The good life
If you’re looking for tips on what I call pretty gardening, which is essentially flowers and shrubs, I’m not your guy; with the exception of croton; my position is I don’t grow what I can’t eat.
Now that we have the criteria clear, let me give you some brief time-tested advice regarding fruit trees in Cayman.
First of all, it’s generally easy unless you get into the more exotic species (you’ll have to check Joel Walton for that), but there are a couple of critical factors: one is yard space, which determines the type of trees you will have space for. An ackee tree, for example, or guinep, and even some mango varieties, can become monsters if they happen to be in an area where their roots can find deep soil.
In other words, if you have limited yard space those big guys are out for you; go for a carambola (lots of fruit and great juice) or guava – they don’t grow very big, and the branches are slender.
Remember also that, small yard or big, this is a hurricane belt and you shouldn’t place substantial trees close to your house. A falling coconut tree, for instance, can practically cut your house in half if it’s in the way.
It’s only when you have to cut up a coconut tree, as in after Ivan, that you find out that those lovely graceful trees weigh tons.
A lot of the work with fruit trees is in that first year or so when the plants are young, and when you have to water them every couple of days and fertilize them once a month.
Once they’re going (as we say in the Caribbean, once dey ketch), apart from clearing away grass or weeds growing around them, most of these trees (carambola; naseberry; soursop; guinep; breadfruit; ackee; starapple; June plum) are quite happy if you leave them alone.
One important exemption to that is the mango tree, which you need to prune every year or so after it matures; no kidding, that’s quite a job. For each tree, figure about six hours of work, with some climbing involved, and clearing up what you’ve cut down can be another big job.
Couple of red flags: Ackee is a beautiful tree and bears copiously with zero attention (I pay for most of my fertilizer from ackee fruit sales), but the parrots love it more than Jamaicans do, and they will either cut down the whole fruit, literally, in the hundreds, or eat the fruit and leave you the empty shell.
Parrots seem to think God made ackee for them; I’ve been up in the tree, picking fruit, and have the parrots fly in, 10 feet from me, screaming parrot cusswords.
Similarly, June plum, is a parrot magnet.
I recall one morning being convinced a tropical storm had passed in the night – there were well over 100 young ackees on the ground under the tree – until I looked up and saw Mister Parrot in the act of cutting down yet one more. You know, of course, that you can’t shoot these creatures, but at times like that you would if you could.
One thing you have to watch for is the salt spray that is uplifted here during hurricanes and deposited all over the island. You can’t see it, but it’s there, and it can maim or even kill very young plants.
The key is to be sure, as soon as the storm passes, to hose down the young plants with fresh water. In Ivan, the heavy rains that followed that storm cleaned the plants pretty well and there was little salt spray damage.
In Dean, because there was very little rain, many of the young plants were damaged (you could see the withered leaves on the grown trees as well). However, it took a few days for the withering to show up, and by then the damage was already done. The key is, after the next hurricane, if there’s little rain, hose down your young plants with fresh water.
Overall, the fruit tree rewards are great. With a few exceptions (pomegranate; dunks) the trees are lush and beautiful, and the fruits you buy in the store won’t hold a candle to what your yard will produce.
You’ll enjoy fresh fruit, homemade fruit juice, all free, and you can obviously choose plants that grow what you like to eat. With the right varieties, for instance, you can be eating delicious home grown mangoes in Cayman from May to October – now, that’s the good life.
Also, a single ackee tree will actually produce several wheelbarrows of fruit in a good season with no help whatsoever from you; just brace yourself for the parrot cussing
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