Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I go eat at this little hole in the wall that belongs to a Cuban guy and his Dominican wife. I call their mofongo "Mangufongo". Taste of mofongo, but a little softer. Not quite like authentic Dominican "Mangú", but I dunno. And again, I've steered away from fried food, but that thing is friggin delicious!

But the canoas are a no brainer. Fry the maduros, add some picadillo & cheddar, toss in the oven for a little bit.

Had to share this Sam, between the funny and the yummy

Brian,

Ah, man! Just when I was planning on skipping lunch, you make me look at those Pavlovian Pictures and now I've got no choice but to go eat something so I can stop drooling on my keyboard!

Pavlov Experiments In Conditioning



We've been making that Cuban dish Felix mentioned every since then! However, rather than fry the whole plantains, we've been boiling them before heaping on the stuffing and they've been coming out super good!

I've started playing around with Dwarf Plantains and just when we thought it was a scam and what I had bought from someone claiming to have dwarf plantains really was a regular huge plantain, out pops a racimo (bunch of bananas on a stalk) of full-sized fruit on a "dwarf" plantain at about 3.5 meters up. Often our plantains are 7m+ so this will be really convenient! Tall plantain plants are not horrible to harvest since we just chop 'em down low on the trunk until they lean over enough to grab the stalk and whack it off with a machete. However, being able to reach them without a ladder could mean that we might pluck off "manos" (little bunch of 7-9 bananas) without taking the entire stalk thereby allowing the plant to continue producing fruit until it runs out of flowers and the more immature fruit can ripen a bit more on plant.



The little "finger" bananas and Red Jamaicans are so much sweeter than the Cavendish Bananas (pretty ones on the right) that one typically finds in US grocery stores. Plantains (larger on left) are not eaten raw like other banana varieties. They are either cooked green to make something like hash-browns or banana chips, or my preference it to cook the ripe ones (maduros) which caramelizes the sugars into something like a fancy Bananas Foster dessert.

The 3.5m plants are still a bit big for DWC, but maybe I can keep a few near enough to the FT to splash them every once-in-awhile.

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Sam

UGH! Now I'm hungry too, and I have to go boil a ripe plantain! Never done that! But try this. Toss the ripe plantain along the edge of a Weber grill (Not directly over the fire), skin & all. Sorry, no fancy gas grills not allowed!

Plantain Hash Browns... Arañitas.

http://nathanscomida.blogspot.com/2009/ ... green.html

Also, the finger bananas, the ones with the paper thin skin we call Guineos Niños. If I could ever get my hands on a plant...

https://c2.staticflickr.com/2/1156/8693 ... 7e02_b.jpg

Here's something you see more & more here. Stuffed Arañitas:

https://twitter.com/foodiespr/status/690395909084028929

Felix,

Yes, those little "Guineos Niños" bananas are the Cat's Meow. Once I started being picky about what kind of bananas we grow, I got rid of all the ornamental stuff and I pretty much am just growing those little sweet finger bananas, 2 types of platanos, white cuadrados, and some other small banana variety. I've probably got 25+ plants of Guineos Niños growing right now in the mix. I head out back with my machete a couple of times a week to bring back a racimo of something and we usually have 15-20 racimos forming at one stage or another at any given time.

If you can't find a rhizome of the ones you want, you might be able to grow a banana plant from seed. I've never tried it but I've read about folks having success. Some of the seed companies sell banana seeds.

Seedman.com - Seeds from Around the World

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Sam

Cool. Thanks!

Sam you sure know how to make a feller hungry for the islands and their goodies. I miss the mangos and the sour sops a lot. The last place I lived had a avacado tree bout 30 feet in diameter and it was loaded with fruit the last few weeks before we left and we dined on avacados for all that time. Still love them.

Don, if you like Soursop, have you ever tried Custard Apple / Sugar Apple (Anon)? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... ection.jpg

I lived on Maui for a winter many years back. One of the things I loved as much as the manicured fruit trees in everyone's yards, was trekking in jungles. One time we went banana hunting in the deep jungle. Yes those trees were so tall we'd have to wade through mosquito infested swamps trying to figure out which stalk was attached to the bananas way up on the canopy. When the giant broccoli looking plants fell it really stirred up the mosquitoes. We'd run up the stalks to stay out of the swamps, often to find we picked the wrong tree to machete. Rough, but fun at the same time because when we scored, the bananas were better than any I've ever tasted. What I understood is the bananas flower and ripen twice per season, and possibly only twice?

Yes Mw we did have them a few times. They have a courser makeup and texture. Makes a poor substitute when you really want a sour sop. The sour sops we used to get were about 10 inches across so they were really big. They have a sweet and sour candy here we some times use when we travel. When you get sleepy you eat some of them and your awake for a while. The taste is simular but not the same.

I hear you. I used to have a soursop tree in my back yard. I think hurricane Georges weakened it, and the termites took care of the rest.

Turns out the wife didn't put up much of a fight limiting my AP experiment to 2m² of a small corner in our back side yard... I had been planning a simple FT & Sump under a 1m x 2m media-based growbed (to the left of the shed door.) Now, before I've started, I've already expanded...

To the left of the shed door was my original plan, now I've traded that space for everything to the right of that door, including under the roof. So I'm thinking something like the red area for media-based grow beds in a U-shape, or maybe just skip the little bed in between the long beds... and using the yellow areas for DWC beds. That should give me about 3.8 m² DWC area, and 2.8 m² GB (media-based.) I'm having no luck finding suitable pond liner and am about to just bite the bullet and build reinforced plywood boxes that I fiberglass...

New plan, requires new SketchUp parts! I've got some new specifics to plan now...

I expect I'll take down that part of the roof over the new tank area and perhaps just put some little per tank roofs over the tanks themselves to provide more sun for the rest of the area.

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Sam

My current thoughts on media based beds: I'm getting rid of mine. I've been cleaning my filter weekly, and I still cannot get my PH down. I suspect anoxic areas in my gravel beds are raising the PH. This is untested, of course, as I've never cleaned my beds. But the hell with it. I'm just going to get rid of them.

I like our media beds. That being said I want DWC troughs as well. Sam that looks great. I can't wait to see what's next.