The Tropical Fruit Forum

Our Coconut Cream and Lemon zest Mangos were fantastic this year. CC was probably the best.

Also good this year we're our Valencia Pride, Fruit punch, PPK, and NDM

Ice Cream an Dot had some fruits which were great and others which had a bit of an off putting taste.

Our Cogshall fruit had a very off taste this year. One of my daughters thought it tasted like the fluoride varnish the dentist put on her teeth once.

We still have some Lemon Zest, Ice Cream, and Sweet tart mangos on the trees.

If you ever want the real Blue Java, we are growing it in Sarasota. I find the fruit of Namwa is better for a longer period of time - keeps a nice texture. Blue Java has great, white, fluffy fruit when eaten at just the right time, but can get mushy when over ripe.

That is exactly what I am hearing as far as size of both Rob!  And what you said about Praying hands, I have heard and read that also.  It seems to be a bit of a pain to separate the fruit cleanly unless you know otherwise. A very cool specimen to have in the yard, that is for sure.  I am literally amazed with the fruit quality of Nam Wah in a smoothie, I just can't see another banana beating it. I made sure to get two different sources of Blue Java, just in case.

Praying Hands separates quite easily for us. It is one of our favorite tasting bananas along with other in the Saba subgroup.  It definitely not dwarf. Our other favorites are in the Maoli-Popoulu subgroup.

The dwarf Bananas we have which do well are Raja Puri (dessert banana), Dwarf Orinoco (cooking banana or eaten really ripe out of hand), Dwarf Red (delicious dessert banana, but ours take 18-24 months to fruit), dwarf Namwa (dessert banana). With all of these, if you buy a tissue culture plant, don't expect a guarantee it will be dwarf or even the correct plant. There have been mix ups with tissue cultures - whether mixing up germplasm or mutations during propagation. Ours are all around 6'. The dwarf red and dwarf Namwa seem the most notorious for growing tall after tissue culturing. Our original plant material was pups from friends. Raja Puri tissue cultured plants have been mislabeled in the past, but maybe the issue has been corrected.

Quote from: geosulcata on June 25, 2017, 01:49:08 PM

I am driving my daughter to the Palm Beach area to go diving Wednesday and would like to pick up some fruit and possibly some wholesale mango trees while I am over there. Any suggestions of places to visit and if an appointment is necessary?

Do you have a nursery or landscape license?

Yes

Bottom and top right ripe ones look like burro/dwarf Orinoco to me.. To the left of those, maybe Raja Puri. Did Rane list any of the possible varieties? You could email him a picture and he might be able to help more, knowing what he harvested.

Wayne Clifton - katway@outlook.com.  He will also be at the Sarasota rare fruit growers plant sale coming up. 

The tree sale where Wayne (and many other fruit tree vendors) will be is the Manatee Rare Fruit Council tree sale on Sunday May 21st. More info at http://www.mrfc.org/p/fruit-tree-sale.html

Great photo. Thanks for posting Oscar!

I have yet to see anyone with a mature fruiting Inga edulis in FL - but several other Inga species mislabeled as such. I have some small seedlings of Inga edulis that have done fine so far without protection.

If you are looking to reduce cane sugar intake and currently use sugar in smoothies, juices, or on fruit, it is a wonderful plant to have. I have a miracle fruit before my smoothies and before eating berries because they taste so much better afterwards. The best is making lemonade without any sugar - just fresh lemon juice and water. It tastes just like sugar filled lemon aid after one miracle fruit. I now make all my fruit juices without sugar - guanábana, mora, naranjilla.
They are easy to grow in a pot with peat moss and a little sand. Just water with rain water. I keep a shallow pan of water under mine. I add coffee grounds and compost from time to time.

We just picked some Passiflora edulis up from Fruitscapes last weekend. We have several varieties growing here too.

We have fruit trees available in north Sarasota (ripe passion fruit too). We are free tomorrow (Sunday) if you would like to stop by.

I only have one small dwarf namwa (plenty of the taller ones). Once mine pups you are welcome to have one.