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Sugar cane anyone?


The Silent Seed

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I got a bunch of sugarcane from one of our members who was offering them for sale here some months ago. They have really taken off! I am really enjoying them. Who else here enjoys growing them? 

Couple generic questions - do they spread? If so, how? Runners? Rhizomes? Or do they just make clumps? How tall do they get? 

Are all sugarcanes edible?

Best, Jude 

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I like growing it at our place in the Keys, it makes a nice informal screen and in that location most importantly it comes back very quickly after extended and violent saltwater inundation (Irma). The problem with it is that, as it gets older, the rhizomes start snaking around all over at ground-level (sometimes just above), they can be a bit of a tripping hazard, the old leaves start looking dried-up and nasty, etc. They are fairly easy to clean up--remove old leaves starting at the bottom and just yank down on them to remove, until you're up at the green leaves. You will need gloves if you don't want to tear up your skin. If you can keep them restrained and cleaned, they have a nice quality. The old leaves do make an excellent mulch. I grow the purple-stem form there and the cane-juice is quite refreshing and fun as a novelty.  But in Mass I don't know what you're going to be able to do with it. It is kind of like a huge multiplying corn plant and I'm sure even with heavy mulching the rhizomes couldn't survive a winter. You'd have to grow it in the ground, lift some safety pieces for winter greenhousing, then plant out again each summer. If you like it, try it!

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Michael Norell

Rancho Mirage, California | 33°44' N 116°25' W | 287 ft | z10a | avg Jan 43/70F | Jul 78/108F avg | Weather Station KCARANCH310

previously Big Pine Key, Florida | 24°40' N 81°21' W | 4.5 ft. | z12a | Calcareous substrate | avg annual min. approx 52F | avg Jan 65/75F | Jul 83/90 | extreme min approx 41F

previously Natchez, Mississippi | 31°33' N 91°24' W | 220 ft.| z9a | Downtown/river-adjacent | Loess substrate | avg annual min. 23F | Jan 43/61F | Jul 73/93F | extreme min 2.5F (1899); previously Los Angeles, California (multiple locations)

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Thank you Michael, for your input! 

I grow everything in a tropical plant house, and they have been growing like weeds, literally, and I look forward to them maturing. 

Thanks, again! 

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Silent Seed,

That is sugarcane growing in the Glades between Pahokee and Canal Point, Fl. It is a large agricultural commodity grown in this area of Palm Beach County, Fl.

I pulled off the road when I saw a rather large Nile Monitor Lizard (5footer) to take a picture but he was gone in a flash and I took a shot of this cane field, which seems never ending. Florida is the largest grower of sugarcane in the US, primarily limited to PB County. Easy to research. Best 

What you look for is what is looking

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We grow it here in our yards, black tastes the best for chewing the stems IMO. If you've never done it, you just whack off a chunk of stem then bite off a piece & chew it for the sugary flavor & spit out the woody part. There's commercial fields of the green type growing just a mile or so west of me.

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1 hour ago, bubba said:

Silent Seed,

That is sugarcane growing in the Glades between Pahokee and Canal Point, Fl. It is a large agricultural commodity grown in this area of Palm Beach County, Fl.

I pulled off the road when I saw a rather large Nile Monitor Lizard (5footer) to take a picture but he was gone in a flash and I took a shot of this cane field, which seems never ending. Florida is the largest grower of sugarcane in the US, primarily limited to PB County. Easy to research. Best 

The sugarcane industry around Okeechobee ("Big Sugar" as all of us in Florida "lovingly" call it) has become an ecological nightmare, devastating the canal system (the heavily publicized green slime cyanobacteria crisis the last several years) and ruining Florida Bay and all the way down to the reef with algae blooms. A friend of mine who is a commercial marine-life collector and on the Marine Fisheries Council tells me he has never (in nearly 40 years) seen so many herbivorous fish (especially Tangs) and invertebrates in the ocean as there are currently on and around the reef. The amount of nutrients deluging the waterways is outrageous, but apparently there is little desire to stop it, nor to convert to a more friendly organic way of farming it (e.g., cover cropping). A terrible shame, IMHO, especially when there are intelligent ways to farm virtually any crop without inflicting damage on the ecosystem, yet the bottom line seems to always win out. Cane sugar production is also very affected by crazy tariffs enacted in the past to protect the sugar-beet industry (the most common sugar producer in the USA)...similar to the way the fruit we know as a tomato was "declared" a vegetable by the Supreme Court in 1893 to protect the U.S. industry. Also in Louisiana, where vast amounts of sugarcane are grown, the burning of the fields is incredibly polluting and disgusting if you are unlucky enough to be located nearby, but the practice is heavily protected by the industry. I wonder if they burn the fields at Okeechobee, or are perhaps forced to do something more eco-friendly?

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Michael Norell

Rancho Mirage, California | 33°44' N 116°25' W | 287 ft | z10a | avg Jan 43/70F | Jul 78/108F avg | Weather Station KCARANCH310

previously Big Pine Key, Florida | 24°40' N 81°21' W | 4.5 ft. | z12a | Calcareous substrate | avg annual min. approx 52F | avg Jan 65/75F | Jul 83/90 | extreme min approx 41F

previously Natchez, Mississippi | 31°33' N 91°24' W | 220 ft.| z9a | Downtown/river-adjacent | Loess substrate | avg annual min. 23F | Jan 43/61F | Jul 73/93F | extreme min 2.5F (1899); previously Los Angeles, California (multiple locations)

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@mnorell, they do burn sugar fields around Lake Okeechobee. Whenever we have crossed to Palm Beach through Belle Glade we usually saw the smoke of burning fields to the south and scorched earth along the highway to the north. 

Meg

Palms of Victory I shall wear

Cape Coral (It's Just Paradise)
Florida
Zone 10A on the Isabelle Canal
Elevation: 15 feet

I'd like to be under the sea in an octopus' garden in the shade.

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Rice stubble was burned when I was a boy (very long time ago :mrlooney:),

but this is no longer allowed in California.  The smoke would travel all the way down the Sacramento valley and pollute the Bay Area air quality.

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San Francisco, California

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It's interesting to know cane-burning is still allowed in FL. When we lived in Natchez (Mississippi), the annual burning of the fields across the river in Louisiana was quite visible and drifted right over us, and it was nothing to look forward to.

Of course crops are not the only source of plant-based smoke pollution, since people throughout the country continue to incinerate yard-waste (and unfortunately other more dangerous things) in their yards/land...and Florida is also the king of WTE (waste-to-energy) plants, with something like 20% of the nation's capacity of incinerating garbage to produce electricity. But the atmosphere is fast-moving in Florida and I suppose any smoke-pollution is quickly and blissfully out of sight, out of mind. In California, where the air (not including the breezy @Darold Petty neighborhood) is often stagnant, they long ago put an end to the once-ubiquitous backyard incineration (and from Darold's note, apparently any crop-burning). You can see a surprisingly visible layer of smog over the Bay Area if you look at the movie Vertigo, which was shot in late 1957.  I had always assumed most of that was from vehicles and other "usual" urban sources, but it never occurred to me that it could have at least partially come from agriculture along the Sacramento Delta. 

Michael Norell

Rancho Mirage, California | 33°44' N 116°25' W | 287 ft | z10a | avg Jan 43/70F | Jul 78/108F avg | Weather Station KCARANCH310

previously Big Pine Key, Florida | 24°40' N 81°21' W | 4.5 ft. | z12a | Calcareous substrate | avg annual min. approx 52F | avg Jan 65/75F | Jul 83/90 | extreme min approx 41F

previously Natchez, Mississippi | 31°33' N 91°24' W | 220 ft.| z9a | Downtown/river-adjacent | Loess substrate | avg annual min. 23F | Jan 43/61F | Jul 73/93F | extreme min 2.5F (1899); previously Los Angeles, California (multiple locations)

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I heard about some poor soul who inadvertently planted his Mary-Hootchy crop amid a large quantity of sugarcane which was later torched. Seems nobody downwind complained about the smoke. 

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8 minutes ago, Gonzer said:

I heard about some poor soul who inadvertently planted his Mary-Hootchy crop amid a large quantity of sugarcane which was later torched. Seems nobody downwind complained about the smoke. 

No complaints about the smoke, and gave them the munchies.. for sugary things,  about a half hour later.

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