Semi-pit tunnel greenhouse update - lots of figs and bananas

This semi-pit tunnel greenhouse is on its way to becoming just a fig house.  I've been moving all of the bananas out and into a new, larger greenhouse that I've just built.  There is still a strip of Dwarf Orinoco bananas remaining, though, and they've currently got 5 bunches of fruit hanging.

Kansas Fig Orchard update

Here are some pics of the banana and fig orchard from last September 4th-14th:

To protect the figs during the winter, I bent them over and mounded topsoil over them.  It didn't work very well, though: all of them died down to the ground except for the Hardy Chicago, which had about 18" of trunk survive.  I left a couple of Dwarf Orinoco bananas out to see what would happen, and they died all the way down to the corm, so they didn't even send out pups in the spring.

Thankfully, all of the figs have grown back.  The Hardy Chicago, Marseilles Black (MBVS), and Celeste are all carrying figlets that are on pace to start ripening in mid-September, and a couple of new additions (LSU Tiger and Vista, which is an especially vigorous strain of Violette de Bordeaux) are loaded with figs, too.  Bananas are a lost cause out there, so we're growing sweet corn in that spot instead.  Here's what the area looks like now, with the season's last planting of corn currently around 4" in height:

 
(the smaller/paler figs were just planted last week)

Black Greek - breba and main crop figs

The small Black Greek fig tree growing in the gravel growbed in our aquaponics tunnel has recently produced a couple of figs, 1 breba and 1 main crop.

The upside is that they were huge and juicy with good flavor; the downside is that they split badly and were a bit watery.  The splitting is tough to judge yet, though, since these two figs were low enough that they rested on the ground, which puts a splitting stress on the sides of the figs as gravity tries to flatten them out.

Despite the splitting, there was no souring.  The breba, which was still a bit underripe when I picked it, had a bit of a cavity and probably would have soured if I had let it fully ripen on the tree, but the main crop fig was solid throughout, so I think the main crop figs will do a good job of avoiding spoiling by denying entry to insects and moist air.  If the figs higher up off the ground can hang in the tree long enough to lose some of their water and concentrate their flavors, this could prove to be an amazing fig variety.

Here's the little Black Greek tree:

Black Greek breba fig (109 grams):

Black Greek main crop fig, visible in the tree pic above, showing its split eye (70 grams):  

Black Greek fig

Here's a Black Greek fig that is starting to ripen.  I haven't tasted this variety yet, so I'm anxious to give it a try.  It probably needs another week or so before it's ready.

I've also been picking some Hardy Chicago figs recently, but they've been pretty tasteless. Figs seem to need lots of heat and long daylight hours to produce their wonderful sweetness. The one below had a tiny bit of sweetness, maybe scoring a 4/10 compared to a summer-ripened fig:

Pineapple and Spinach

This pineapple growing in the aquaponics tunnel should be ripe soon (first pic is from October 1st, second pic is from January 23rd):

The semi-pit tunnel greenhouse is a bit cooler than the aquaponics greenhouse, so spinach and lettuce have been planted underneath the dormant figs and bananas.  Soon the ground will be covered in a lush sea of green :)

Kansas Farmers Union

We were happy to host members of the Kansas Farmers Union on December 6th.  GreenFin Gardens was chosen to highlight the "thinking outside the box" theme of this year's KFU convention. 

Here's a link to the KFU writeup: http://www.kansasfarmersunion.com/kansas-farmers-union-convenes-to-think-outside-the-box/

Hardy Chicago with ripening fruit