The Tropical Fruit Forum

What's everyones take on managing weeds growing in the pots with your trees? I know most people's instinct is to pull them out asap, but could there be any benefit to just letting them go wild in there? I'm sure at some level they are competing and pulling nutrients out of the soil and away from the main plant in the pot. At the same time, maybe it could be helping by shading the bare soil and promoting a bit of a mini ecosystem within the space, benefitting the tree? If you're in a commercial setting, it's probably not a good look to have weedy pots, but otherwise, why not just leave them in there?

Maybe this has been talked about before here, but I couldn't find it. Why is it so hard to find anyone growing the commercially grown cavendish variety of banana in Florida? It seems like a no brainer being that so many people happily buy these at the grocery store everyday regardless of the fact that they are picked way too early and gassed to ripen. They somehow still taste decent after that. I know the argument that most commercial fruits and veg are far inferior to selected varieties grown by connoisseurs, but has anyone here ever had a properly ripened cavendish? I can only imagine they'd be great.

To me, some possibilities to why we don't grow them might be:

- home growers prefer the novelty of more diverse varieties (but at this point a home grown cavendish seems even more novelty)
- cavendish is disease susceptible (but isn't that only a big deal when grown in a massive monocrop?)
- release is suppressed by commercial growers (bananas are so easy to propagate though)
- is it climatic, is cavendish too tropical for Florida (I'm not aware of any bananas that are)
- there's the dwarf cavendish, but I'm not sure how similar that is to the true cavendish

I don't know, I'm confused. Am I missing something obvious?

Thanks!

Does anyone have good methods or tool they use for opening coconuts? I'm mainly referring to dry coconuts as I like to eat the meat on the inside as well as drink the water. Removing the husk is always a slow that I usually use a machete for. Once thats off the only easy part is next, punch a hole and drain the water, then crack the shell in half. Removing the meat is the other big challenge. I've broken countless knives prying to get it out, plus it's just dangerous. Always worried I'm going to cut myself.

Anyways, who's got the quick tricks for removing husk, then removing the meat? Thanks!

Does anyone have any Mamey Sapote Scion wood that they can sell or trade? Ive got a bunch of seedlings that need to be grafted. Thanks! Sam

So I just moved to a new neighborhood here in Englewood, FL and our house is only about 500 yards from the inner coastal. We're right on the southern edge of Sarasota county where it meets Charlotte county. From what I understand this is still technically zone 9b on the USDA cold hardiness map, about an hour north of what they call zone 10a. Anyways, I just spotted a coconut tree in my neighbors yard across the street and its probably about 40ft tall, full of coconuts!. What do you guys make of this? Warm microclimate or does he have some sort of freak cold hardy coconut? I figure for a tree to get that size they must not of had a freeze for at least 10 years or more, right? This seems to me like a green light to put some trees that are on the more tropical side in the ground here. Let me know your thoughts. Thanks! Sam