At our farm we have twenty eight grown up jackfruit trees and almost weekly we harvest at least one big fruit. Normally it weighs within 8kg to 30kg. You need to have special skill to harvest the big fruit and ensure that it doesn’t drop to the ground otherwise the fruit will get smashed up and tend to rot before its ready for cutting.
Harvest jackfruit from the tree, please view this video. -
Planting from seed, jackfruit trees are fast growers and starts flowering in three to four years. Good thing about jackfruit trees is the lifespan is long, one can grow till 100 years old although productivity decline as the tree grows older. Once flowering it takes another 90 days before the fruit is mature enough to harvest.
Do you know that the flowers are clustered and consist of male and female version? The male is sometimes called “fake” and the female version “real” as the female flowers are the one turns into fruit once its pollinated.
How to know if the jackfruit is ripe and ready to be eaten?
Normally the fruit skin is yellowish and when squeeze lightly, you feel the softness of the outer skin. Next, it gives unique smell that is strong and powerful. Just to confirm, one can use a steel chopstick and poke inside the fruit to confirm the sweet smell exudes out from the ripe fruit.
Jackfruit can be eaten raw and besides eating raw, young jackfruit is very popular for vegans. The flesh of the fruit has the texture of meat and it has nutrients of vitamins and protein. There are many recipes for vegetarian food using the flesh of the jackfruit to cook like pork sandwiches. It easily absorb other flavors like tofu as such if you are an adventurous and creative cook, one can cook a storm out of this fruit.