The Coconut Diaries Part II

This is part II of my coconut diaries. Yesterday I detailed how I harvested some coconuts from the trees growing in my back yard.

After I cleaned the coconuts, I had this pile of husks and shells on my patio.

I decided to spread it around as mulch in the gardens. Here I put some near a pineapple top that I planted.

I spread some over the patch of dirt below to act as a sunscreen because I planted some seeds in the rocky soil.
In my blog entry entitled "Johnny Tangerine Seed", I detailed how I planted seeds from fruits that I eat that normally woudl go in the garbage. Under the pile above, I planted the seeds show below. One is a pomegranate, the large one is a sapadilly and the little brown one is a sugar apple.
I spread all of the husks and I was quite proud of my coconut mulch.

I had just come in from the office this afternoon and found our Haitian gardener cleaning up all of my coconut husk mulch and putting it in the garbage. You can't win for trying to be a tree-hugger recycler in these parts. I guess I will throw out my Birkenstock sandals and go and cut down a rain forest somewhere.

The Coconut Diaries Part 1

Regular blog readers will recall that I have my own crop of coconuts in my back yard. Pictured above is one of the trees on the north side of our yard. I had no way of getting them down, except waiting for them to fall.

Well, this week they turned all brown and three of them fell. I wondered if they were still edible in the brown stage. There was only one thing to do -- fetch my machete and open them.

Compared to the green state, when they are brown, they are incredibly fibrous. Normally in the green state, I open them with a large kitchen knife. It took me about ten minutes to open one with a machete. The brown coconut inside looked promising.

I took the coconut inside and opened it using little taps from the back of a large kitchen knife around the pointed end (not the end with the three eyes). The end just pops off. I tasted the coconut water. It was delicious. It was sweeter than the coconut water in the green stage. And the coconut itself (the white copra) was creamy and delicious.

Coconut is incredibly good for you. It is healthy and full of nutrients. I shredded one entire coconut into a fruit salad. The other two, I bagged and put in the fridge.

Part two of the Coconut Diaries is coming -- probably tomorrow. It details what I did with the husks.

So far, I am pleased with my crop of coconuts, but when they all fall, I think that I will have more than a year's supply of coconut.