Growing Our Own Fruits and Veggies in Panama - Wellness Wednesday by A Panama Mama

in homesteading •  7 years ago 

When we moved to Panama, we heard from friends that you can put a stick in the ground and it will sprout. We have actually witnessed this - fences made out of tree limbs will grow new trees, cut a stick off of a plant you like and watch it grow! The soil here is truly rich, dark and very fertile.

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If you look really close, you can see the baby potato growing right above the brown skin

I am very new to gardening. When we lived in Texas, we tried to plant some things, but it would get so hot during the summer, no one wanted to go out and tend them. The temperature here is very pleasant for gardening and the rainy season helps to establish the roots.
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Wild blackberries we picked

One thing we hope to do in the future is have some fruits and vegetables that we can harvest and eat from our land. I recently planted 11 avocado trees, but I hear they take five years to produce fruit. I also planted about ten ice cream bean trees. These grow amazing pods whose seeds are covered in a yummy white substance that is super sweet and sort of tastes like ice cream! I grew both of these types of trees from seeds.
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Sweet potato plants

Every time we eat something with a seed, I plant them to see if they will grow. We now have some super hot pepper plants growing, sweet potatoes, regular potatoes, tomatoes and who knows what else. I lost count and I mixed up the seeds and plants, so we will be surprised when something come up! I also recently bought a strawberry plant and we have eaten all of two strawberries off of it! I received a pumpkin squash from a friend recently and plan to plant those seeds. I have never had a green thumb, so I guess it will take practice for me to learn how to actually garden!
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Lots of little plants and a chayote

When we moved here, our land already had some fruit trees on it. We have some amazing lemon trees, navel oranges, mandarin oranges, limes and even some blackberry bushes. We also have some lemongrass growing and some guaba fruit (but we do not eat them because they always have tiny worms).
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Our tasty lemon tree!

I would love to hear any advice you have. What should I do as a newbie gardener starting out? Do you plant all the seeds that you get also? What would you make with the blackberries?


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the lemon tree looks amazing.. how about a orange tree

The orange trees are down the hill and I didn't walk down there to take a pic. :) The lemons on this tree are really yummy. A friend took some recently and made me a super tasty lemon pie with them! YUM! Thanks for stopping by.

Isn't growing your own food frickin AWESOME?! We started this year and it was such a fulfilling feeling to eat what you have planted and tended to all season.. Its really neat you already have a bunch of fruit trees in you yard, way better snack than candy!
Be careful with strawberries, they only fruit a little bit the first year but they are like vines and grow and move extremely fast! We planted 8 at the beginning of the year and have like 40 or 50 now! lol, they took over a whole raised bed! So make sure to tend to them or put them somewhere by themselves. Anyhow, goodluck and have fun growing all that stuff! :)

Nice - thanks for the advice! I didn't know strawberries would reproduce so quickly! Right now I have them growing in a milk jug. Lol! That's how we have been doing our "container" garden because we go through a ton of gallons of milk a week, so they make for great "free" containers for that. Then I get them started and plant them. Can't wait to eat some of the stuff once it really takes off. :) Thanks for the comment.

Yeah, always down to talk about homesteading :)
Congrats on the awesome upvote value of this post! U deserve it! ;)

Lol - thanks. Yeah, I was totally shocked with the upvote. :)

Looks like you are doing a great job without much help. I sure do wish I could plant something in the ground and have it just take off. Just plant what you enjoy eating and have a good time with the process. Thanks for your post.

Thanks for the comment! Hopefully some of the stuff we like will grow. It sure is amazing how this volcanic soil makes everything flourish!

Wish we had some here. The previous owners could have been kinder to the earth. We are trying to reawaken the beauty with sand. Haha

Wow you definitely have a green thumb and a knack for gardening. I am not too much into gardening but enjoy reading posts on the topic often because my mother is passionate about it so I read stuff and share it with her.

Oh nice! My gardening ability has to come from 1. Panamanian soil, 2. Panamanian rainy season. If I had to water on my own, it would never happen. I can't even get myself to pull weeds (I can't tell what's a weed and what's a plant I want to keep)! I planted some plants that I had grown from seed yesterday and today I went to look at them. One was about twice as big as the others, overnight. I'm now questioning if it is a weed. I have no idea!! :) THanks for the comment.

Hahaha I like your honesty and I am glad the soil and rainy season are making gardening fun and easy for you :)

It's amazing what will grow in Panama, especially at the higher elevations.

Yes, bananas too that I forgot to mention. Thanks for the comment!

That's great! We're in Colombia where we live on our farm. We have avocados too, it can even take 7 years before they fruit. Panama is quite wet though, so maybe it's faster there. We're in a wet-dry climate with hot and dry 'summers' and wet 'winters'. Good luck with your growies!

Very cool that you're in Colombia! Neighbor! 7 years? Yikes!! Well, at least we will have a few shade trees along our fence line until then. :) We have a rainy season and dry season. I think dry season is from December to March or April (the one coming up will be our first as we moved here 7 months ago). :) I'm going to check out your blog. Welcome to steemit!

The soil here is truly rich, dark and very fertile.

Wish I had good soil. I always have to keep checking the pH levels and making sure the fertilizer is correctly fixed. So time consuming.

I LOVE your lemon tree!! I am imagining lemonade... lemon custard.. lemon tarts... lemon cookies... lemon drops... (please use Bubba's accent from Forrest Gump here)

Lol! Thanks for the comment. I honestly hadn't thought of doing any of that stuff really with the lemons. Just lemonade. A friend made us a lemon pie and it was so yummy. Lemon cookies? Wow! I will have to find a recipe for the things you listed. Yummy!! Lemon desserts are my favorite and I didn't even think about it. If you see my blog start to be taken over by lemon recipes, you'll know I have you to thank... ;)

I'll proudly take credit for anything lemon

Ha ha! :) I better start making a list of all things lemon. You've created a monster. ;)

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Wow, super cool stats. Thanks for putting that together and letting me know about it. :)

This is a fantastic post!

My wife and I made a planter box for our backyard this summer and planted a few things. It's difficult to grow things from seeds, especially with the weather like it is here. You're much closer to the equator, so I envy your fruit trees.

I actually planted some lemon seeds from a grocery store lemon back in the summer and successfully sprouted about 9 of them. Unfortunately only 2 or 3 of them are still viable at this point. I'm still excited that they even came up in the first place. They're inside now, as they don't like the winter.

I can't say I have any tips for you. You're much better off with the soil and temperatures in Panama than I am up here in the US, so I'm sure with a little bit of coaxing, you can grow whatever you want.

You may have seen @papa-pepper's account since he's a popular Steemian, but he does many posts about gardening and such. You might enjoy taking a look at some of those. He also does videos, which can be helpful.

Best wishes growing things. Be sure to keep us updated!

Thanks for all the advice. I have seen some of @papa-pepper 's stuff, but I need to look again. He seemed to have a wealth of knowledge. Cool about the planter box. My husband wants to do raised beds around our house (mostly for flowers) at some point. Cool that you sprouted lemon seeds from seeds you got from a grocery store lemon. I thought they made all seeds not reproduce - like watermelon seeds. I'm not sure how it is here. I hear there are some things we can't grow here because there is so much water - stuff rots out, mold is an issue. Thanks so much for the comment. :)

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What about vegetables, i.e. broccoli, carrots, pumpkins? Then you just need a few chickens and you'll never have to shop for food again!

Will follow your blog, I'm trying to learn about off-grid gardening and this will help :)

Oh nice. Thanks for the follow and comment. Yeah definitely need to get some chickens. We used to have some in Texas but we haven't fully settled in here yet. Maybe in the future. I have never seen orange pumpkins here. So weird. Maybe they need much cooler (or much warmer) temps? Ours is consistantly between 60s-mid 70s year round. I need to try carrots. That would be fun! And broccoli should grow well too! Thanks!

Blackberry jam is always good. And yes, I plant everything! That is how you get free plants and variety in your garden.

Yes - free plants! I just wish we could grow apples because that's one thing we really like! :) I forgot we also have a lot of banana plants, but they don't taste very good for some reason. I need to research that! Blackberry jam is on my list. It is one of my favorite things at a restaurant I like in Texas. :) We will see if I can do it. The kids keep eating them so I'm just hoping to get enough. I'm storing them in the freezer until I can get about 4 cups.

Are you sure they are bananas and not plantain? And not all bananas are the same. Are you picking them when they are ripe? Too green doesn't that good, to me at least. Green bananas can be cooked just like potatoes too.

We just cut some today that look like plantains. I'm not sure what we have. :) We have a friend that knows all things garden. I need to have her come over and help me identify stuff. I didn't know that about green bananas! We cut them off when they are green, hang them up and let them turn yellow. If we leave them to yellow on the tree, they turn bad or get eaten!

Leave them until they start showing yellow before you cut them. Then let them hang and turn more yellow. They'll taste sweeter.

Oh nice! Thanks for letting me know! Will have to try that next time! We have a ton of banana/plantain trees. Mostly they run along the creek in our neighborhood and they just grow wild! We also have a lot of ornamental (little red) ones. I haven't heard if those are edible or not, but having the name ornamental, I assumed they aren't.

We have little red ones here too. They are edible. They are about half the size of a regular banana. When we lived in Costa Rica we had orange bananas. To me they all taste like banana...

No, no, no. You're doing it all wrong! No one is supposed to grow their own food. They're supposed to go buy it from large corporations who program people to be dependent upon them. Governments do the same. Sheesh, are you crazy!? Go get some fluoridated water before it's too late! ha ha

Yeah, exactly! Ha! Thanks for the comment.

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@apanamamama
you doing great...am sure you stabilize soon and have great orchards...love the spirit
check out some good tips on natural ways to fertilize from y older blogs.... keep pests away and understand your soil...which plants can grow in that area well and storage options...
keep it up

Thanks for the comment. I looked at some of your posts. Pretty interesting to use urine as a natural fertilizer. ;) Guess that would work for us during dry season, but we sure couldn't tell anyone that's how we "watered" the plants. ;)

sure...and if you check down you find more valuable options including fish...egg...fish water...also aquaponics ..etc
good one and ensure you keep us updated..and hey...urine is very ok..remember to add wood ash...and once the crops blossom, am ready to enjoy the harvest...!
;)

We just burned some logs and stuff - need to add the ashes to our soil. Thanks again!

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So true about trying to about trying to grow things in the Texas summers. It looks like you are well on your way to becoming a gardener, I'm curious as to what makes the soil in your area so suitable for plant growth, that you can grow fence posts into trees? I know here we use a lot of cedar tree posts for fencing pastures , and every now and then you will see a "volunteer" cedar tree spring up along the fence line. But haven't seen a post blossom into a tree yet.
Best of luck with the garden.

Most people use tree limbs or those office plants (my parents call them corn plants) for fence lines. So not the picket fence posts. ;) Almost all fences are branches that have sprouted into full-on trees though. It's the volcanic soil that makes it amazing here, from what I understand. We have massive volcanic boulders in our yard from the last time the volcano erupted (some 500 years ago from what I hear). :) We also have a few black sand beaches around.

How about diamonds, are there any diamonds to be found?

Lol - don't I wish. I hear that there is gold in the mountains (where the indigenous live) and there is a gold legend with our neighborhood even, but I haven't seen any.

No, I'm serious. I know in Arkansas there is an old volcano site, that is the only diamond mine in North America where you can dig for diamonds, it is a state park and you pay a fee to dig, keep what you find.
it is called Crater of Diamonds State Park. I figured that if that volcano produced diamonds , maybe there are some where you are at. We have dug there a few times , but no luck at it.
You may have some and not even realize it, they don't look a bright, shiny and cut when they are raw.

I'll have to get the kids out with some shovels if that's the case! I haven't heard of any diamonds, but that would be really cool. Interesting about that one in Arkansas. I wonder if it's every volcano or just something to do with all the right conditions at that one... Something for me to research. :)

Yes, check it out online. And if you have a lot of rocks around that are quartz, there is a real good chance you will have diamonds as well from what we told at Crater of Diamonds. Everyday we have been there diamonds were found, not by us though.

I'll have to ask around about quartz. I haven't ever seen any here! Cool that diamonds were found there every day....even if someone else was the finder. ;)

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

Hy Hallo .. We in Indonesia also often plant blackberry plants but to note is Do not plant blackberry close to night plant, or member of family of night plant, like tomato, potato, and pepper. Wood is a common problem of blackberries, can be carried through the soil. Do not plant blackberries around thorny bushes, or close to blackberries that grow wild. Start your plant growth in fresh location to avoid infectious diseases infectious disease. The temperate climate is cooler, blackberries can grow well and mature faster by planting in the greenhouse. Although the fertilization of blackberries is done individually, the benefits can still be obtained from cross-pollination treatment, which means it is a good idea to plant 2 different varieties if planted indoors. They need minimum temperature exposure for 200 hours under 400F, but use temperature 60-700F if inside the room .. Greetings know from Indonesia ,, Follow me friends ..

Nice! Thanks for the helpful information! All of our blackberries are wild and we have a lot of them! They sure have a lot of thorns though. Thanks for stopping by!

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

Thanks for sharing, i'd like to hear more of your experiences in the near future. I Just started gardening myself @ my neighbours garden, since we dont have one in our apartment. My neighbour is quite old tho and was happy to give me a piece of her garden in exchange for some help on her lawn, mowing, cutting hedges and such. I think thats a great synergy which more people should use. There are just so many people living in germany who have great gardens, which are not used at all. I started out with some peppers, chillies, tomatoes and salad. Also a few potatoes, cucumbers and some herbs. Its amazing to be able to go into your own garden and collect your ingredients for a nice salad or sandwich. Maybe you could start composting or building a worm farm? Greetings from germany!

I have a little pile of compost. I need to read more about how to do it better though. :) So nice that you can use your neighbor's garden. That is really great of them! Thanks for the great comment! Enjoy your garden and I hope you find something tasty to put together out of it. :)

Yeah its a great way to recycle and get cheap fertilizer. I will do so myself, once i get my own garden. All the best to you! cheers!