So, I've been searching through the distant reaches of the forum and trying to build up a list of plants which grow quickly for the new greenhouse plan (consider these as "pioneer species", some of which may later be replaced with slower-growers for more diversity / quality). There are of course two aspects to "grows quickly" - there's "reaches size quickly" and there's "fruits quickly". We need some of both.
Here's the results of my searching (all assuming "good conditions"). Please add more info where you have it (both growth rates and fruiting ages, whether from seeds or grafts), including disagreements with any of the info below. Obviously for some of these (for example, pineapples), the plants are so small that we could literally just import them in an already-fruiting state
Plants from mainland Europe could arrive after just a couple days in a truck, as there's a ferry, so I'd think "truck sized" would be the limit. For non-European sourced, I have no clue what's the max you can manage by airmail, I'll need to research that.
Anyway....
1 year to fruit:
Dragonfruit
Papayas- 2m @ 6 months
Bananas (1-2 years)
Moringa (1 years to harvest leaves (earlier if you're mean), 2 for beans. In good conditions, 1m tall in just 2mo, 3m tall in 4mo, etc. Crazy fast.)
"Grafted cacao" = 14mo (really? how big of a grafted tree?)
Dwarf ambarella (6mo)
Fig (cuttings) = 1year (really?)
Solanaceae:
* physallis
* cubiu / cocona
* naranjilla?
* probably a lot more...
Acerola (cuttings) = >1yr
Ambarella = <1years
Tamarillo = 1-2 years
Wax jambu = little over a year when grafted?
3-gallon citrus trees
Muntingia calabura / panama berry
~2 years:
Pineapple
Cambuí-roxo / rainforest plum = 2 year
Peanut butter fruit tree (1 year 8 months)
Abiu (grafted - what size?)
Miracle fruit (yeah, sounds right)
Peanut butter fruit (everyone seems to agree - 1 year 8 months was a stated time)
Dwarf grumixama (example of 1m tall and 5 fruit after 1 yr. After 2 years, in a 40cm pot, 2,1m tall with 50 fruit
Muntingia calabura / strawberry tree: 2 years to 3m with fruit.
Guava: 2 years
"Coffee sometimes"
"Grafted mango"
~3 ár:
Abiu from seed
Biriba / rollinia
Carambola: Dwarf Hawaiian, 2m @ 25gal pot = 100 fruit per year. But in larger pots?
Annonaceae:
* Sugar apple
* Cherimoya
* Guanabana
"Brandon's Red Jaboticaba"
Some Jackfruit seedlings
Grapes (...)
Said to be fast to fruit, but no time mentioned (okay, I'll admit, I could look some of these up, and probably will later this evening
Others will be harder to come by )
Santol
Roseapple
Durian
Longan (slow growing first year, fast later)
Cambodian gooseberry
Lakoocha
Thai Giant jujube? Uneven reports
Passionfruit
Jujube
Cashew
Eugenia neonitida Pitanga Tuba.
Eugenia pitanga and uniflora?
Cacao from seed?
Grows quickly, but what about fruiting?
Inga edulis (2m in year 1 is typical). Inga feuillei also fast. Also spectabilis. "inga marginata maybe"
Mammea americana (1,5m @ 1yr)
African Sausage tree. (30cm -> 2m from spring to october)
Jackalberry tree
West Indian avocado: >2m @ 1 ára. (but I understand it takes like 5yr, grafted)
"Most vines"
Bamboo obviously grows very quickly - what are some good, exotic-looking, tasty bamboos with fast growth rates? Would need a good containment approach (copper hydroxide?).
Fast growing, but not fruiting:
White sapote (10m in a couple years, but ~8 years for fruit. Deals well with shade)
Coconuts (at least early on, when they're drawing their energy from the seed. Several meters tall in short order)
So much more that could be added! And I probably will when I have a chance to go through the PFAF database (although the version I have currently is quite incomplete - the downloadable db doesn't match the site, and the people there are very unresponsive :Þ) Seriously considering writing a scraper script for their site, as after all, I did pay for the right to download the data (and will donate more if it proves useful), so they can't really complain...