Prepping the land
When I bought the farm, it was an old citrus grove that had been left fallow for a couple of years. The citrus trees were all dead, having been killed by citrus greening. What was left was row after row of 10-12’ tall citrus trees with long grass and weeds growing all around them. Before I could do anything, I needed to get these trees out of the way so I could cut down the weeds and prep the land for passion fruit. I’m the kind of person who likes to do everything myself, but for this I knew my limits and hired out some help. I had a pair of experts come out with their excavator and skid steer and within two days they ripped up all of the trees, transported them to the back end of the property, and ground them up into wood chips. Wasn’t cheap, but it was a huge relief to have that done so I could move on to the next phase, which was setting up my PEQ (post-entry quarantine) area.
What initially drove me to starting a passion fruit farm was the excellent fruit I had while living in Taiwan. I decided that if I was going to provide the best fruit possible, I was going to need to grow the best, and that meant importing plants from Taiwan. First, I had to set aside a fenced in portion of the property to act as a quarantine area for the plants. According to the USDA, any live plant material of this variety brought into the US needs to be placed in a quarantine for a period of two years, where it can be monitored to ensure no pests or diseases are introduced. This meant renting a U-Haul truck and driving to a number of hardware stores to get the 8’ T-posts and netting I needed. Of course, thinking I could do this all on my own, I bought a manual post driver, thinking that the loose Florida sand would be easy to drive posts into. Yeah, I was wrong. You wouldn’t think it at first but lifting that 20 lb. metal tube over your head over and over again to pound that T-post into the ground is actually pretty tiring. Especially in the Florida heat, and even more especially when you have 60 posts to drive. But I got it done and passed my APHIS inspection. I am now cleared to import!
