Cook em: LOQUAT RECIPES
This plan would work nicely on some other fruits as well. Watching someone run down the street streaming tears after stealing apples would be priceless.
Peter Piper nicked a pack of pickled peppers?
Seriously, that sucks. For awhile my parents’ garden got pilfered (mostly of its watermelons and tomatoes) but they eventually just moved it to where neighbors and passers-by couldn’t see it or access it.
Good loquats are like a perfect synthesis of a tart tangerine and a sweet peach. Delish.
Holy shit again (as someone else said so eloquently previously).
I think after the first time I’d try to set up some sting operation with the cops.
Oh, and with the loquats I always wondered if you could boil them a bit then use a coarse strainer to seperate the pits and skin from the pulp. Then you could probably make jam/jelly out of that. I’ve wanted to try that and use the pulp as a base for a homemade hot sauce.
I had not even seen a loquat for about 50 years until I found some in a fruit shop in a new town. I bought some and they were disgusting- the second worst thing I had ever put in my mouth.
This general topic comes up once every few months, and it bears repeating: Poisoning food thieves is likely to get you arrested, and rightly so. Yeah it sucks not to give thieves what they deserve, but if you pepper or laxative foods that you expect to be stolen and eaten, that’s considered a form of assault. Don’t do it.
I’m a cutting and seed thief. I have a few ethics though: I usually nip from public plantings, and go for a smaller branch not too noticeable. In the fall it’s open season on seed pods from anything along the sidewalk. I only take a little.
I never take flowers, fruit or an attractive main stem or anything.
I used to grow extra tomatoes for my elderly landlady. She just loved vine-ripened tomatoes. I told her she could have some anyway. Her son caught her one time and yelled at her but I let him know the tomatoes are basically for her. Picking a fresh tomato right off the plant made her happy and reminded her of younger days and simpler times. How could deprive a sweet little old lady of that?
Fortunately, capsaicin is sometimes used as a natural insect repellent. So if you’re looking to repel… insects… feel free to go for it.
Thats true (except I think the rightly so thing is baloney baring actual death/serious injury).
However, you have a legit reason to spray pepper sauce on your plants. Pests and varmit control (with thieves being a sub category).
http://www.ehow.com/how_4867549_make-organic-pepper-spray-plants.html
Hell, you can even wave the American flag claiming how your saving the environment by going all green and getting rid of those evil pesticides and telling the evil chemical companies to stick it.
Or heck, just plant habaneros or ghost peppers or the Guatamalan insanity pepper and you don’t have to do anything.
Then, would that be assualt?
In defense of our beloved delicious chili lovers, let those who cannot refrain from going so far as to steal neighbor’s beloved delicious chiles, let them repent thru their burning orifices.
BTW did you know that when mammals consume pepper pepper seeds become damaged during the digestive process whereas pepper seeds in bird poops are intact. Birds do not feel the heat/pain of hot pepper. The heat/pain of pepper is directed towards mammals to protect the seeds… which many humans decided they like. (I got this from Scientific America show I believe.)
Johhny Cash:
It burns burns burns…that ring of fire…that ring of fire…
That would be up to a jury to decide.
If it can be proven that pests have not been at your plants but humans have, then a jury might decide that you were not doing it for pest control.
Except if a number of people do this, it becomes noticeable.
I have harvested seed from commercial plantings i.e. at banks, shopping malls etc. where the odds are heavily that no one (except birds maybe) will want them. Cuttings are probably going too far, certainly if it involves someone else’s garden or a botanic garden. Last year an old man actually rang our doorbell and asked if he could take seed from my cannas in a bed near the street (Mrs. J. said no because she didn’t know if I wanted them - I didn’t and wouldn’t have minded giving them away).
I suspect many gardeners at one time or another have taken seeds or cuttings under less than 100% ethical circumstances. Famous British gardener Christopher Lloyd once referred to sticky-fingered people who propagate plants from others’ gardens as taking “Irish cuttings”. I’m sure his Irish readers appreciated that. :dubious:
I can tell you bidet really helps.
I’m dubious about this statement, but I’ll confess that I may not have given them a proper chance on account of the disproportionate labor to fruit ratio.
Absolutely serious question: how do you eat the damn things? Walk me through it, step by step. Maybe there’s an easier way to get at the fruit that I’m not seeing…
You put them in your mouth, kinda chew em up, and spit out the seeds (and skin if your kinda picky), kinda like how you do with scupernog (sp?) grapes.
Oh, and for eating hot stuff…keep the toilet paper in the fridge.
I feel the same about our grapefruits. I love the trees but what the heck are we supposed to do with hundreds of grapefruits every year? I bring them to work, to relatives and put a sign on the lawn for people to help themselves. Still have to pick up pails full of rotting fruit from the ground each year.
I love loquats - but they’re not often available in the UK. The trees will grow here, but don’t fruit well because they flower in autumn and fruit in the spring. I sometimes manage to find them in little international deli shops, but they’ll be pocked with brown spots, as they also don’t travel well.
To eat them, I either peel by hand, then score several times around the pip(s) in different axes, then remove the flesh in wedges, or just cut in half and scoop out the flesh from the skin using a teaspoon.
They have to be just right - under-ripe and they’re wooly, over-ripe and they’re watery and insipid, but when they’re just right, they’re excellent. They’re also good made into a firm jam, used in the same way as membrillo.