TropicalDingdong

This past Friday my best friend Kai took his life at Lahilahi. I'm not trying to dump this on any one but its been the hardest thing I've had to go through since my own suicide attempt almost 20 years ago. I made this video to share with our community and to cherish his memory, but I also consider you, lemmy, a part of my community. So I'm sharing this with you because you are all part of my ohana. But if you have someone in your life that you are worried about please cherish them. Its so easy to get wrapped up in our own struggles and miss those who are falling behind around us.

I'm posting it here because there is no place I could find more appropriate.

Its that time of year when banana man brings da presents.

🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕
🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕🎩🌕🌕🌕
🌕🌕🌕🌕🌘🌑🌒🌕🌕
🌕🌕🌕🌘🌑🌑🌑🌓🌕
🌕🌕🌖🌑👁🌑👁🌓🌕
🌕🌕🌗🌑🌑👄🌑🌔🌕
🌕🌕🌘🌑🌑🌑🌒🌕🌕
🌕🌕🌘🌑🎁🌑🌒🌕🌕
🌕🌕🌘🌑🌑🌑🌓🌕🌕
🌕🌕🌘🌑🌑🌑🌔🌕🌕
🌕🌕🌘🌔🌘🌑🌕🌕🌕
🌕🌖🌒🌕🌗🌒🌕🌕🌕
🌕🌗🌓🌕🌗🌓🌕🌕🌕
🌕🌘🌔🌕🌗🌓🌕🌕🌕
🌕👠🌕🌕🌕👠🌕🌕🌕

Apple banana coming in. I've had this patch planted maybe five years. It's becoming a bit of a problem and I'm gonna have to move it because it's taking over and crowding out some native plants but I thought garden and farm nerds might want to see how non industrial bananas are grown.

You startem out as keiki:

which grow at the base of a large corm, or pseudo bulb. I usually dig them out with a shovel and then throw them in a pot like this for to transplant. I fertilize with an organic heavy phosphorus mix just to get them going.

[note: this picture isn't apple banana, but Tahitian blue banana.]

At that point, with enough water and any where from 30-100% sunlight, they establish themselves. It takes almost 18 months from keiki to mature fruiting plant, and usually your first bananas are so so in quality. However, the new keiki will be coming up (about 12 months after planting), and if you irrigate or have enough rainfall, once established, you press up up down down LRLR start select, and that unlocks the infinite banana cheat code. Bananas, once established, are insanely productive, and you can manage the sugar to fiber ratio by how early you harvest. Boiled banana a favorite at our house and we do that with very immature bananas.

When a banana plant is ready to give it starts to lean. Bananas are all effectively nodal clones from the base of the corm, and can be pretty destructive. We had some come down on a fence and with the stem, which is basically all water, and the bananas, it's at least a couple kg suspended pretty high in the air. You can also tell they ripe when they yellow up and start to fan out like a open palm 🫴. The longer you wait the better the flavor is, but also more likely to fall uncontrollably. Depending on the variety can do real damage to cars or whatever underneath.

Most of thes going to go to a food bank and we grow enough fruit to keep an ice box pretty much full all year. Anything extra goes to an auntie who that's her thang and she'll make sure they get to the right people.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/23224596

More pix first. Then explanation.

So this is going on the fifth year I'll be farming Vanilla. My operation is microscopic but it's a work in progress. I've got maybe 300 vines all in. I got some Vanilla off this planting 2 years ago, and this was the first vines I planted. Which is some what typical for Vanilla. Usually 3-5 years before they really become productive.

I fertilized these back in May/ April. It's a tiny yield but next year I expect to have maybe 5-20x this amount, which means if I can sell some of it, I'll finally be able to cover some of my costs.

Right now I have about five varieties. All from either trade or from hiking to old plantations and looking for feral populations. This one is a variety of Tahitiensis and I made a vanilla bean whip cream a few months ago with it. It's a very distinctly 'bourbon' flavor. Like i ground it up in a mortar and pessle and it straight up smelled like whiskey.

So not close to enough to sell (again) this year. But next year and the following years, maybe this hobby will finally start paying itself off.

More pix first. Then explanation.

So this is going on the fifth year I'll be farming Vanilla. My operation is microscopic but it's a work in progress. I've got maybe 300 vines all in. I got some Vanilla off this planting 2 years ago, and this was the first vines I planted. Which is some what typical for Vanilla. Usually 3-5 years before they really become productive.

I fertilized these back in May/ April. It's a tiny yield but next year I expect to have maybe 5-20x this amount, which means if I can sell some of it, I'll finally be able to cover some of my costs.

Right now I have about five varieties. All from either trade or from hiking to old plantations and looking for feral populations. This one is a variety of Tahitiensis and I made a vanilla bean whip cream a few months ago with it. It's a very distinctly 'bourbon' flavor. Like i ground it up in a mortar and pessle and it straight up smelled like whiskey.

So not close to enough to sell (again) this year. But next year and the following years, maybe this hobby will finally start paying itself off.

Voyager stopped opening in links in Firefox?

Did an update get pushed changing this is behavior? previously I have voyager set up to open all links in Firefox. I did t change anything but now it wants to open up everything in YT app. I use Firefox for ad blocker.