I’ve posted before on why the tropics are the most amazing place for food growing, and I’ve also shared quite a bit on The Great South Florida Food Forest Project… but nothing compares to the sheer, lush extravagance of being right near the equator and seeing the abundance in person.

In the tropics, many plants produce year-round. There’s always something to eat. Winged yams were a common weed… bananas were laden with stalks of fruit almost too heavy to carry… and papaya were everywhere. Along the sides of the road were fallen passion fruit, golden apples and other fruits I’d never even seen.

It’s a far cry from the struggle to produce we face in temperate climates.

That is a breadfruit. I’ve wanted to try them since I was a kid but they simply will not grow inside the continental United States. The flavor was rich and starchy, with a slightly sweet undertone I found more than satisfying. Bonus: the trees grow really fast. My friend’s tree was only two years old and it towered at 20’+ and was loaded with fruit. In its first year it bore 60+ breadfruit.

Try to get that kind of success with pecans or chestnuts. It won’t happen.

I hate to make any of you fellow Floridians jealous, but…

…man alive…