The View from Villa Flores

Passions, Passion Fruit and Spines

A garden in the tropical Twilight Zone

My Geriatric Journal #22

South African Spiny Cucumber? Photo: R. C. Flores-Gunkle

I‘ve been really busy lately (completing and publishing a couple of books*) but I always have time for my garden. I have stopped obsessing about tomatoes and the plants have responded well to my new laidback approach. But I did wrestle with passionate passionfruit and bizarre cucumbers.

You would think that tomatoes, a tropical plant, would be easy to grow here in Puerto Rico. Doesn’t happen — at least not for me. Without exaggerating, I have planted 50 different varieties over the years and have never had real success (i.e. often problems with small yields and odd diseases). That is until I switched from attempting large fruits to small ones — tiny even. Right now (January, 2022) I am harvesting a salad bowl full of sweet babies nearly every day, including miniature yellow pear-shaped fruit.

I continue to harvest a fair amount of everything my wife and I want and need. Most days I hike down to the garden (it is just 50 yards or so from my hilltop house) and pick the herbs and vegetables for dinner. I have been particularly successful lately with celery and carrots. The celery is so flavorful that it bears no resemblance to the stuff we…