Hello all!... my name is Miguel and I live in Portugal, near the city of Aveiro (latitude 40º40' north) on Portuguese northwest coast. I do follow this forum for some time now but never had the courage to jump in... until now!
I live some 20 km inland from the Atlantic coast and normal climate here is 9b but my garden is at river valley floor and that gives me a 9a climate because it accumulates a lot of cold by drainage effect;
There I have a 200 sq. meters, 4.5 meters tall, unheated greenhouse dedicated solely to "rare stuff" and that gives me probably a 9b inside the greenhouse with the added benefit of the extra heat.
I've been collecting rare stuff since 2005/2006 when I bought my place and became interested on this... My first and most important supplier was my very good Brazilian friend Helton Josué that I believe most of you know well... I have the pleasure and honor to have his book "Coleccionando frutas-Vol 1" autographed with a special dedicatory where he treats me as a "colaborador"!... that’s one of my little treasures of this hobby!... but since then I have exchanged a lot of different stuff with a lot of nice people... most of them are now good friends.
My experience so far has demonstrated that the myrtaceae family is the one that thrives and rewards me the most on my conditions and that's my main focus for the moment... Here I have acid soil and acid water and that’s an added bonus for this particular family myrtaceae... In fact my place is near the city who claims to be the Portuguese Blueberry capital...
I have also some plants at my father’s house that is some 60 km south from here where the climate is 9b but water and soil are slightly alkaline.
Just to give you an idea of the different conditions I am dealing with I can tell you that at my place near Aveiro I have killed by freezing outside the GH several cherimoyas, macadamias, white sapotes and even one half meter tall Jaboticaba ... inside the greenhouse all these things thrive well and I even can get to have litchis, logans and even mangos (mangos do suffer a lot on wintertime)... at my father's place it's possible to have cherimoyas and white sapotes outside without problems... I hope this gives you all a clear idea of my conditions... anyway this forum seems the right place to report successes and failures and exchange ideas and questions because as far as I’ve seen this is the only place where there are talks about rare and obscure stuff that I’m actually growing by myself by the "test and failure" method because there aren't many detailed information out there...
I intend to gradually test and report which ones of these rare and obscure stuff can handle the 9a climate outside and this forum seems a nice place to report and discuss results... hope this would be my little contribution to mankind, or at least to the mankind fraction that likes different fruits and flavors and have a climate with colder temperatures than minus 3 º Celsius!... to me in fact this -3º Celsius seem a very important border to deal with specially when we are talking about rare myrtaceae stuff...
I'm trying to attach some photos just to document what I am saying here (hope they came out ok...first time here...still learning)
Some rare stuff from my little collection and some status info:
Diferent guabirobas (Campomanesias spp.):
Campomanesia schechtendaliana var. rugosa (fruiting already)
Campomanesia adamantium (flowering now) and Campomanesia cambessedeana ( Lozenzi puts them together on the “Blue Book” but Helton used to have them separated)
Campomanesia xanthocarpa (guabiroba)
Campomanesia xanthocarpa var.littoralis (guabiroba da praia/restinga)... fruiting
Campomanesia sessiliflora (flower a lot but no fruits yet)
Campomanesia guazumifolia (sete-capotes)... fruiting
Campomanesia phaea (cambuci)… growing
Other rare eugenias, psidiums and Myrciaria/Plinia that I am growing here:
Eugenia anomala ( Helton use to call it Hexaclamys tomentosa)... fruited last year for the 1ºtime
Eugenia myrchiantes ( or Hexaclamys edulis)...fruiting now
Psidium guineense ( have 2 diferent ones)...both fruiting since 2012
Psidium longiopetalum (araçã-goiaba)...fruiting since 2012.
Psidium australe var. suffruticosum… fruiting
Eugenia calycina ( Cerrado cherry - fruiting since 2012... I've cracked the Cerrado Curse on this one)
Eugenia pitanga ( Cerrado pitanga...several diferent ones... fruiting since 2011... no Cerrado Curse)
Eugenia klotchiana ( Cerrado pear...2 diferent ones... one flowering for the first time now...hoping to be the first to fruit this one at mainland Europe)
Eugenia negrensis... fruiting
Eugenia florida... fruiting
Eugenia speciosa (laranjinha do mato)... flowering now.
Eugenia selloi... fruiting
Eugenia blasthanta
Eugenia candolleana
Eugenia neonitida (Pitangatuba)
Eugenia pyriformis / Eugenia uvalha…uvaias (round, pear, several diferent ones fruiting)
Myrciaria delicatula (Cambui amarelo/ yellow)
Plinia edulis (cambucá)
Plinia rivularis
Jaboticabas ( M. jaboticaba ; M. cauliflora ; M. trunciflora ... waiting for the hybrid Jaboticaba to arrive...)
Things that I've fruited already but eliminated because of terrible bad taste:
Psidium myrtoides
Psidium eugenifolia
Of course I also have grumixamas, cherries of rio grande, pitombas, pitangas, guavas, strawberry guavas, feijoas but theses don’t seem to be so rare anymore…
Looking forward to exchange some ideas and thoughts with all you fruit nuts.
Miguel
