We have now few Custard apple trees in my native and this is the season when they grow. The trees are just beside my house on a govt plot, and are visible from my window as well as roof top. Usually in native villages, whoever, sees it, takes away. Not because its on a govt plot, sometimes they jump inside our campus and take it too. When I came here a month back, I saw the fruit coming up. Since it's rainy season, the area is full of other useless trees, so much so that, its invisible up to 2-3 feet and people are scared to come inside that. I even saw snakes couple of times. But that gives protection for us - I thought, it would help us get the fruits this time. So one fine day, I cleaned up those trees next to my house. It was not very difficult ( as the soil is wet), but it still took couple of hours.
And now we are getting the benefit - a lot of organic custard apples. The reason, I tell them Organic is that the ones that we get from market is ripen using chemicals. They procure it when its raw, and then put in cartoons and spray and its ready in 2 days and sold it in market. And may be the reason they do that, is they do not procure the mature ones, that would ripen themselves. There is a indicator for the mature ones - as you can see in the above photos, a white layer comes up in the mature ones. That indicates, if you procure them and keep it, it will ripen in 2-3 days. The more the white, the better it is, but there is a danger - the squirrels won't spare them.
When I was a kid, there were lot of these trees - so much so that, every day, we could eat 10 - 15 for couple of months. That time, we used to bring them and keep it in paddy husks which we used to get for this purpose only. That's the organic way of ripening them. With time, man has become its own enemy relying on chemicals so much. Little they realize the consequence of this - the alarming increase of cases of cancer. We are what we eat as someone said.
I would not cite the health benefits of it, because everything is available if you search, but this is super delicious. If you take 3 - 4 of them, then it will keep you hassle free for the day. And it has anti cancer benefits as well and a lot of other health benefits. We do not need to take care of these trees at all - they just grow up themselves. Unfortunately people cut them to free up space and that is how we are seeing less of them. This year, we are trying to throw the seeds at various places, so that more of them come up. It would take at least 5-6 years for the tree to mature on its own and give fruits. But no harm in trying, to do this every year till we have enough of them.
The squirrels are smarter than me on few occasions. Every alternative day I go and leave the ones which are just about to ripen in 4-5 days. But may be they smell it or something, they scratch and start eating them. They might have a natural instinct for this to be smarter than us.馃榾 So its a fight...
I uploaded a lot of photos from the phone, then while deleting one of them, many are gone. Anyone knows, how to see to them ?
