot of seed yet but we were introduced to a merchant who sells in Turrialba, has very good fruit and has a nursery so has seeds, will see him tonight, we are planning to eat out with a few Haitian students. 

One we met this morning is Wesleyan, Cite Chovel in Cap, working for Haitian Govt. 11 Haitian students total. Will offer them the peach palm fruit after we remove the seeds.

Worst drought here that people remember. A nany from Germany helped translate for Carlos, we toured the peach palms for a couple hours, learned about the best varieties and different types, including spineless. 

This afternoon I walked through more of the peach palm collections. Lots of variation in tree type, spinyness and fruit size. 

Saw one big snake (about 5') was keeping an eye out for them, with the drought and fairly recent mowing the grass of the collection fields wasn't bad to walk around in.

Took a short walk in the botanical gardens, lots of interesting plants and fruits and flowers there. 

Lots of big black sapote trees here, looks like the fruiting season lasts several months at least.

Cory

Cory's First Day in Costa Rica

Hotel grounds were interesting, lots of fruits. Breakfast of eggs, watermellon, mango, green mango (not so good) pineapple, corosol juice, half ripe cooked plantain with syrup and cinnamon, could have also had rice and beans and toast, cereal.

 Car rental picked us up about 9am. Changed money at a bank, filled up with gas, traffica a mix between American and Haitian driving, great roads, stopped at a fruit stand, bought avocado that look like zucchini and some kind of passionfruit that I don't recognize but is eaten plain instead of juiced.

 At the top of the mountain above Turrialba stopped at a peach palm stand, bought ripe and raw fruit.  Expensive but they were big nice fruit, most were the preferred type with cracks in the skin.

Still dry, lots of brown lawns, looks like they had drought like we did this year. CATIE is impressive. Found Carlos and we will tour the peach palm collections tomorrow at 9:30. We drove by them and they are about at their peak right now, some spineless trees were also loaded with great looking fruit. 

They had a table with many exotic fruits, looks like a good amount are ripening now, tasted black sapote, about like mine.

People are very friendly and helpful, a few speak English. We had left a kilo of peach palm on the stand at the top of the mountain and were driving off and heard a whistle so stopped, the motorbiker that had been buying peach palm and translating for us with the vendor ran to us and gave us the bag.

Will take a while to explore CATIE let alone all the farmer's markets. Don't know if we will have time to visit a mountain park or other tourist site. It is fairly easy to get around with the GPS.


There are whole mountainsides covered with shade cloth held up with poles for what appears to be small ferns for floral arrangements. Maybe they supply the world.
Interesting country.


Cory