This past Saturday Esther, Jimmy, and I went to the Huertos Casero (or Home Garden) festival. The festival takes place in Gurabo, a city about an hour south of Rio Grande, and happens only once a year. The purpose of the festival is to serve as a learning grounds for areas in education related to horticulture, compost, small-scale agriculture, and pest management. Vendors at the festival sell all kinds of agriculture related products. There are fertilizers, trees saplings, flowers, seeds, all kinds of tropical fruit, and much more! Esther and Jimmy usually go to the festival to purchase more trees for the farm; this year they had a specific interest in purchasing durian trees. They have a specific vendor they like to go to named Juan. Juan grows hundreds of fruit trees on his property in a southern part of Puerto Rico. Juan has trees of dragon fruit, rambutans, mangosteens, longan fruit, jaboticaba, durians, and much more. Juan grows his trees so well that he sells their saplings at festivals across Puerto Rico; he also hosts an annual meeting at his farm for “Fruit Hunters” to share and discuss the tropical fruits they are growing and interested in.
In addition to agriculture products, there is also a huge market with tons of fresh produce. There were watermelons, pineapples, mangoes, all of kinds of citrus, bananas, and more. In terms of bananas, the most frequent variety was actually Plantains. Gurabo is a plantain growing region and recently passed laws making it illegal for anyone to pick plantains from trees in people’s yards. Although plantains were the most common bananas I saw, there were also Cavendish and Niño bananas, which were new to me. Here are a few pictures from the festival:
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