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Messages - CGameProgrammer

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1
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Black sapote?!
« on: February 13, 2024, 03:58:23 PM »
It's a sweet and fatty fruit, and the interior color is quite unique, but the flavor is mild. It does have some flavor though. There is a cultivar called Matt Snow which I bought last year but I'm still waiting for the fruits to ripen.

2
I've been growing sugarcane for years but never juiced it. What do you guys use for pressing/juicing?

3
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Jackfruit after 11 years in SoCal!!
« on: November 30, 2023, 06:04:55 PM »
Elsewhere on this forum, locals have said that their jackfruits always set fruit but never ripened because the winters here kill any hope of getting viable fruit. I will guess that the trees will drop the fruits during the winter or spring before they ever mature. But even so, it would still be a fun tree to grow just for the novelty of it.

4
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Euterpe Edulis
« on: September 10, 2023, 07:44:49 PM »
I have to assume he's asking which species of Euterpe creates acai, and the answer is Euterpe oleracea.

5
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Question: Silas Woods Sapodilla
« on: July 05, 2023, 01:52:02 PM »
Is anyone growing this in California? I wonder what its harvest season is here. My Alano just ripens in a fairly short period in late summer / early fall. Basically one crop per year.

6
Keep in mind that "self-pollinating" plants still require pollination. In a greenhouse, you will not get any fruits due to lack of insects unless you painstakingly manually pollinate each flower. What you're probably looking for are plants that fruit parthenocarpically, meaning without any pollination at all. These produce seedless fruits when not pollinated. Examples are banana, pineapple, fig, mulberry, and wax jambu.

7
The ones I tried were very sweet, with some pleasant sourness IIRC, and had a somewhat apricot-like flavor. Though for reference I find passionfruit delicious out of hand and would never sweeten it.

8
Someone mentioned Kei Apple, but those fruits are really delicious and the shrubs, while thorny, are very compact. The San Diego Zoo has a bunch spread around and I pick some of the fruits when they're ripe and they're great. They're also very easy to eat, unlike the vast majority of specialty fruits, because you just eat it whole. No pit.

9
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Cherilata in Southern California
« on: May 05, 2023, 02:21:26 PM »
It seems like 100% of cherilatas are Painter's because Painter is the name of the guy that first created the hybrid. I believe all of them derive from his original?

Do you have to manually pollinate the flowers?

10
Florida (and greenhouses) are different; things ripen much later in California. My mulberries are just now beginning to form flowers so I should get fruit in a month or so, but loquats are already beginning to ripen. No flowers on any eugenias yet; it's too early. But my cape gooseberry has some fruit and I have a young pepino melon plant with a nearly-ripe fruit on it.

11
To me, a lot of tropical fruits are unpopular for obvious reasons - difficult to eat or questionable flavor (especially older cultivars).

However I think sapodilla (aka chico sapote) is definitely underrated; apparently it used to be gritty but current cultivars, such as Alano which I have, are delicious and very easy to eat. They should be much more popular but nobody knows about them.

Canistel (and ross sapote) are another. Certainly plenty of people don't like them (texture usually), but I think the good cultivars are very enjoyable.

12
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Growing Kwai Muk in Southern CA.
« on: August 15, 2022, 10:16:49 PM »
I bought a Kwai Muk from TopTropicals a couple of years ago, here in San Diego, and it's done just fine for me. Way too young to flower but it remains evergreen even through winter. I just have it in regular potting soil. At first I had it in the ground but felt it got too little sun, so now it's in a pot on my balcony and seems to do better. I need to find a sufficiently sunny spot in the ground for it.

I haven't ever fertilized it, I just give it water.

13
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Pink crystal guava
« on: May 20, 2022, 06:09:17 PM »
I'm sure nobody here has purchased from that seller so you'll have to let us know (and the name is likely something he made up or translated from another language), but the colors remind me of a guava I bought from TopTropicals years ago that they called "Sweet Kiss". It ripens light green on the outside and red on the inside, is nearly seedless though not entirely, is pretty small, and is really delicious. I like it even better than Ruby Supreme; its flavor is similar to RS but with more of a berry flavor.

Anyway, if you ever get fruit out of it, you should post here and let us know what it's like.

14
Seeds are irrelevant because the flesh does not cling to them at all; they're just in their own hollow pocket in the center. And the exterior of the fruit has the most flavor anyway. Just break a fruit in half and shake out the seeds; it's simple.

All wax jambu can create seedless fruits if not pollinated, but the flowers create so much nectar that it literally drips down and so bees go crazy for it, so pollination is very likely.

By the way, while fruits are forming you should use low water; that helps sweeten the fruits. With abundant water they just become more watery/mild. Also don't pick them until they're about to fall off; even after the color break, they still have a month or more of ripening to get properly sweet.

15
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Cecropia Peltata Growth Rate
« on: October 14, 2021, 05:23:34 PM »
I've heard mixed things about this fruit's palatability. Has anyone tasted it?

16
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Small fruit trees for shaded spaces
« on: June 10, 2021, 10:10:08 PM »
Coffee for sure does well in shade, and so does miracle fruit. Of course both are basically novelties for home growers; you're not going to snack on either really. Same with cacao.

I think monstera was a good suggestion.

17
Coffee is not very tropical at all and is easily grown in many areas, as is pineapple, so those are not worth mentioning. Cacao is so tropical that it's a struggle even in south Florida because the winters can get too dry. I know the Miami-area botanical gardens only grow cacao in greenhouses (unheated) just to contain humidity so the trees can do OK.

I think there is no way it can be grown outdoors on the Azores. It's not about cold, it's about humidity.

18
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Anyone else have Peanut Butter Fruit now?
« on: December 10, 2020, 01:16:14 PM »
Carolina, plants need sunlight to produce sugar. Depriving it of light will always result in bland fruit. That's why commercial growers try to get as much sunlight as possible. But it's nice that the plant can survive such conditions.

19
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Choosing only 2 Jaboticaba to grow
« on: November 02, 2020, 06:46:28 PM »
Someone bumped a 7-year-old thread but I'll add my two cents anyway.

I bought my red jaboticaba 6 years ago as a 3-gallon. It finally flowered for the first time this year in early spring, but those flowers set fruit and it has been continuously fruiting and flowering ever since. It just finished producing a few ripe fruits and now has a bunch more flowers blooming. It went from 0-100 real quick! And it's a great tree for home growers because producing small amounts of fruit continuously is perfect!

So red has my vote. I believe only the red and the Sabara (black) varieties give multiple crops per year; the others just make one crop so they're a much worse choice for those with limited space.

20
Honestly you should visit both places; they're very different. In terms of plants, PR has a tropical rain forest but Hawaii does not, because PR is overall much wetter and more consistently tropical. But that can work against you if you grow fruits that actually prefer it drier, which would be much easier on the western halves of the Hawaiian islands.

But PR is MUCH cheaper and also much closer to other places as well as Florida. Hawaii is a 6+ hour flight from anything.

21
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Tropical cherry fruit?
« on: September 05, 2020, 08:06:37 PM »
Australian beach cherry, aka cedar bay cherry, is a eugenia with a very cherry-like texture (very crisp) which is very salt-tolerant (hence the "beach") and a sweet but subtle flavor. Some are kind of bland but others have a subtle flavor on top of the sweetness. (No sourness though.) The fruits are bright red.

Acerola / barbados cherry, specifically the very common "Manoa sweet" variety, is very good. Seeds are a bit annoying, I tend to just eat the perimeter of the fruit, but the plants fruit prolifically and the bright red shiny fruits are very nice-looking.

22
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Red Jabo Blooming Madness - Photos
« on: August 29, 2020, 04:12:35 AM »
My own tree, which I bought as a 3G six years ago, created its first ever flowers and fruits earlier this year, and now it has more ripening fruits as well as tons of flowers. It went from 0 to 100 very quickly!

23
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Cedar Bay Cherries Are Ripening Now
« on: July 31, 2020, 07:40:24 PM »
Pretty cool! Can you grow Barbados cherries in San Diego?
Yup, there are local nurseries that grow them and I have one that created a lot of fruit already the last couple of months and now has new unripe fruit and more flowers. Delicious and very productive.

24
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Cedar Bay Cherries Are Ripening Now
« on: July 23, 2020, 07:50:24 PM »
aka Beach Cherry, I have a couple of plants too (very small). The fruits are OK. The problem is this species is only propagated by seed so each one is different. One of my plants makes fruit that is sweet with little bitterness and some slight flavor; hard to describe but at least it's not completely bland.

By contrast, my Ice Cream Bean makes sweet fruit but with no flavor whatsoever.

25
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Fruit tasting get together san diego
« on: July 22, 2020, 07:51:17 PM »
This thread has gone way off the rails. I do agree that get-togethers are ideally best avoided.

For what it's worth I have no ripe fruit right now. My acerola just finished fruiting but is putting out another wave of flowers, my red jaboticaba, which fruited for the first time ever a couple of months ago, is now creating new flowers, and my wax jambu are flowering and I've unripe bananas that'll ripen later this year along with green sapote, and I have a mango tree (either Lemon Zest or Coconut Cream) that should have had ripe fruit but the biggest ones split open so I guess it's getting too much water.

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