Update Of My Gardenjournal: Growing & Managing My Fruit Crops Garden

Greetings Dear Gardeners! It's another great day to share with you! It has been a couple of days now since I shared to my Garden Community. Yeah, I'm very excited to share on my fruit crops. The best fruit I like are banana, papaya, oranges, avocado and mango. Some of these fruits are sometimes scarce since much of our concentration is to grow staple food like cassava, plantain, cocoyam, maize and rice. It's very sad that our lands are very rich but we don't engage mostly in such fruits which provide good health to our bodies.

Most people grow them in large scale for sales. But it's not common as we see in small scale farming. Most household farms grow them around their homes as backyard garden. For instance if they acquire land to build a house, they sometimes grow them somewhere in the house. If they are maintained, they are able to survive for long.

These bananas are found at the back of my house and they are growing in healthy conditions. Their generations have remained here for more than 10 years. I keep maintaining them year by year. The old ones are been replaced with their suckers when I harvest the matured ones. Early this year in January to March, the storm broke most of the matured banana plant. I had to cut most of them for regrowth. They aren't like plantain where the matured one is difficult to sprout again if they are break down. I decided to burn some part and replant some affected part.

Bananas are resistant the hot weather conditions in the tropics here. Like the plantain, they grow vegetatively by the use of the suckers. The suckers are the young bananas that have been emerged from the parent plants. They are annual crops and would fruit and mature within eight months. This variety which I have been grown is hybrid one which is able to produce more fruits. Look at how it has been able to produce from top to down. The ripening stage is what I have problem some of the sellers of riped bananas. They use chemicals to store them. I think they should have allowed them to ripe organically.

Papaya is one of my favorite fruit that is why I keep growing them at the back of my house. It is grown sexually using the seeds. The seeds are raised from the matured papaya when they are harvested and dried for a while. The seeds can be germinated through nursery or growing at stake. Currently we have many varieties of papaya that have been improved through breeding. We have the early maturing type which is able to fruit and mature within 3 months of their growth.

These varieties are the exotic breeds which are able to grow very early. They have few seeds with good fruits that is very sweet. The seeds are good for deworming when they are blended and taken. But I love taking the fruits. They are often sold at our local market and easy to get. We also have local ones that we grow. Some were even domesticated and we didn't intend to grow them. Those ones are dispersed and we normally find them in our farms.

Oranges are one of my good fruits and I don't intend to grow them in large scale. I have only 5 tress of oranges grown in my compound here. They contain a lot of vitamin C and they are very good to improve our health conditions.

It takes number of years for the nursed seeds to grow and matured. But the vegetative ones are able to mature and fruit within 2 to 3 years of growth. When budding or grafting is done, they mature very early. We can grow different varieties of orange on one tree. Having different varieties help different brand of fruit.