Carambola Harvest

Oh yeah! We just harvested our first Carambola fruit. I’ve been eagerly awaiting this moment since 2014, when I tasted my first tree-ripened fruit.

It’s such a fascinating tree because it produces fruit at all stages throughout most of the year. From bloom to harvest, it takes a little over two months. Here’s how the fruit progressed from pea size to hand size:

-Carambola ripening. Two are almost ready to eat.

Tree-ripened fruits are like juicy sweet, tart bombs with rose and tropical floral notes. Once they turn bright yellow with thin green edges, we pluck them off the tree and let them finish ripening inside.

It doesn’t take long. In a couple of days, the yellow picks up a rosy orange hue, and the edges lose most of their green color.

Now’s the time to enjoy them because they have a short shelf life. In 24 to 48 hours:

• The fruit loses its floral notes and picks up a strange off taste
• Small tan imperfections in the skin turn a dark brown
• The greenish color disappears from the ridges

-Two-year-old Carambola tree.

Refrigerating them doesn’t slow down the process. I think it gives them an even stronger, stranger off taste.

Carambola that goes through our modern food distribution system is, at best, just okay. They’re picked way too early. And being expensive and unfamiliar to many consumers, most sit on the grocery shelf for way too long.

I’d rather eat them a little greener and mostly flavorless than eat an overripe one with that off flavor.

✨

Cheers, D 🌴🌊