🍈 May 2026 – Mid-year Abundance

Posted May 28, 2026

Another month has gone by and we're already reaching the middle of the year! I'm pleased to say that we've been greeted with abundance once more. The Amazonian grapes (Pourouma cecropiifolia) have really been a treat, and the biggest surprise has probably been all the breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis) we've been enjoying recently. The sundrops (Eugenia victoriana) and Hawaiian guavas (Eugenia stipitata) have been great for drinks and smoothies, and the seemingly endless lemon-drop mangosteens (Garcinia intermedia) are growing on me as one of my favorite foraging snacks. I must also mention the delicious Abiu's (Pouteria caimito) which are going off again! It's the best time of year to plant trees, and I'm happy to say that we've done pretty well selling nursery trees this month. We also shot the first footage for the newly formed "Bio-Film" production at the Tinamaste Annual Seed Festival.

One great thing about having planted such a wide diversity of crops is that there's almost always something fruiting. Many fruit trees are bi-annual fruiters—meaning they only give significant harvests every two years. One such fruit is the very rare and funky-looking safou tree (Dacryodes edulis) from tropical Africa. Other fruits take a whole nine months to develop! Waiting for a borojo (Alibertia patinoi) is almost like waiting for a baby—and we've recently harvested jackfruits (Artocarpus heterophyllus) nearly the size of one.

Fruiting bushes like the lemon-drop mangosteens seem to never stop producing, though the fruits are small and have a short shelf life. Custard apples (Annona mucosa) give lots of fruit quickly, but they ripen at highly different times, even on the same tree. Amazonian grapes grow in heavy bunches, with each bunch ripening gradually and providing a steady harvest over long stretches of time. Every species truly has its own characteristics, and over time they begin to feel familiar. It's a blessing to share life with these symbiotic beings.

We recently sold over a hundred fruit trees in Pavones. We also planted around twenty-five trees in a fern field we've been reforesting on the far side of our fruit-tree hill. After clearing out more than one hundred and fifty trees, our nursery still looks full! Now that we've been harvesting plenty of fruits, our seed intake keeps increasing as well. We also returned from the Tinamaste Annual Seed Festival with several interesting new plants.

I had heard of the Tinamaste Annual Seed Festival before, but this year we attended thanks to Kristy spearheading the debut of the Bio-Film project. She really wanted to capture footage of Ed and Jessica Bernhardt, who she knew would have a stand there. Ed and Jessica have been practicing and teaching organic gardening since long before it became trendy. Ed is the author of the well-known book Medicinal Plants of Costa Rica. We interviewed them during the festival, and I'll share a link to the interview in next month's post.

We were thrilled to participate in the festival, and Heydi even paid for a table to display her leatherwork. She sold more bags in that single day than she usually sells in months up in San Vito, where the market tends to favor cellphone holsters, machete sheaths, multi-tool holders, and similar items. We traded plants and gave some away as well. We also ran into Zoly, a durian farmer who lives down south near Ciudad Neily, not too far from us. From him we acquired a grafted Durian graveolens "Sweet Red" cultivar—a very rare fruit that we'll now have to wait five or six years to hopefully get a taste 😋.