Post #791137 by Prikli Pear on Tue, Nov 13, 2018 12:28 PM

The first real cold front of the season blew through last night, so I set about protecting the tropical landscaping that is so much a part of the Lagoon. Mostly, I try to plant hardy tropicals or their temperate relatives (I'm looking at you, hibiscus and passiflora!) but the in-ground Bird of Paradise and my bananas got covered with frost cloth. I've learned from experience that fruit is much less durable than the banana plants themselves, so I harvested a mostly-mature bunch from my dwarf Orinoco:

Dwarf Orinoco is a plantain hybrid. It can be cooked as any other plantain, but if allowed to get fully ripe--we're talking black peel that looks almost rotten--then the fruit inside softens and gets very sweet. It makes a flavorful dessert banana. Here's the bunch with a store-bought Cavendish type for comparison.

And then my potted citrus and frost-tender tropicals all migrated to the garage. Our freezing spells don't normally last longer than a few days here. Friday I'll move them back out onto the south-facing lanai where they'll soak up the sun for the next few weeks. Long-range forecast doesn't hold anything lower than the mid-40s through the end of November. It's not as much moving as it looks, but as an incentive, I found a few limes I'd missed when I picked them a few weeks ago. Score!