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What’s growing, fruiting, flowering, germinating, and cropping in our tropical food garden in May? May is the last month of autumn where we are. It’s getting towards the start of the tropical dry season, our winter. We are still getting a little rain, the garden isn’t as dry as a chip, yet. At night it’s “cold”. We’ve seen temperatures below 20 degrees C at night but mostly the days are hot and sunny. By May I’ve usually been able to get out into the garden and clear much of the jungle that grew during the wet.
Most plants in our tropical food garden will grow as perennials. By keeping this month-by-month record I’m trying to learn and become a better gardener and know what to do next year.
Jackfruit
The jackfruit tree is full of fruit again. This tree is full of surprises, it keeps doing exactly what I don’t expect it to do. I can forgive it being unpredictable as it gives us masses of huge fruit every year. It currently has about half-grown fruit and the fruit started setting around Christmas time, just as we were finishing the last of the previous year’s crop. It’s a lovely big tree and gives us much-needed shade.
Bananas
Yes we have bananas! It’s the first time we’ve had bananas in a long time, in part due to an accident involving my son and a saw. They are fully formed and not far off ripe. This is the original banana plant that I planted almost 10 years ago. When a banana stem flowers and fruits we cut that stem down and allow one of the child shoots to mature and fruit the next year, this is the way of bananas. In previous years we have used a plastic banana bag to keep pests away from the fruit. This year we don’t have one, so the bananas are having to go it alone out there. Time will tell how that turns out.
Lemons
We have lemons in the freezer from the dwarf lemon tree and we planted a new Meyer lemon in the front garden. The new one is flowering. Meyers produce fruit from time to time, rather than all at once, so I’ve been told. We shall see! It certainly looks that way with just one small cluster of flowers.
Ruby Grapefruit
My mature grapefruit tree is absolutely drooping under the weight of semi-ripe grapefruit. We’ve started using this year’s crop, but the longer you leave your grapefruit on the tree the sweeter they become. We start use=ing the grapefruit while they are still green.
Regular Grapefruit
This is a new tree this year. It’s growing well but hasn’t flowered since we’ve had it. I think we planted it in October.
Papayas
The papayas will be ripe this month and right now I’m keeping a very watchful eye on them. About this time last year a local eclectus parrot though my papayas should be his breakfast so I’m trying to make sure that doesn’t happen again. I’m thinking of throwing an old mosquito net over the papaya (paw paw) plant. I have two papaya plants in fruit at the moment and almost a dozen younger trees. The original plant is a bisexual that I bought at a nursery. All of the others are its direct descendents grown for its seeds. You can see from the rounder feruit in the daughter plant that it hasn’t bred true. It will be interesting to see how the fruit tastes in a few weeks. It seems that papayas only set fruit in the wet season and bisexual plants set far less fruit than other varieties. Every flower on this daughter plant was female, whereas the parent only has a few female flowers, most are male. Or maybe I got a dud, I don’t know, but the botanist in me thinks she can spot a female flower.
Mango
The mango tree persists in doing nothing. I mostly forget it’s even there
Fig
Newly planted in October. Not doing anything currently.
Fejoa
Newly planted in October. Not doing anything really
Lychee
Newly planted in October. Again, not doing anything.
Avocado
Strawberries
Nope, not growing strawberries currently.
Peppers and Chilies
Peppers and chillies, all varieties, have just been non-stop through the wet and summer months. There were some issues with fruit fly when it was really wet, we cured that by picking them green not red. They’re still producing now but its getting cooler, I don’t know how much longer they’ll keep producing but right now we have hundreds of peppers in many varieties.
Bush Beans
I planted seeds of French beans just yesterday. The dwarf red snake beans are still going strong in the garden too.
Start bush beans in pots about now, ready to plant out when the wet season is over.
Snake Beans
I’m not growing snake beans. I’ve decided having to trellis them is too annoying.
Aubergines (Egg Plant)
Yes, we have aubergines, black and white. They seem to be doing pretty well at the moment. We do have aubergines every month of the year I think. The white aubergines are my favourite, they have fewer seeds and a less tough skin.
Thai Aubergines (Thai Eggplant)
This plant is getting huge. It’s almost 6 foot tall now. It seems to bear fruit continuously but you do need to pick them really small before the seeds develop. This means you need a lot to make a green curry. This one plant is not yet big enough to produce enough to make green curry for 4 people simultaneously. I need to figure out if I can freeze them as I pick them to use all at once and make a full meal.
Cucumbers
Cucumbers are one of the few plants that I can grow year-round. They even survive, and fruit, in the late and early wet season.
Don’t plant them in the ground, start the seeds in seed raising mix and plant them out when your seedlings are strong. Plant cucumbers in succession. You only need a couple of plants to feed a family and have cucumber to spare, but the plants don’t usually last long. Have new ones ready to replace the old.
Cucumber seeds in the ground or in your raised beds during the wet tend to rot in the ground, same for beans.
We make an amazing greek yoghurt, garlic, lemon and olive oil dressing for cucumber. When we have dill (June onwards) we make dill pickles and add dill to that yoghurt sauce.
Pumpkins
Growing pumpkins in the tropics is productive and confusing. We always have plenty of pumpkins, they grow well, but they seem to just grow when they feel like it. Right now I have several Kg of pumpkins harvested and stored. We picked most of them in April and May. In a bad wet season (the wet dragged on to June recently) no pumpkins formed during these hot, wet months.
Some of the vines browned off and died, others are still growing and producing flowers. Some grew right over the fence and are heading for New Zealand! Pumpkins grow, it seems, all year-round.
Noticeably I couldn’t get a flower to pollinate in the wet season, whether it was the heat or the humidity, I don’t know, but even hand pollination didn’t work. Towards the end of the wet, as the weather got less unpleasant, they set loads of fruit and that is what we’re eating now. You can also eat pumpkin shoots as a green vegetable.
Thai Basil
Always there, in flower, attracting bees and looking healthy. It self-seeds all over the garden and is a great permaculture staple.
Garlic Chives
Grow like crazy. Including the clumps we divided to use as an edging plant. They grow all year round and have never flowered.
Cherry Tomatoes
I’m a bit obsessed with growing tomatoes in the tropics lately. I want to grow all the varieties, all the time and never have to buy them in a supermarket ever again. The cherries, and we have maybe 4 varieties, continued to grow through the wet but the fruit was mostly inedible due to pests, including fruit fly. In May if things have dried out and the weather is getting cooler, the cherries are much happier and some years I can pick my first major haul of black grape cherry tomatoes of the year in May and June. These plants are all cuttings from last year’s plants and they’re mostly in containers.
If the wet season drags on maybe start tomatoes from seed, but don’t plant them out until the rains subside.
Heritage/ Larger Tomatoes
Larger tomatoes are harder for us to grow than cherry tomatoes but they definitely prefer the cooler drier months. I’d be starting tomatoes from seed about now and planting them out when the wet season is over.
Pineapples
Our pineapples grow year round and we just leave them to grow pups and multiply. By May its quite likely that the leaves will be starting to turn red in preparation for flowering. We normally harvest pineapples around Christmas, summer.
Sweet Potato
Kale
Kale does better as a winter crop for us in the tropics. In May I can start kale from seed, under cover, to plant out into garden beds once the wet season eases up and temperatures drop. If we plant around 20 kale plants, we can have 1 kale meal every other day through winter. I’d love to have space to grow more! It’s a great green veg staple, along with green beans (bush beans) and lettuce, through the coming cooler months.
Rocket
Radish
Silver Beet
Melons
Passion Fruit
Dragon Fruit
Cucamellons
The cucamellons are still growing and still flowering, but not setting fruit. I think they don’t get enough sun at the moment. The sun has moved to the other side of the house. Luckily, they’re in a pot, so I’ll move them to a sunnier spot. These plants gave us hundreds of fruit in October into early November. Over-ripe ones have fallen and I think, are growing. But I haven’t eaten a cucamelon in weeks.
Mint
Very happy
Mother of Herbs
This fabulous herb grew insanely fast in the hot and wet, swamping many of the other plants in its (slightly) raised bed. Once the wet was over I got out there and started chopping it back. Throughout the wet season I’ve been drying this plant, also known as Indian or Cuban oregano. We use it to make “sleepy tea” and it really does knock us out! It tastes pretty much like oregano too, so we also use it in pasta and pizza sauces.
Lemon Grass
Lemongrass grows strongly through the warmer months, only slowing down in winter (July). By May it may be starting to flower. You can harvest from your lemongrass clump at any time of year. Check out our ways to use lemongrass here. We also have a post on how to grow lemongrass.
Pigeon Peas
I planted pigeon pea seeds directly into the ground in October and November, at the start of the hot, wet summer. They are now taller than the house and are in flower. I’m really stunned by these plants, the leaves are soft and velvety and the yellow and red flowers are beautiful. I’m so glad I planted them.
Pidgeon peas are lentils or split peas, so harvesting and processing is really labour intensive as we found with the mung beans. I bet they make great chicken food! The green leaves are good animal fodder and of course, as legumes they are nitrogen fixers and great permaculture gild members.
I plant pigeon peas as part of a multi-species ornamental hedge to screen out neighbours.
Courgettes (Zucchini)
I’ve started courgettes from seed in May and transplanted them out to raised beds. If it’s still very hot and wet they won’t do well. It might be best to wait a little longer before starting them from seed, depending on how long the wet season lasts that year. During the wet season the female flowers (if they form) probably won’t be pollenated.
Sage
Still happy
Spring Onions (Scallions)
Celery
I grew celery tops from seed and from store-bought. I use the tops in cooking. The heat and wet of our summer, the wet season, will kill off some, but not all, celery plants. It struggles through the wet season but once the rains stop it grows well. Depending on when the wet season stops (sometime it rains until June), we can have useable celery in May. May may be a good time to start celery from seed, under-cover, away from the rain. You can plant it out when the weather improves.