How much do various tropical fruits cost in BI? (renter, neighborhood)

[Kansoku]

Bananas, Mangos, and other tropical fruits.

Also how easy is it to forage tropical fruits? I heard that there are lots of avocados to forage but not so much other tropical fruits?

[hotzcatz]

It depends on the fruit, the time of year and what's in your and your neighbor's yard.

Bananas are pretty expensive at the grocery store, typically over a $1 a pound. However, they grow easily in many places on the island. When we have some ripe ones we share them with our neighbors since there are too many in a bunch for us to eat. A bunch of bananas is made up of many hands of bananas and a "hand" is what you'd typically see in a grocery store. A large bunch of bananas from a tree can be more than a case if you were buying them at the store. Our neighbors share theirs with us when theirs get ripe so there are more frequently bananas around than just the ones we grow.

During mango season and if you or your neighbor have a tree, then you're golden. Otherwise all the gold gets left at the grocery store. I'm not sure how much they are per pound, but I can't think of any fruit or vegetable that is under $1 a pound right now. Cabbage, maybe. Carrots are right around $1 a pound, lettuce is typically around $1.50 to $2 a pound, tomatoes a little to a lot higher, onions used to be .79 to .89 a pound, now they are about 1.25. This is a change in the past several months. Most vegetables are sold by the pound and not per piece, at least at the groceries. The Farmer's markets sell things per piece or per package, but they are mostly now $2 each instead of a dollar each the way they used to be.

It's the tail end of pineapple season right now, so pineapples are right around $2 each at the grocery. They'll go back to $1 a pound or more after pineapple season. Those are easy enough to grow in your yard, just twist the top off a pineapple, stick it in the ground and wait two years.

You can forage a truckload of guava, that falls all over the place along the road sides. There are avocados here and there when they are in season. There is occasionally feral coffee along with feral longan. (At least, I think it's longan - sort of small yellow slightly fuzzy tree berry/fruit) Most mango and banana trees belong to someone. Lychee trees are generally not only owned but guarded. Coconuts are getting harder to find since trees that are out in public get the nuts cut off of them so they don't fall on folks' heads. Sometimes you can find moringai or pigeon peas.

If folks have bamboo, they will frequently let you harvest a shoot or two during the bamboo shoot season. We have a lot to "forage" in our yard and neighborhood, but a lot of us have been planting it for quite some time to make it like that.

[Mar0]

Usually you just find someone who has a certain kind of tree. For example, my coworker has lots of mango and will just give them to me if I ask. I will often give him fish that I caught. My other coworker has lettuce and he will give that to me because I bring in cookies to work for him. Sometimes I just have to ask and I get it. People are very good about sharing here.

If not, try to find a farmer's market (I'm on Kauai and we have them weekly(.

[Vaedrem]

Yeah, through informal means (connections) you can get a lot of free fruit--people often have more than they can eat/harvest themselves and don't bother to sell either. Otherwise, papayas are usually 3 or 4 per dollar at the farmers market, and good varieties of bananas are about $2 per hand. Good varieties of mangos are usually like 2.99 per pound, the ones you find growing by the roadside in nature reserves generally aren't the best varieties, but the untended avocados can be good. Guava, monstera, and lilikoi are abundant, but they aren't staples.

Hotzkatz, it sounds like what you describe is actually loquat which I've also found to abundant in wild places.

[hotzcatz]

Aloha Vaedrem, Yup, I think you're right. The folks that told me what it was did call it loquat. I knew it started with an "L" but all I could think of was longan. There's quite a few of them in season.

Do you eat much monstera? Is it tasty? Do you cook it or what?

[Vaedrem]

Aloha, I eat monstera once in a while, and it has a nice sweet, acidic flavor. However, it ripens so that you have to eat only a little bit at a time--and if you bite into an unripe section, your mouth will fill with sharp calcium oxalate crystals, so I imagine it would be difficult to get enough good pulp for a recipe.

[hotzcatz]

Hmm, those oxalate crystals are in a lot of different tropical fruits. Do you think cooking it would get rid of the crystals? Still, it's not like there's a lot of it around. I'm guessing you just eat the flower stem/bud part? Guess we will just stick to pineapple for the sweet acidic flavors.

[Badatta2de]

Vaedrem, how do you prepare monstera? I have a bunch growing for "pretty purposes". Didnt know you could eat it!

[Vaedrem]

The flower stem eventually forms into a thick scaly fruit, and then the individual scales gradually start to come off when it is ripe, revealing the yellow flesh underneath. Usually people just eat it like corn on the cob. Apparently it takes over a year to get from flower to ripe fruit, and they hide well in the bushes. I really don't know about cooking the fruit; I've never heard of anyone doing so. There's a huge patch in a park nearbye, which is where I've found it; the plants don't seem to like our property.

[leilaniguy]

It grows like mad on my place, my renter eats it, says when it's covered in ants it's ready.