The Tropical Fruit Forum

Do you have any idea of what species "beach cherry" is?

Thanks, Har, I'll have to give it a try.

John

I received an order the other day.  All the seeds were extremely well packed and well documented with labeling.  All arrived in good condition and many were starting to germinate.  He even threw in a few extra seeds.  This was possibly the best shipment I have ever received, considering the condition of seeds, care in packing, and good documentation.

John

I believe he was asking if it is dioecious (male & female flowers on separate plants) not if they tasted good (delicious).

I believe that Wirsiy at Forest House did have grains of paradise (A. melegueta) plus a couple of other, unidentified ones.

John

No worries.  I think Cara Cara is supposed to do pretty well here.  I am not a big orange guy, I tend to prefer mandarins but threw in a couple of blood oranges for variety. 

John

Do you know if this Dracontomelon costatum is dioecious or monoecious?  Information online is scarce & seems to be conflicting.

John

Angiopteris get HUGE! Unless you have a rather large conservatory/greenhouse, I doubt they would survive outside in St. Augustine

Yeah, I am living where I can plant it outside & I am still debating whether I want to tie up the space with it.  You would need an extremely large greenhouse to attempt one of these under glass.

John

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.524.3359&rep=rep1&type=pdf

i have a barrel i can wrap with shade cloth and that should work. maybe i'll try out the cripple one first in the hoop and bring the nicer one out of the shaded area to a partially shaded area closer to where I want to plant it!

I know a lot of people make the barrel out of some type of wire fence like hogwire and then cover it with shadecloth.  A lot of people just leave them on until the plant grows out the top.  I was making a lot of these so I just made a bunch out of the orange plastic fencing you can get a Home Depot (they stuff they had a few years ago worked much better than the current stuff).  I would staple it into a barrel shape with a heavy duty stapler & then staple the shadecloth to the fence material.  I would secure these with 2-4 bamboo stakes (depending upon the size of the barrel).  The bamboo stakes don't last too long in Hilo weather but long enough to harden off the seedlings.

I made hoops with galvanized wire used for bracing for the hogwire fencing.  You can cut it to size appropriate for the seedling & just bend it into a hoop shape.  I'd then tie shadecloth on the hoop to drape down over the seedling & cover it.  If it was a larger seedling, I might also might up a wire spreader(s) to hold the shadecloth off the seedling.  The hoops worked fine and had the benefit that you could lift some of the shadecloth up to harden off the seedling after it was out there a while.

I tried my first fruit of my sanguinelli blood orange today.  My young tree was really too small to be bearing fruit but I let it keep the two fruit it set this year anyway.  The tree is planted at probably 650-700' elevation here just outside of Hilo, HI.  Advice I had seen indicated that only Moro blood orange was worth growing here and that the others would not develop any color at all.  I planted a Moro and a Sanguinelli with low expectations for either developing any real blood pigmentation due to our lack of any real cold snaps here.

I was uncertain about the ripeness of the oranges.  Regular oranges sometimes do not color up well here so I was not sure what to expect from a blood orange.  The orange developed a nice deep orange color with a little rosy blush -- not the exterior color Sanguinelli is noted for but very nice!  I was uncertain about the ripeness of the oranges; I would be gently probing & squeezing to see when they seem to have a little more "give".  When I tried it today, it came off in my hand -- so maybe a bit over-ripe? 

I was amazed when I cut the orange open, it had developed some nice rosy coloration in the flesh as well!  The flavor was mild, low acid, mildly sweet, and juicy.  It was sort of "citrusy" but not a typical orange flavor.  There was another flavor -- maybe peach? -- that seemed more predominant.  If I were blindfolded and someone popped this in my mouth, I would have no clue of what kind of fruit it was.  My wife is not a fan of oranges but we both enjoyed it.  I suspect it will improve significantly in the future.  The fruit had 14 well developed seeds as well as 3 or 4 small aborted ones.  Since I had no other citrus flowering at this time, I have decided to try to grow out the seeds.  With no other citrus blooming, this will be a "selfing" (as plant breeders say) where it will just be juggling around the genes of Sanguinelli so there could be some interesting variants coming out of this.

The bottom line is, if you are in HI or similar tropical areas, do not just dismiss Sanguinelli as unsuited for your orchard.  It might not color up as well as in subtropical areas but you might still be pleasantly surprised.

John

Did you sample the buah langir?  I have heard it is supposed to be very sweet but have heard no particulars about the flavor or how much flesh there is?  If you could provide any details, it would be appreciated.

John