A while back we bought some habanero peppers at our local produce stand to make more habanero salts. The peppers were so big and healthy that we decided to save some of the seeds to see if they would grow. Boy did they grow! They’re the healthiest looking pepper plants we’ve ever seen. After we got back from the States we finally had a chance to get them into the ground. Kelley planted 24 habanero plants, 5 poblano pepper plants and some more kale. While she was doing that I got some yellow squash, butternut squash and some giant pumpkin seeds in the ground. We haven’t tried growing pumpkins here yet, but hopefully, if they do grow we might have a jack-o-lantern come Halloween and some fresh pumpkin pie come Thanksgiving. And of course, we will roast up and salt the seeds if we get any pumpkins. Since we’ve put the seeds in, we’ve had some rain and within a week everything has sprouted, so it’s looking good.
Earlier this year, all 15 of our coffee plants were totally white with blossoms, and it looks like most of them took. The plants right now are all overloaded with coffee and are starting to fall over. Usually we can tie our plants and trees up with wood stakes, but these are so heavy that we had to pick up some 1/2″ rebar to support them. This is by far the most coffee these plants have ever produced and I assume that it will keep getting better each year. Is anyone interested in coming down for a visit in a couple months and picking some fresh coffee?
There are still a few pineapples left on the plants, but for the most part they are done for the year. Which is great timing, because our dragon fruit is just starting to ripen. The other day I counted at least 70 fruits on the plants with more popping out every few days. This year they are mostly the purple ones, but we are also seeing quite a few of the white ones. Looks like we’ll be enjoying dragon fruit for the next few months.
Ruben has just started picking tomatoes down on our farm lot. He’s got at least a couple thousand producing plants currently loaded with Roma tomatoes. To keep on top of things, he also just put in another two thousand more tomato plants that should be producing in a couple of months. Plus he has another rotation of seedlings just started that will go in after the current crop is done. He said that we should have fresh tomatoes for the rest of the year, and we’re fine with that. I also ordered a bunch of green chile seeds, so hopefully he will get a few big rows of chiles planted. Green “Hatch” type chiles are very hard to find here, so we’re looking forward to having some fresh ones to roast.
Recently our black pepper plants produced enough peppercorns to fill up a couple grinders. That was great, but it’s not enough to last us throughout the year until the plants produce again. So we did a bunch of trimming on the existing plants to propagate new cuttings. We’ve done this before and it’s worked out pretty well. Our goal is to produce enough black pepper to last us throughout the year. We use a lot of black pepper in our meat making as well as just about in every meal.
At this point we have decided that the newly cleared area behind the back patio will have a small pathway lined with tropical plants and a bunch more cacao trees. So we have been trimming and potting a lot of our current plants to have ready once we get started on that project. One of my favorite plants here is the pheasant tail. They get big, are very tropical looking and grow well from the seeds they produce. I think Kelley has at least 300 seeds planted in trays that will go in the ground once they get bigger.
Another plant that we started out with three or four is the zebra plant. Pretty much all you have to do is take a cutting and stick it in a pot or the ground and it grows. Currently, we have these lining some of our pathways around the yard, so they will carry over to the new area just fine.
Then there’s the dieffenbachias, when it gets too tall and falls over (which it does), all you do is cut the stock in three inch pieces, stick it in the ground and you have a new plant in no time. With all the other plant trimmings, we figure that after the first of the year, we should have enough to get started on this new area.
Recently we had Ruben’s son (Kevin) come down to re-chop and help clear up the area behind the patio. There were a couple more cohune palms that we wanted taken out before they got too big. One of the palms was big enough that he was able to save the heart out of it. He took most of the heart home to his grandmother, because she loves it and rarely gets any. Kelley went out and scraped a bowl of it out of the stump and brought it for us to try. Raw, it was a little sweet yet tender and sort of crunchy. Then she also fried some up with butter, salt and pepper. Some people say it sort of tastes like an artichoke or white asparagus. Either way, the heart of palm from the cohune tree is considered a local delicacy here in Belize.
Kelley finally had some time to weed out her flower garden. Over the dry season it didn’t get much water and about the only thing that actually grew was the weeds. Anyway, now that the rains are here, she’s got it all cleaned out and put a ton of new flower seeds in. There were a few specific types that she wanted, but for the most part it was just a mix of all types of flowers.
A little over a year ago a friend gave us a miracle berry bush. This year it finally started to get some blossoms, and a few fruits are starting to appear. These are an interesting berry, because when they are consumed they alter your taste perception, making sour or bitter foods taste sweet. We invited Ruben down to try one of these sweet tasting berries. After eating one, we tasted a lime, some mustard and some vinegar. You should have seen the look on Ruben’s face, because everything tasted very sweet. The taste-altering effect can last for a short period, typically between a few minutes to an hour or two. If you are interested in more information on this berry, check out https://health.clevelandclinic.org/miracle-berries
Over the past few years our house has settled somewhat. For the most part we can’t really notice it with the exception of a few small cracks in the walls. The one really noticeable area was in the shower. The water did not completely drain towards the drain anymore and we have to squeegee it down before we get out of the shower. I ordered a couple of screw jacks to put under the house around the shower to help level it. Of course, by doing that a lot of grout in the shower cracked and had to be replaced. It’s a good thing we have the shower in the guest house that we could use for a few days.
It’s been a while since we’ve made some different types of candies with our homegrown chocolate. Kelley recently found a recipe for one of my childhood favorites, chocolate covered honeycomb. It’s an airy toffee that looks like a honeycomb, and when covered in chocolate is delicious. The stuff we made tasted just like I remembered from when I was young. When I was a kid, my dad would take us to MacFarlane’s Candy Company in Oakland, CA. It was a huge candy store where they made all their candy. There were more choices there than you could imagine, but I almost always went right for the chocolate covered honeycomb. How great it was to be a kid going to a big candy store like that, where everything was made in-house, sold by the pound and there was no commercial packaging.
After the past couple of weeks of bust’n our asses trimming, planting and chopping everything, we got word that our Amazon order had arrived. A few weeks back we made an order on Prime Day and had some things shipped down here. One of the great deals was a green neon sign that we thought would be just perfect on the back patio.
You guys are doing an amazing job there. Sorry we missedyou the last time you were here.
Scot n Vick.
I am so impressed with what you both have accomplished. These kinds of things are in my dreams of how I would want to be successful in growing my own food. As an avid gardener, I admire what you have done and am a teeny weeny bit jealous!! You guys are rocking it in the dirt.