The Tropical Fruit Forum

Im not looking at the leaves, I'm looking at the trunk. I only have seen one variety that has the kind of reddish tint, but I dont know the name

Dwarf Red Jamaican has a red trunk, but the plants I had were a lot redder than the unknown banana.

Where is this Fruit and Spice Park?

I've got a Meyer Lemon, a Key Lime, and a Citrus rootstock.  When I bought the rootstock, it had a navel orange twig grafted onto the top, but the twig didn't make it and the rootstock sprouted new branches below the graft.  I'm going to prune both the lemon and lime before I bring them inside for the winter, so I'll have some new twigs I could graft onto the rootstock.  The branches on the rootstock are a little under half an inch in diameter.

I've read some articles on citrus grafting, but I've never actually done it before.  Do any of you have any advice?  A technique that reliably works for you?  A grafting product (wax, tape, etc.) you can recommend?  How about any gotchas I need to avoid?

I'm requesting photos of your plants.

OK, here you go.

Satsuma Orange--showing some of the 29 green oranges


Meyer Lemon--showing one of two lemons


Mexican or Key Lime--showing this year's only lime


T.R. Hovey Papaya--showing two of the three fruits (the other got picked and eaten)


Dwarf Pomegranate--showing the very first fruit to grow on this plant along with some new flower buds


Kona Coffee--the far plant is from Kona, the nearer one is a Caturra cultivar

This Kona Coffee tree is one of the rare three-leaf mutations.

Sweet Bay Laurel


True Cinnamon


Small Leaf Tea--showing two of six seed pods to grow this year


Ginger--what could I be doing wrong?  It grows slowly even without the oregano sharing the container


Super Dwarf Cavendish Banana--no fruit yet....


Allspice/Pimento--I don't really expect to get berries.


Actually, I've got LOTS more plants, but the batteries died in my camera.  I'll try to post more pic's once they're recharged.

I live in Tennessee, so all of my tropical plants must come indoors to survive the winter.  I think the largest, practical pot size is about 24 inches/60 cm diameter--and that's mounted on casters.  The plant, container, and casters underneath must fit under a 7 foot/2 meter ceiling.  I have seen the following plants make fruit--here--in pots that size or smaller:

Satsuma Orange (Citrus unshiu) the first fruit wasn't as sweet as I would want, but this year I've got 29 oranges growing on a 3 foot/1 meter tall tree.
Meyer Lemon (Citrus x meyeri) my lemons were quite sour but had a very full flavor.  I've seen more than a dozen lemons growing at the same time.
Mexican or Key Lime (Citrus aurantifolia) small, ping-pong ball sized fruits.  I haven't tasted them, though.  I'm hoping to harvest enough for a Key Lime pie.
T.R. Hovey Papaya (Carica papaya var. 'T.R. Hovey'), Delicious and not very stringy.  It reminded me of cantaloupe.
Dwarf Pomegranate (Punica granatum var. 'nana') this plant just made its first fruit.  It's not ripe, so I haven't picked it--much less tasted it.
Kona Coffee (Coffea arabica var. 'Kona typica') I had one set seeds a few years ago. The heater in my sunroom failed; plant froze. Ugh.  Trying again now.
Sweet Bay Laurel (Laurus nobilis) OK, it's not a fruit, but I can harvest a few leaves whenever I want to cook my own spaghetti sauce.
True Cinnamon (Cinnamomum verum) I could harvest some bark, but I won't.  It doesn't grow very fast here.
Small Leaf Tea (Camellia sinensis var. sinensis) Another slow grower, but I'll harvest leaves when I bring it inside this year.
Ginger (Zingiber officinale) Glacially slow grower, but it does produce some new rhizome each year.

I hope the rest of my tropical fruit plants are simply too young to produce--so far.

If you have raised tasty tropical fruit in a container, please post your experience here.  Thanks.

Hey TNAndy, I find your experience very interesting.
Our climate is somewhat similiar (i have a climate marginally hotter than Chattanooga, in winter at least) so i think that on some degree, your experience can be useful to me.
I'm thinking about growing papayas as a vegetable since a couple of years. Basically i would like to grow in indoor during winter, and plant it outside during summer, and let it die on the next winter. And repeat this process every year, once i manage to understand the correct timing. My hope is that, if i get a flowering plant  by the time i plant it out, it can mature some fruits before the next winter kill it (much like we do with peppers). So i'd like to ask you some things;
1) How low has the minimun temperature been, in your sunroom?
2) How big was you plant when it first flowered?
3) How long did your fruit take from flowering to maturity?
4) Did you notice any problem transplanting yout plant?
Thank you. This year i have experiemented with a papaya myself and apparetly they can grow nicely in my soil, at least from may till september/october.

1) On the coldest winter nights my sunroom gets down to the lower 40's F./upper single digits Celsius.  That's a guess.  Most of my plants go dormant.  You can easily see how tall my papaya was last winter from the crowded leaf scars on the trunk.
2) The lowest fruit scar is 29 inches/0.75 meter from the soil level.  It had flowered before that, but those early flowers fell off.
3) Sorry, I didn't take notes.  It flowered last fall and I picked the first fruit on August 6.  IIRC, it was about 3 inches/8 cm tall when I bought it on June 23, 2011.
4) No, not that I recall.

It has been about a week since I planted some of the seeds from that first fruit.  I'll try to report when they sprout.

I've read about some LED grow light fixtures that emit only the wavelengths that make chlorophyll work.  They consume 90 watts versus 1000.  I don't have any experience with them, but if you're willing to roll the dice, they'd save you a lot of cash in electric bills.  They don't produce as many lumens as the metal halides, but since they only produce light the plant can use, much less of it is wasted.

I bought a "T.R. Hovey" Papaya seedling on June 23, 2011 from Wellspring Gardens on eBay.  By the end of the year, it had flowered and three fruits were starting to develop.  I waited for the oldest fruit to fully ripen on the tree before I picked it yesterday.  It was larger than a softball; smaller than a football--a little over half the size of store-bought papaya.  The rind was a deep lemon yellow and nearly all of the green specks had faded.  I almost waited too long to pick it.  It still had significant green spots last week, but by Monday the flower end was starting to go bad.

When I cut it open, I expected red flesh, but this fruit was golden yellow through and through.  Store-bought papaya seems to be packed with seeds, but the seeds were more sparse in mine.  All the seeds appear to be fully mature.

It was delicious.  It was less stringy and much firmer than most papaya I have tasted before--easily as firm as a cantaloupe.  It was sweet, but less sweet than tropic-grown papaya, again comparable to cantaloupe.  I have no idea if this variety normally has less sugar than the red varieties I tasted before or whether this is a result of not growing it in the tropics.  I live in Tennessee, zone 6b.

Wellspring shipped this in a 1-1/2 inch pot.  I potted it up into a six inch container before transplanting it to a 24 inch diameter half-whisky-barrel liner.  I brought it inside to my sunroom last October.  By December it was blooming, but all but three flowers fell off (and they continue to drop off now).  Unfortunately, my sunroom has only a small heater, so most of my tropicals go dormant during the coldest months. The only effect I can see is the distance between leaves became shorter.  Now that the plant is warm again, this distance is lengthening again.  I use Miracle-Gro potting mix exclusively, but do not recommend the moisture control stuff.  Once the built-in fertilizer runs out, I tend to use organic fertilizers, but sometimes use osmocote to save time.

I recommend this dwarf variety and this vendor for greenhouse/sunroom growers.