The Tropical Fruit Forum

Sometimes I get lucky, very very lucky! Two summers ago I was in Florence South Carolina at a Southern Fruit Fellowship meeting (garden club for backyard fruit growers of the south). While on one of the tours a tree I've been looking for was pointed out to me - Ogeechee Lime (Nyssa ogeche) a type of tupelo, not a citrus. I was allowed to gather fallen fruit, which I took back to Raleigh where I cleaned the seeds and sowed them. I was thrilled when TWO of the seeds actually sprouted. Here I am today with two small potted trees that are maybe 4 feet tall but appear very healthy. I was finally going to get around to planting them in the ground when I discovered that they were blooming (they're just babies!) and surprise surprise one is a male and the other is a female! The trees look alike so the only way to tell if you have both sexes is to wait until they bloom, which normally would take years. So I will be adding another native fruit to my collection - Ogeechee Lime which I guess could actually make fruit at a much younger age then I predicted. Lucky Lucky Me!





a shot of the male blossoms


a shot of the female blossoms

Greenman62 - yes that's the finger lime. It is grafted onto Poncirus trifoliata. I have no idea how old it is but it is maybe 3 feet tall including the pot. I bought it from the guy that grafted it, I didn't see any mature finger limes in his collection so I don't know where he got it from.

I normally grow Waimanalo papaya (seeds from Oscar) but I saw some Red Lady plants on sale at my local big box retailer so that is the only reason I have them. They hate winter here but snap out of it once it gets hot. I haven't tried rooting cuttings but I have just dug them up and potted them before (mature trees), sometimes it works.

Good to hear that the opuntia should be true to type. The fruit was emerald green when ripe and very intense flavored. I'm not sure how many fruit I can get off of a pot bound plant. I'll decide if it is a keeper after it fruits. It is big enough now so this should be the year. I have a couple of winter hardy optunias in the yard so I can get fruit each summer - it isn't the best quality though.

My normal plan is to grow things from seed to see if I can keep them alive and happy for 5 years then if I like them I buy a grafted named cultivar. I'm at that point with sapodilla and white sapote (forgot to mention them earlier). I've been getting rid of the suriname cherry plants, the fruit tastes like Black Currant to me and I have them in the garden already. My cherimoya is huge and blooms continuously all summer, I keep trying to hand pollinate it but so far my efforts are fruitless. It may end up in a smaller pot so that I can move it outdoors for the summer. Greenhouse space is precious so you gotta produce fruit if you want a prime location.

So my Longan is in full bloom again. This year it has many more sprays of flowers and with the warmer weather this winter my greenhouse is full of pollinating insects so I might actually see fruit before too long.

I collected seed from a bunch of different grocery store fruit and out of all the Longan seedlings this one grew faster and stronger than all the others. I gave everything else away to other gardeners and kept this one. I normally drag it outside the greenhouse for the summer and keep it in partial shade and well watered. It get so big each year that I have to cut it back hard just to get it to fit through the greenhouse door. I believe it was over 6 feet tall by year 4. I now have it in the largest plastic pot I own and it can easily touch the roof inside the greenhouse which has a 15 foot center ridge. I think it is about 10 years old now but I didn't write anything down so I don' know for sure. For contrast I also have a Lychee  that is way over 10 years old that is only 5 feet tall and has never shown any signs of blooming. It has had a hard life where more than once it has had a large tree branch fall and crush it while it was summer-ing outdoors, and more than once rats have eaten it back to the ground while it was inside for winter.

Also my small potted Finger lime is blooming and making small fruits. It bloomed a little bit last summer but this year it is covered with flowers.

My yard trees' flowers are starting to open up. Out of three mature trees, only two are heavily covered with buds/flowers. The middle tree has only a few. A wild one I have up by the house also has only a few. Mild weather here in Raleigh NC. At this point they only predict low's of 28 this coming weekend and again next weekend. I will be too busy covering everybody else so the pawpaws will just have to snuggle up to keep warm.

looks like Pokeweed - Phytolacca americana. Fruit and seeds are poisonous.

I always assume that if they drop, they are ripe. The seeds have to be colored up, if they are white then there is usually little flavor. Some people like them heavily wrinkled and others eat them with only a little bit. I'm not sure there are any hard and fast rules. My P. edulis is in full swing so right now that is what I am eating. The fruit comes in waves and there is enough to make a juice from or drizzle over fruit salad. I've got to figure out a way to grow a ton of these.

Even sour cherries are marginal. I'm in the piedmont (Raleigh), maybe the folks up in the mountains can get good cherries. Everyone says that the high heat and humidity is was does in sweet cherries here.

I have four seedlings grown from named cultivars (unknown to me, seedlings were purchased from a local nursery that tasted various fruit from a nearby research orchard. They sowed the seed from the best tasting fruit), and one native tree in a different part of the yard. They were all bought and planted at the same time (2010) and were two year old plants. One is far bigger and better than the others, maybe 15 feet tall and 8 feet wide. It has the largest fruit. It is the one that I gathered suckers from and transplanted along the row of trees. The last tree in that row is tiny but a heavy bloomer. It's maybe 6 feet tall and 4 feet wide and almost looks like some sort of dwarf pawpaw. I believe its size is due to it being the furthest away from my septic leach lines (ha ha!). It is also down hill from the #1 tree. All of them taste about the same but the #1 tree's fruit are so large that they are more worth eating. My plan is to leave all the trees in the row and let the transplanted suckers get as big as they want while I keep the smaller fruiting ones pruned back, they are there as pollinators. Out of 15 suckers removed from the #1 tree (I left two there) only two have failed. Like I said earlier, I think these guys are tougher than the literature states.

I also have a Cherimoya in the greenhouse which blooms all summer long. I keep trying to hand pollinate it but so far I have failed. One year I had a damaged branch on my #3 tree which rebloomed in August. It was the only tree around with flowers on it. I hand pollinated it with cherimoya pollen and saved the seeds from any fruit that was formed. Out of all that work I got one seedling. Hopefully this year it will get big enough and have enough leaves on it to tell me if it is actually a cross or just a pawpaw. (their leaves are different)

The super flavored yellow skin one sounds like Mexican Cream to me. I love the strong guava aroma. I have grown many from seed and none of them have been anything like their parent. Whereas Mexican Cream is small and very yellow the babies have been extra large, green skinned and white on the inside with a more pear flavor. Nice but very mild. I may have to check out this Lemon Guava from Florida.

The trees in my yard are just now opening up. If we don't get another freeze it should be another bumper crop year.

Just for kicks I dug up suckers from my number 1 producing tree and spread them down the row. Some of them were 3 or 4 feet tall. At this point it looks like almost all of them have made it through the torture even though they didn't have many roots and I basically hacked them out of the ground with a shovel. I think these trees are tougher than the reports. It will be another month before I know for sure that they have survived fully.

I have to cram everything into the greenhouse for the winter so I can only tell you what I stuffed into it. I can't see into all the corners, there are so many plants so it will a couple of months before I know who survived. Every May is a lot like Christmas for me.

I have just about every type of citrus, about half of them are small and kept pruned as patio plants in smaller pots which get moved outdoors for summer. The rest are kept in extra large pots and allowed to grow big. I have to prune them after they fruit (this seems to help with bug control) otherwise they would sprawl too much for the limited space. Even though I have some of the "hardy" varieties, all that are in the ground outdoors have suffered or died so I am now just growing them in pots.

I have strawberry guavas and regular guavas - seed grown so the fruit varies a bit from the parent. My situation seems to grow guavas well so I will probably break down and buy a grafted plant soon. I would love a Mexican Cream. The seedlings I've grown from store bought fruit have not had the fragrance nor the flavor.

I have an old Lychee also grown from seed. It is maybe 4 feet tall and around 8 years old. It would be much taller but everywhere I place it it gets hurt or munched on by the local Cotton Rats or squirrels. It has finally gone an entire year without having an oak branch fall on it, another potted plant tipping over and crushing it or the rodent damage. It is finally really growing and putting on large leaves.

I have a few purple passion fruit vines, one of which produces fruit (the native passionvines in my yard have great flavor so I am not inclined to growing the tropicals anymore).

I have a huge Cherimoya grown from seed (it is the yellow leaves in the background of the photos posted earlier). It blooms all summer long but I have never been able to get it hand pollinated. I plan on cutting it back and repotting it into a pot that will be easy to move in and out so that I can place it in the shade outdoors during the summer.

I have a Sapodilla that is finally big enough to fruit. Grown from seed; and a Jaboticaba, some White Sapotes that will be big enough in a couple of years. Seedlings in pots are Luc's Garcinia, Achachairu, Miracle Berry, Ogeechee Lime (hardy), a cluster of Opuntia ficus-indica (from green when ripe fruit) and a broad collection of Solanums. You can see the large leaves on one of the Tamarillo's (from Oscar I think). I also have some Bael seedlings from Roy in India, they come inside the house in the winter, the greenhouse gets too cool for them.

I'm in zone7 and must rely on a greenhouse to grow guavas and I depend on my local Asian market to buy fruit from and I start a lot of seeds. I have never had a guava grow true from seed except one time with the Giant Asian White or Apple Guava. Mexican Cream or any of the rich pink inside ones throw fruit of all different colors and flavors when I've grown them. I have three in the greenhouse now that should fruit this year, if I don't care for the flavor they will be pitched and I will just break down and buy a named variety. Space is limited in the greenhouse so they have to taste good to keep a spot.

I can send you seed from this years fruit (they were in flower before the smaller Naranjilla). They may struggle for you in the heat of summer. I have to grow mine in the shade and they still pout when the days are over 90. The flavor is odd, pretty sour and with an odd chemical tang I haven't tasted in anything else before. If you cook them with water and sugar they get a citrus flavor with a strong note of mango. In South America they usually just juice them and blend them with orange juice or sometimes Tamarillo juice.

I need to take a photo of the Opuntia ficus-indica I grew from seed (grocery store fruit) inspired by all your posts about prickly pears.

I've sent you seeds before and believe I still have your address.