The Tropical Fruit Forum

For eating out of hand and cooking, I prefer Saba over Hua Moa. Saba is excellent dried too. It is a VERY tall plant though.

IMG_9057 by SulcataGrove, on Flickr

IMG_2880 by SulcataGrove, on Flickr

My favorite all time is Maqueno, but I have not seen it available in the US. Some say it is Maia Maoli which Going Bananas has listed on their site but has not had available when I check.
I have someone holding a Maqueno for me in Ecuador. I need to figure out where to get a phyto down there and fly back through an airport that is more likely to not automatically destroy the corm.

There is someone that sells Inga vulpina on eBay from time to time (high price and I think in the US) I haven't seen seeds available. I have been looking for this too - flowers have nice pink/red stamens.

Are you bringing the bananas?

Thank you! Hope someone chimes in about when to harvest.

I see you grow pitogo.  Please keep us posted when you get the chance to try it.  What type of strawberries are you growing?

I wish I knew what varieties of strawberries we have. Our children went to Earthbox in Palmetto last fall and tasted the berries in their pre-planted boxes and purchased the boxes with the sweetest and most flavorful berries.
With the Pitogo, the fruit handled the winter very well. We lost the fruit in Blue Java and Pisang Jaribuaya, but the Pitogo fruit (and plant) look as if we had no winter at all. We live in a pocket that reached 32 for an hour one morning.

Fruiting/Blooming in our yard:

Mango
Dot
Harvest Moon
Valencia Pride
Pickering
Malika
Lemon Zest (loaded with little fruit)
Cogshall
Southern Blush
Peach Cobbler
Pina Colada
Maha Chanok
Kesar
Glenn
Nam Doc Mai
Coconut Cream
(Eldon, Fruit Punch, and Sweet Tart were flowering but we removed the flowers early on)

Lychee
Sweetheart
HakIp
Brewster
No Mai Tze
(still no blooms on our Ohia)

Sapodilla
Alano
Silas Wood
Tikal

Bananas
Pitogo - fruit almost ready
Dare from GRIN - not true Dare, something in the Pome family
Dwarf Orinoco
Orinoco
Raja Puri - fruit almost ready

Passion Fruit
Fredricks
Possum Purple
Sulcata Red
Panama Red

Avocado
Daisy
Ooh La La (Super Haas)

Figs
Idlewood
Nazarti
DiRito
Vito
Black Mission


Ross Sapote
Miracle Fruit - always covered in flowers/fruit
Longan - Big Jim
Loquat - Bradenton with mature fruit
Grumichama
All Spice
Yerba Mate in full bloom
Painters Red Wax Jambu blooming but will remove flowers
White Sapote - Redlands
Key Lime
Naranjilla - ripe fruit
Several grocery store pineapple tops with fruit
Mulberry
Easy Peel Sugar Apple
Florida Sweet Barbados Cherry
Jamaican Cherry
Sunshine Blue Blueberries
Lots of Strawberries

Yes, there is a loquat and a longan named Big Jim

Great fruit tree collection! Thank you for sharing. Our coconut cream doesn't set many fruit either.

I have two seedlings but am in Sarasota. We will also be at the Manatee Rare Fruit Council fruit tree sale on May 22nd and will bring them if we still have them available.

Yeah...I'm done with small lots of seed permits.  Just got a call from the inspection station in Miami.  They finally have my seeds and now say they need a Fedex or UPS account to send them on to me.  The seeds were sent regular mail coming into USPS.  They should now put my address onto the package and USPS will forward on to me at no additional expense.  The person down there doesn't understand this and run off to get clarification.  I can already tell this isn't going to go well for me.

They just called me back.  Making me sending a self addressed envelope with postage down to them...then they will send me the seeds.

We were told that the USDA forms sent to us were for Fed Ex only and not USPS. Apparently, they only mailed those forms. We have been unable to obtain the forms for USPS. We were told by the inspector that is what has been causing problems with small seed packets. We were not sent the correct forms.

Quote from: Aaron on January 26, 2016, 01:31:17 PM

gunnar you need to adopt a cat. just make sure its spayed/neutered

I know right?  My wife is allergic  , but c'mon, this is fruit we are talking about!    I may need to find a way to keep one around the yard.  I actually saw a neighbor's cat climbing my banana stalks last night, so maybe with a better strategy (catnip?), I can lure them to the yard

I am allergic to cats (scored highest possible on allergy testing). We have 5 outdoor cats on squirrel patrol. I have no problems with allergies. We found the lean, male adult cats from the animal shelter are the best at controlling squirrels/rats/moles.

If you look at the pic at http://www.floridahillnursery.com/banana-tree-plants-c-3/musa-ice-cream-banana-tree-p-54
my fruit looks exactly like that.  Slight blue tinge to it, but not as much as the Blue Java that is really blue.  I stuck a blue and green piece of paper down next to the fruit I just cut off today and took a pic.  The fruit has a slight blue tinge, but not as blue as the Blue Java you sometimes see.

BTW, does anyone in Central Florida have a pup of the "really Blue Java"?  I would be interested in getting one to compare with what I have.

Your plants looked great!
I have blue Java in Sarasota. They taste very different than namwa. You may want to search ''Florida Hill' on the forum (and bananas.org)

Nice looking fruits, Geo.

you grow yellow passionfruit (P. edulis flavacarpa) in SW FL?  I thought they were a PITA to fruit here.  Do you hand-pollinate them?

I heard someone say that the purple doesn't do well here, but never the yellow. Our plants are covered in honeybees (which I guess aren't the best pollinators due to small size) and ants. I did hand pollinate each flower of the yellow with its own pollen this last time and the fruits were heavier.
The issue I have with the purple is crown root rot. My husband grafted possum purple onto the yellow and onto a red flowered ornamental to see how those do. I have one purple cultivar that seems much less prone to crown rot than possum purple (where we are anyway). The production of our purple fell after three years, so we replanted. Year 2 was the heaviest production. We have only had the yellow in the ground a year.