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1

Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: How to make Surinam Cherry taste better?

« on: August 26, 2021, 12:47:21 PM »

How close is the flavor of a suriname cherry to pitangatuba?

My pitangatubas taste like poison.

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Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Extinct Florida Variety Peach Trees?

« on: March 16, 2021, 01:09:19 AM »

I had a Mid Pride peach tree at my last place. It's a low chill variety from Dave Wilson/Zaiger Genetics. The fruit quality is fantastic...sweet, juicy and soft, almost like a good mango. I'd highly recommend it if you can find it there.

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Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: E4 Abiu the best for taste

« on: February 26, 2021, 12:30:38 AM »

I'm amazed that there's enough commercially grown abiu in Queensland that not only do you get to choose a variety, but they have cute little stickers on them!

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Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Where to get pouteria viridis

« on: February 26, 2021, 12:24:08 AM »

Not this year....I'll only get 6 seeds if I'm lucky!

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Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Where to get pouteria viridis

« on: February 24, 2021, 06:41:03 PM »

Quote from: Squam256 on February 24, 2021, 12:56:20 PM

Quote from: brian on February 24, 2021, 11:09:51 AM
Is there a reason that mamey would be a preferred rootstock rather than grafting onto another green sapote seedling? Assuming you had them handy.

I ask because I have a green sapote but no mamey, and I don't plan to get a mamey nor can I find them locally. But I might be able to plant green sapote seeds and graft mature scion onto those.

nm, I found an answer to my question: http://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=19763.0

Sounds like green sapote scion on green sapote rootstock should be fine.

No issue with compatibility. In Florida I would say it’s two-fold: One issue is availability of seed stock. No shortage of mamey but not many producing green sapote trees in Florida, and green sapote season is relatively short compared to mamey.

On top of that, green sapotes don’t like a lot of water. They’re native to the highlands of Central America and don’t thrive well in really moist soil conditions even on mamey stock, so I could see this being worse on its own roots.

Yep! I'm using mamey for rootstock because I couldn't find any P. Viridis seeds to grow out. The second point I didn't know, but it's good news for growing this in our dry climate!
I'm going to start all the seeds I harvest from this round of fruit, and graft onto those as well. I really think this is worth growing around here. It seems to like the climate, has a delicious fruit, and doesn't take forever to bear.

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Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Where to get pouteria viridis

« on: February 24, 2021, 10:33:00 AM »

I planted my green sapote in 2018 and its about 5 feet tall now, holding onto half a dozen fruits. I got it from Plant O Gram and I believe its grafted onto mamey. Normally it doesn't look this beat up going into spring, but the drought and Santa Ana winds have been completely ludicrous this year, so most of my trees look bad. It does seem to be a hardy tree. The coldest temps it has seen were high 30's and the tree was unaffected.

I'm planning to graft scions from this tree onto some mamey rootstocks once the weather warms up, but I was hoping to get a little more than 28 bucks for it.

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Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Sansapote, orange G. forbesii and Oncoba

« on: January 25, 2021, 12:28:14 AM »

OMG that spikey one! That's Oncoba? Tell us more about that one Mike the internets don't have much to say about it.

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Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: La Niña in winter 2020/2021

« on: January 15, 2021, 11:32:47 PM »

La Nina has brought us a miserable dry thru-summer here. Nonstop rippin' hot Santa Anas. My bananas have been shredded to ribbons and everything else has salt burn from the lack of rain. I had two papaya trees completely defoliated by wind. More dry wind to come this week. Ugh.

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Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Mystery Cherimoya

« on: December 09, 2020, 08:14:19 PM »

Quote from: johnb51 on December 09, 2020, 09:15:36 AM

Does he hand-pollinate?

No! He does nothing to this tree. The tree is huge, and the flowers get pollinated somehow!

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Tropical Fruit Discussion / Mystery Cherimoya

« on: December 09, 2020, 12:39:51 AM »

Any guesses as to what variety of 'moya this is? Its from my neighbor's tree, and weighs in at just under 2 lbs. This is an average size fruit for his tree, and I've seen a few of them get twice as big. It has a bubble gum flavor, not too sweet and a little grainy. The tree gets no irrigation but somehow manages to grow like crazy and produce these big fruits on 10 inches of rainfall a year....

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Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Comments on the Nov 30th cold snap & what survived...

« on: December 04, 2020, 08:21:53 PM »

I'm surprised the bananas were damaged at 41. Was it windy?

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Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: How do you know when to pick white sapote?

« on: November 26, 2020, 07:03:42 PM »

They're ready when the fruit has a slight give to it. Vernon doesn't have a strong color break but it will blush slightly yellow.

I read somewhere that February is white sapote season up north so you might have a couple of months yet.

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Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: What kind of banana tree is this?

« on: November 24, 2020, 06:04:55 PM »

Looks like Orinoco to me.

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Tropical Fruit Buy, Sell & Trade / Jamaican Red Banana Plants

« on: November 17, 2020, 09:51:45 PM »

$40 each....Jamaican Red and Namwah banana plants for pickup in Ventura, CA. Impress your friends with orange/red peel Jamaican Red bananas with salmon colored fruit on the inside!

Namwah bananas....fast fruiting and delicious!

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Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Any banana experts out there for an ID?

« on: November 13, 2020, 02:02:35 PM »

They look a lot like Gros Michel to me. Or some kind of Cavendish sub-type. Here's a rack of Gros Michel I picked yesterday for comparison.

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Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Panama Red passion fruit question here.

« on: November 11, 2020, 08:36:57 PM »

You might need to hand pollinate it. Passionfruit flowers often need hand pollination, or big carpenter or bumble bees to set fruit, because of the shape of the flower.

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Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: How Good are Star Apples?

« on: November 08, 2020, 01:56:37 AM »

Has anyone fruited star apple in SoCal?

There's been a few posts recently about the awesome star apple varieties that are available in Australia. They definitely sound worth growing, if we ever got them here, but I've never actually seen/heard of a star apple tree growing in our area.

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Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Blue bananas

« on: October 28, 2020, 02:06:30 PM »

I think the OP might be talking about the Burmese Blue banana, https://urbantropicals.com/product/burmese-blue-banana-tree-itinerans-guangdongensis/, which is a weird seeded variety that I'd like to see/taste myself.

If you mean the Blue Java, or Ice Cream banana, I definitely wouldn't pay $97 plus shipping for a couple hands of them. Having grown Ice Creams before, I personally think they're pretty bland but for some reason there's a lot of internet hype around them.

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Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Orange flames in my greenhouse wall furnace

« on: October 27, 2020, 12:51:37 AM »

Wow, that's good to know! I run humidifiers in the house during Santa Anas when the humidity can drop to 5% or less. The stove burners put out orange flames when I do this, and I've always wondered why. Regular water vapor, like from boiling a big canning pot, doesn't do the same thing.

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Tropical Fruit Buy, Sell & Trade / Re: Pitangatuba Seedlings For Sale

« on: October 25, 2020, 12:05:19 AM »

Holy Eugenias Batman!

Those are some XL size pitangatoobz...

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Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Is this "fake" lulo?

« on: October 23, 2020, 10:58:35 AM »

I've been enjoying mine. They taste like orange sour gummy bears with a tiny bit of savory flavor in the background.

The thorns are intense. I wear bbq gloves to pick the fruit and I still get stabbed.

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Tropical Fruit Discussion / Is this "fake" lulo?

« on: October 23, 2020, 12:01:33 AM »

My naranjilla plants grown out from Baker Creek seed are finally producing fruit. They're quite tasty, but the flesh is yellow instead of the green I was expecting to see. A little googling suggests these might be "pseudolulo," which is said to be inferior. Bummer! Makes me wonder what "real" lulo tastes like. Or are there yellow fleshed varieties of lulo?