The Tropical Fruit Forum

Yup. I'd say these seeds are still alive. -- I just got another order of fresh longan in today, again from the Hula Brothers. Decided to introduce family and friends to this fruit for the holidays. (And I even ordered a box of rambutan...  I've never eaten it, but I won't be able to get it that fresh anywhere local! That box is due in next week.)





I also decided to reduce, reuse and recycle, as my mom loves to say. I was looking into getting seed starter trays... for trays with a dome? Whew. The cost starts to hike way up there. Instead, I came up with these. Now I can even attempt to give a few trees to my friends and not have to worry about shielding them from the wind so much.


^ Used, but all washed and cleaned.


^ This is a little Dole brand plastic cup they sell grapefruit in. I drilled holes through the bottom for drainage.


^ Then I used a little cup that you might get a taste of sample food in from at the supermarket. The Dole cup fit perfectly inside to catch any excess water.


^ This is just a disposable 20oz plastic cup. I poked holes in the bottom so that there was air flow.


^ There's the finished dome. I think this'd be a great little project for a classroom. Each kiddo gets their own little dome and grows a tree (or whatever).

My guess is he missed the decimal point when he was reading the teleprompter (or someone typo-ed). Still not a good loss, either way.

I just heard on the news that the citrus farmers in Cali are talking about a $23 Billion dollar loss due to the cold spell.  Supposedly mandarins were particularly hard hit.

It's too bad you can't tell just by looking at the trees, you know? This is the best of my year-old unknown trio. Just measured it at 9" tall. I'd trimmed some of the older leaves off, since they'd had some browning from wind damage sustained over the summer.

Oscar, thanks for the tip. I wasn't terribly worried about this bunch since I hadn't been planning on growing any of them originally. I'm pretty much a newbie when it comes to gardening, and I'm very much a hands on learner. So this is an educational process for me to explore. Thank you for the pot size info! I'll start looking into what's available once I figure out how many seedlings I'll actually need to transplant. -- As for the irradiation and/or possible mutations, I'll just be happy to see seedlings. And if for some crazy reason they grow to the point where they actually start to fruit for me, in a pot, indoors, in Michigan... I'll be happy with whatever fruit I get. It's not just about the fruit for me here anyway. It's also about the green. Lack of green depresses me. I'd be dealing with a severe case of "Winter Blues" were it not for my little tropical fruit tree forest.

^ The current view from my bedroom window. ^

Doglips, the problem I've run into with the longan I can find at my Asian marts is that A) they are already getting old, and B) there is no indication of what cultivar they are. My original three trees, I honestly don't know what they are. I narrowed down the field of possibilities to just a few, but there's still no sure way to find out.

starling, if you have the space, it can be fun to try and grow a few seeds. I always love the color of newly sprouted seedlings. Such a lovely reddish hue. If you are a serious grower though, I know people say that in order to secure the same fruit, you need a graft rather than a seed. But I'd like to think mother nature has developed some of her own gems with just seeds. I'm willing to give her a shot. 

Leo, I'm keeping my fingers crossed. 

So the first trio of longan trees I started growing last year were rather unintentional. I had eaten the fruit, spit the seeds into a paper towel, then tucked it all into a plastic zip lock bag to show it to my kids later. When I finally remembered to go back and get them, I was surprised to find they had started growing. And thus, my obsession with tropical fruit trees began. 

That first bunch of seeds had not been cleaned in any special way and still had that soft mushy top you find on the white area of the seed. I used wet paper towel and a clear plastic bowl to house them in so I could watch their progress. I was constantly wiping off gray mold from the tops every few days or so, and switching out paper towel with clean ones when it got too icky looking. Finally I decided to put them in a little seed starter dome kit with soil. The seed growth was sort of an ivory color to a light brownish color (similar to the first photo posted below). And though I still have three of these trees today, I don't think they are as healthy as they could have been.

So for this experiment, I started with two large zip-lock bags. Both are filled with my potting soil and have been kept moist.

The seeds I put into the first bag went directly in after I was done eating the fruit. I had to dig around the bag, which does not smell so nice anymore (sort of like dirty socks), to find a few that looked decent. Many of them had the fuzzy gray mold on the tops like my original seeds had. I am not wiping any of these seeds off. My motto for this bag is: only the strong survive (since I have very limited space, and wasn't really planning on adding a ton more trees right now anyway!) 


      ^ Unclean Seeds ^
            (First Bag)

The seeds in the second bag, I scraped off all of the mushy white tops, rinsed them well with cool water, and tossed them in. The growth coming out of 95% of these is pretty darned white. There has been little to no mold, and there is no smell.


       ^ Clean Seeds ^
          (Second Bag)

After roughly a week and a half in the zip-lock bags, I've taken the healthiest looking ones from each and have put them into little starter domes. The goal is to see which grow faster and which grow healthier. -- And yes, I did put some air holes in the plastic bag. Though the store-bought seed starter dome does not have any, it is not air tight.



 I also decided to do another small set of seeds using the wet paper towel method again. I did clean these guys off, but not as well as the ones I had done for the zip-lock bag. So you can see what happens to the white top of the seeds... it first turns dark gray or brown, and then starts getting a lighter colored, and sometimes hairy, mold thing going. But, they are still growing. I will clean these guys off at my discretion. This lot was mainly to help me see visually where the other seeds are (hopefully) in their growth. These guys are a little more ivory/cream colored than my super clean, washed seed growth.




NOTE: The fruit that these seeds came from were irradiated before I received them. So for those of you that worry irradiation will kill seeds... apparently not always! These are Biew Kiew Longan.

Obviously this will be a slow paced thread, and I will make all updates to my experiments here when there is anything new to report.




Edited to Add: What size starter tray would you guys use for each tree? (If and when they reach that point where I want to move them into a little bit bigger surroundings.)

Actually, the bag didn't have any holes in it. And I am currently trying this method with longan seeds from my fruit order from the Hula Brothers. Dirt, no holes in a sealed plastic bag. I'll transplant the healthiest in a few days to a more breathable container, but they are definitely still alive and growing. Is longan is just another super easy seed?

Edited to clarify: Biew Kiew seeds

I know it might be expensive and a pain in the butt... but has anyone ever tried vacuum sealing the fruit almost directly after picking it before they ship out?

It's gotta be real.  Here's the same guy with a giant apple from the same farm...

The lighting on your apple is all wrong. 

Actually... I'm quite good at spotting photoshop fakes. If it is fake, its a really good fake. There is a shadow on the ground in front of the man that matches the fruit... and all of the lighting seems to be coming from the same direction, which tells me that either it was a master photoshopper, or it's a real picture. Too bad it's so grainy/noisy... but I gather that it was probably taken with a cell phone camera.

     I may have fallen in love with longan, jackfruit and mangosteen while I was in Thailand... but there was one fruit I tried that just seemed so different at the time that I'm not sure I really gave it a chance. I decided to look it up last night and I figured out what it was: The Makok Sapodilla (http://tinyurl.com/yekgsy)

     Perhaps the one I tried was not quite ripe yet, as they do pick a lot of their fruits early over there. Or perhaps it was the fact that in my mind, the color brown is associated with dried out old fruit that you wouldn't want to eat. It didn't look like any of the fruit I had grown up with, which I now realize was only a tiny sliver of what's actually available in the world. I am embarrassed that just for a moment, my "Silly Foreigner" face squeaked through.

     The fruit seller didn't speak English, but gladly offered me a sample fruit from his wares. He could not describe it to me before I bit in. I don't know exactly what I was expecting, but it certainly didn't taste like any apple, pear, or orange I had ever eaten. And then I did the worst thing possible... I pulled out a tissue from my pocket and spit the mouthful of fruit into it. Not wanting to insult the man further, I bought two huge bags of his mangosteen and was on my way back to the little village I was staying in.

     The lady with whom I was staying had once owned both a gas station and a 7-11, the remnants of which were still standing. The shelter that once stood over gas pumps had been converted into a shelter for picnic tables. The 7-11, a single room structure with one wall made completely of windows, ended up becoming my bedroom. My bed had once been a rickety old picnic table, but was cleaned up and adorned with a thin mattress pad, pillows and a blanket. A short walk next door would lead you to the bathroom... where I got to experience showering via a large stone jar filled with water, and a small plastic pan with which to rinse myself. -- Is it shocking that I actually really enjoyed this experience? 

     It was at this place that I was introduced to another exotic fruit: The Rose Apple. This tree was growing just outside of my bedroom. I could open a small window on the left wall and reach my hand out to touch it. Though it was off season, her tree was bearing fruit. She had me retrieve a long stick with a basket on one end from her garage, and encouraged me to try and pick some.

     After hooking several into the basket, we sat down at a small stone table beneath the canopy of her fruit trees. I was probably expecting to taste something like a pear when I bit into this fruit, mainly because of its shape. The fact that it was pink just intrigued me. Sadly they weren't quite ripe yet either, and there was very little flavor as a result... but I didn't spit this one out.

     Will I ever eat another Makok Sapodilla or Rose Apple? I'm not a quitter. I think I would like to try them both again. Preferably when ripe.

I am so ready to try them all! I know I can find rambutan locally, but I have never seen red (or yellow) ones. By the time they hit our shelves, they are brown and dried out. -- I haven't seen lychee, and I definitely haven't seen pulasan.

I'm having one of those "moments" where I can't believe I never thought to call around to local international markets to see what they offer. I know what I'll be doing all next week.