This is John Kohler.
Today I have another exciting episode for you and this one's going to be like no other
because I have a special guest here and I admire this special guest highly.
He's a world-renowned tropical fruit expert.
He's traveled the world in search of different tropical fruits.
He has his own farm in Hawaii where he grows hundreds, if not thousands of varieties of
tropical fruits.
He's all about no GMOs, he's all about local food, he's all about, you know, getting fruit
out to people because it is so delicious and he's taken many, many years of his life to
research tropical fruits and in this episode, he's going to share some of that knowledge
for you.
Now, this episode is specifically designed for people that live in the tropics.
If you live in the subtropics or somewhere else, some of these things are going to take
longer to grow and many of them you may not actually be able to grow at all.
So, today's episode's going to be very simply the 7 different fruits you can grow and produce
from in under 3 years.
I like to grow vegetables because literally within 30 days on some vegetables, like radishes,
you could be having the crop.
On fruits, they take a little but linger but the benefits of the fruits is that, once you
grow the tree they're there to stay and they're going to be producing for you reliably years
after year.
I like that a lot.
So, let's turn it over to Ken and we're going to share the first fruits you can grow and
produce fruit in under 3 years.
Well, thanks very much, John.
Boy, it's so hard to choose form when you have 250 different types of fruit to start
with, but maybe first of all, I'd pick papaya.
Now, papaya's not the quickest necessarily, but it's one of the most well known.
So, form seed to fruit, it's in 2 years and which is remarkably fast considering that
it usually grows 10 feet in those 2 years.
So, Ken, one of the things that concerns me about growing papaya, I love eating papaya,
but now, you know, I know in Hawaii they are GMOing papaya, so how can my viewers be safe
and not grow GMO papaya?
Well, one of the things you have to do is find the local anti-GMO people who can do
test kits for the papayas.
You can go to whole foods Hawaii organic farmers association and often they have people who
can help determine whether or not it is.
There are some papayas that we know are from GMO, but papayas found in the wild, or sunrise
papayas, which tend to be more red on the inside, those are usually 90% safe.
So, it takes a little while to determine it, but we have to work in that direction, and
that's particularly on the big island.
On other islands, there's a much better chance of getting nonGMO strains of papaya.
Thank you, Ken.
So, what's the second fruit that you can grow in under 3 years and produce some fruit for
you and your family to eat?
Well, the second is probably my first.
My favorite, and that's fig.
I mean, you know, everybody knows fig, so if we're marketing them, just eating them
or we're marketing them at the farmers market, everybody knows figs.
Even kids know figs and they're much better off with the fresh ones than some of the other
things that are made with them, but figs are incredibly durable.
First you just need a cutting of about 16-18 inches, you put it in some potting soil, and
it grows.
Within a year, you probably have a little fig on the top.
It's really quick.
Plus, as it grows up over time, you can (unclear) along the wall, you can tie it to the fence,
you can bend that branch down any way you want.
I mean, figs in japan are amazing.
They come out the ground about 15 inches, to a 90 degree turn, and then every 15 inches,
there's another vertical with each one of those has 20, 25 figs on it, and that'll go
50 feet.
So, it's really amazing what you can do.
Plus, were used to wanting 2 types of figs.
The USDA has 290 types of figs you can pick from, and they range in flavor from honey
with sesame seeds in it to raspberry jam, blackberry jam, just amazingly sweet.
Wow.
You're making my mouth water, there, Ken.
I wan tot just taste some of those figs, but
Then visit.
I also want to encourage you guys tot grow genetic diversity.
Don't just grow that standard mission fig, you know.
Find some o these heirlooms and exotic ones.
We need to keep these lines alive, these genetics alive, so that they can be continued to be
propagated and shared with others so that these varieties, you know, do not go the way
of the west.
So, Ken, what's number 3 fruit that's going to, you know, allow people to grow fruits
within 3 years?
Another one of my favorite is, well I was born year of the dragon, so naturally the
dragon fruit.
So, dragon fruit has, there's 2 main types of it.
Hyloncerous and celoncerous.
Now, hyloncerious is this pretty pink ones that you get and sometimes they're white with
little tiny black seeds on the inside.
Sometimes they're dark purple on the inside, which tend to be a little sweeter and better,
and then there is celoncerous which is the yellow one and more commercialized type of
dragon fruit in the tropics and the only problem is it has thorns, but to brush those thorns
off is worth it because it's 10-15% sweeter than the pick skinned ones, and it's so incredibly
diverse with what you can do with it and eat it in terms of smoothies and shakes and dressing
and if you want to juice it with one of your machines you can take the seeds out and you
can leave the seeds in.
I mean, in dragon fruit I really like the seeds.
It adds a bit of texture and thickness.
You'll like some of these yellow ones.
You got to come try them.
I've tried many varieties of dragon fruit.
They're definitely my favorite if you get a good one, and I want to encourage everybody
to leave their fruit on the vine, let it ripen to peak ripeness when they got the peak sugar
content but also the peak nutrition, high flavonoids, higher anti-oxidants, etc.
So, Ken, what's fruit number 4?
Fruit number 4 is polha, which you might know as Cape gooseberry.
It's called physalis pruvianous and it's a husk tomato.
I mean, a husk cherry.
It comes in a little paper husk.
Some of its close relatives are tomatio, Japanese or Chinese lantern plants, but polha, especially
upper elevations in Hawaii, you know, 1-2 years before you get a couple fruit and then
just expands form there, but it's incredibly sweet.
It tastes almost like an orange, you know, little orange juice, caramel texture to it.
I mean, it's just an amazing thing to add to anything or just to pop in your mouth.
It's a great additive if I'm working out in the fields and the polha is usually spread
wild by the birds.
So, although you can plant the seeds, it's not a problem, but it's just an energy booster.
You know, I'm just going to pop a couple of those and it just gives me the energy to keep
going.
I love the poha berry.
I grow them in California, the subtropical environment.
Even in my greenhouse, I can keep them alive year-round and they continue to produce through
the winter.
The way I like to harvest them, actually let them turn on the vine, actually let them drop
to the ground, that's when they're fully completely rip and going to have the best flavor, I found.
So, Ken, what's number 5?
Number 5, I would say, would be passion fruit.
I love the passion fruit.
It's the passion.
I know you're passionate about what we call lily coy.
Lily coy comes in yellow, purple, mixes of those colors, and actually there's thousand
of types of passion fruit plants, passionflower.
Now, they don't all produce edible fruit, but the ones we're used to, (unclear) is the
most common on in Hawaii, and it's just yellow, kind of tangy one.
There's lemivi, or what they call Jamaican passion fruit, and it's kind of an orange
sweet one, but, yea, it's great for a barrier too, because you can grow it up on the wall,
as a vine, it can grow up trees.
We used to plant it to keep out invasive species form the jungle moving into the farm.
So, what do you do when there's like the trees behind us?
There you just plant passion fruit everywhere and it just blocks all of the stuff from coming
in.
I love the passion fruit, especially the Jamaican ones.
I first actually had those in Hawaii.
So, Ken, what's number 6?
Number 6 is bananas.
Everybody loves bananas, and again, what you were saying before about genetic diversity
is incredibly important in bananas, and in addition to genetic diversity and protecting
the future in all bananas, we need to also protect some of the endangered ones right
now, especially the native Hawaiian ones, and one the ways to do that is if you have
a banana patch, you have to take out the babies or well kakis and plant them someplace out,
because the banana rhizome, which ahs all of the trees in it, it's just one common root
basically, that's a magnet for the boars and other insects who just drill into it and eventually
cause the end of the plant, but if you take out those small ones with the clean rhizomes,
move them 50-100 feet away, and you're going to get another stand and that's going to keep
those, perpetuate those bananas and keep them healthy and that's really important.
We also have, you know, close to 100 of them on this big island, and around Hawaii and
there's the regular cabinish types, there's yellow bananas, there's blue bananas called
ice-cream bananas, we have 3 types of red bananas, we have a striped banana, manini
or ayay as we call out on the big island, and it's green with white stripes in it, Just
amazing, and from starch to sweet, you can get every range.
Some of them when they're fully ripe you get a little gelatin pocket in the middle of it.
Just incredible.
Wow, so many different kinds of bananas, you know, and, once again, you guys buy bananas
in the store and you don't like the taste of bananas, Ken'll tell you, I'll tell you,
bananas off the plants are just incredible.
They slowly ripe instead of gas and they ripen fast and don't get the full flavor and you
may not get the varieties that's grown in good rich soil and you're not going to get
the total flavor of what a bananas is.
I mean, so important to grow your own food to secure these varieties, to get them spread
out and allow to have new taste sensations.
So, Ken, we're down to number 7.
Oh, boy, number 7.
Number 7 is probably what Hawaii's been known for hundreds of years and that's pineapple.
Just cut the top of the pineapple off, put it in the ground, 2 years, you got a fruit.
It's that simple, and usually store-bought ones, if you get it at a farmers market or
it's a good organic quality pineapple, you just take that top off, you put it in the
ground, and wait.
Now, pineapples, like bananas, are heavy feeders.
So, they like to have mulch and good organic matter in the soil with them.
And once again, you know, just like all the other varieties of fruit that we talked about,
there's many different cultivars or varieties in all of them.
You guys know about the apples.
You know they got the Fuji apples, granny apples, you know, all different kinds of apples.
There's all different kinds of the pineapples as well.
I remember Ken brought one time some white sugar pines to California with him from Hawaii
and we tasted them and they were amazing.
So, I want to encourage you guy to just reach out and find different and new varieties.
Those sugar pines are just the sweetest pineapples I've ever tastes.
Definitely melts in your mouth.
It's just incredible.
So, you want to research about some of these rare and unknown cultivars, try to get hem,
grow them in your garden, and spread those.
Give the plants to others so that we can all grow them and stay safe and keep the genetic
diversity.
So, Ken do you have any last words you want to talk about?
The GMOs?
I know that's a big issue for you.
It's really something that we all have to become more aware of.
We all have to work to protect the genetic diversity, protect the future of our land
and protect the future of ourselves.
We have to be against GMOs.
Otherwise, you know, it's impossible.
Once again, I want to remind you guys what GMO is all about.
Basically, GMO's like me trying to have sex with a fish or something like that and create
a fishman.
I mean, that's what a GMO is.
It's not like me trying to get with like an ethnic woman form other ethnicity of myself.
That's kind of like just regular crossbreeding and hybridization, which can occur naturally.
This is something totally artificial that would never happen in nature, and in my opinion,
it's defiantly not a good thing.
So, you definitely want to avoid the GMO seeds.
Get tested papaya seeds if you're going to grow them to make sure they're not GMO because
we don't want to propagate any more of those than absolutely necessary than they're doing
on their own without our help.
Once again, this change will start from the bottom up, not the top down, and we need to
save the genetic diversity and the heritage, so I always encourage you guys to save your
won seeds, pass them on to friends and family and others that we can continue to grow and
spread the genetic diversity.
Ken, I really want to thank you for your time today, and I want to let my viewers know that
Ken has produced some amazing posters with all different varieties and rare varieties
and cultivars of different things like figs and papayas and fruits form the big island
and how could some of my viewers find out more about your important work, Ken, and buy
some of your posters?
Well, thanks.
Yes, hawiifruit.net.
And it's that simple and it's an old fashioned website.
No frames or bells or whistles, but you can just go in there.
There's a posters section and I'll give you links so that you can see all the posters.
Even at the end of that page there's a dropdown and you just see the four seasons, and if
you click on spring, you'll get a little printable in decent resolution guide to the spring fruits
that are available in Hawaii.
So, all four seasons are there, plus all the posters are available through localharvest.org.
Awesome, Ken.
So, I appreciate your time spending with me today and I hope to have Ken on in future
episodes sharing more about his knowledge on the tropical fruits and fruits that are
growing around the world.
He's travelled so much he is an encyclopedia of tropical fruit sitting right next to me.
I'm so honored to be able to be interviewing him and hopefully you guys glean some information
that's going to help you grow more fruits at home.
Once again, my name is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com.
We'll see you next time, and remember, keep on growing.