The Tropical Fruit Forum

Yeah, sorry, I was editing while you wrote that. I uploaded the photos multiple times before they finally showed up. I thought maybe posting the message would make them show.

Just bear in mind, since you bought two extra, that brown turkey fig trees can become massive--you need a large space if you plan to mature them.  You can also break off branches and root them in a bucket of water, or air layer them and make new trees with ease.  You can also clump a few different varieties together, and force them to compete with one another and help stunt their growth so they don't become too large.

Thanks, I know. My plan is to plant them close together and prune severely, leaving only enough leaves to keep them going and only the branches with the best fruit. I have had the first one for maybe 4 months now and it has been watered daily, and it is actually even smaller than when I bought it because of the pruning. So I don't think they are going to have much chance to get too big. Most other things I'm growing I want as something attractive in the landscape and as fruit producers, but in the case of the figs, I only want their fruit, and occasional use of the leaves which can be used in cooking. (I am rooting many of the branches I pruned right now!)

Are you able to order things from Amazon? If so, I highly recommend this cutter mattock:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000KL2V6A/ref=wms_ohs_product?ie=UTF8&psc=1

It's not directly related to the topic, but given the picture (great photos by the way!) and your mention of all the hard work and the rocky soil, I can tell you this thing would be a massive improvement over the pick your friend was using. I am dealing with a serious illness and so am bedridden a lot of the time and very weak, so digging in the rocky coral here is nearly impossible for me. But I don't have a lot of choice but to do it myself without industrial equipment. This tool makes chopping tough roots as easy as a single swoop, and taking out the frequent rocks as big as half my arm something that can be done in seconds. Imagine if it is that easy to dig holes for someone in my condition out of heavy rock and endless big roots, what it could do for you and your friends!

I wouldn't have believed it could take the place of an auger or a small excavator, but it really almost does! I have found that I can dig all the holes I need for my trees - some of which are around 12ft tall - myself without needing any of the more expensive equipment. If you're enjoying the challenge of working the land and have limited resources, something like that could be a big help. The wide sharp edge makes all the difference - I can use it for digging, picking, pulling, cutting, and a little shoveling too, all in one. That means I only use one tool to dig the hole, cut the roots, and finish planting the tree. It's a major energy and time saver, for only $36US. Just a thought, in case you can get access to one.

Thanks, I didn't know about those kinds, I'll look into them.

Good luck with your survival rate!

Because I'm in the Keys with a lot of windows, I get extremely strong sun indoors for many hours. It's not a whole lot different from being outside. The benefit is temperature and humidity control and ease of watering frequently - too many plants that need a great deal of sunlight burn because our sun is too harsh without shade or filtering, even with plenty of watering. The indoor garden helps to control temp so it's more like growing in the summer in a Northern climate - temps range from 80s to high 90s in the sun, rather than into the 100s in direct sun for many hours on end. Thus far I was able to get strawberries and peppers to fruit successfully indoors, so watermelon and others seemed possible. But the downfall has been lack of a balanced environment - hence the easy scourge of aphids. If something gets introduced from a pot or something outside, it's hard to fight it off for good because there is no other insect life to keep it in control. I'm trying to grow exclusively from seed now inside to avoid further invasions.

My intention is to rotate crops to keep down the incidence of disease in future years.

I'll keep an update if this first crop is successful.

Thanks for this - I am just in the process of growing my first watermelons, and for the moment I am attempting to do it inside in containers. It's early yet to know if they will fail due to disease because for now the plants are happy, but I'm interested to see if more is posted about this in future because if I have trouble (even after I bring them outside if necessary), then grafting could be my next step. I haven't grafted before, but this is exactly the kind of project I could learn on, as practicing on watermelons is pretty low stakes for me!

Thanks for the suggestion!

I don't mind buying something that starts on the smaller side I guess if I have to, but I don't want dwarf variety if it means maturing at much less than 20ft, because they need to eventually fit into a row of tall coconut palms I already have aesthetically. I just assumed this would be popular with SFloridians to try because of all the hype, even if it might be difficult to grow here, so I was surprised when I looked around the internet all I saw were a few house plants on ebay. I checked the database on Dave's Garden and nothing came up at all. TopTropicals only sells seeds at this time. I assumed that perhaps some of the nurseries in Homestead have them, but because they tend to supply directly to landscapers and often don't have any employees who speak English, they don't have websites set up to market to individual consumers in the public. I didn't feel like driving around Homestead and Florida City for days from nursery to nursery or palm plantation to plantation trying to track some down.

Good luck! I agree, it depends on what kind of fruit you want to grow. But as far as just any fruit that can grow easily in a container, the easiest container fruiters I have had were brown turkey fig (fruiting frequently at 1 gal), calamondin (pushing out so much fruit at 1 gal it's hard to know what to do with it all!), and a dwarf meyer lemon which was a beautiful and delicious-smelling plant that fruits twice a year after about 3 years (you just need to give it lots of light).

I've also grown a lot of tropical vegetables in containers indoors. As long as you have a light source, you can do almost anything. As one means of saving money, you can buy solar lights that you lean in your window (not all even need direct sunlight to work), and then turn on at night. It's free light and gives your plants a boost if you are relying on a sun that is not giving enough hours for what your plants need, or if you want to cut your electric bill back a bit. Of course, it's not as good as sun light, but it works and you can't beat it for the price compared to lots of grow lights!

One other thing that can help indoor plants, which I wrote about on another thread regarding grow bags. I use plastic bags, which have been great and cost very little, but for indoor plants that don't get as much light I wrap the bags with aluminum foil and tuck the foil over the rim of the bags and down into the insides next to the soil. The purpose is both to hold drainage water at the bottom, but also to reflect light at the plant around every side so it gets extra - especially for plants that are in a corner. They seem to like it a lot - the plants that I did this for grew the most versus those just in the bag with no reflective material. But be careful if you then bring them outside for summers, remove the foil or they will be toast!

I'm growing brown turkey figs, which were at a local nursery for only $12 each.  I bought it only because I was curious, I never thought I liked figs much because most of the ones I had tried were dried or had been shipped long distances, and they were just ok.

I was so wrong! The little plant I bought put out a reddish-purple fig the size of my fist. I wish I had gotten a picture, but I was so excited to try what was my first ever freshly-ripe fig (you could smell it from the outside) that I jumped in first and only thought about it later. I was blown away by the flavor, absolutely nothing like any of the figs I had tried up North. It was so tropical! It tasted like a mix of passionfruit, strawberry, and guava. I never would have expected that! Truthfully, it was one of the best individual fruits I have ever had. I got so excited about it that I was heartbroken about how long I would have to wait for another fruit from this 1-gal pot, and went out and bought 2 more. I wondered if this is what all figs taste like, why in the world wouldn't everybody be talking about them?

I realize not many people are excited about the brown fig turkey here, so maybe I got lucky. Pruning was definitely beneficial, because before that I was getting tons of fruit on different branches that mostly dropped before they ever got ripe, or were smallish and not that good. Now I will never let any fruit grow on any branch but that one (until of course it gets to be big - right now there are only a few branches to choose from). Just thinking about it makes me want another... who knew? I thought I didn't like figs!

Yeah, I don't know that species specifically, but it sounds a lot like the growing conditions for Mangosteen in as much as "early shade," "long taproot," etc.

The mangosteen I bought has a pot that is a real pot but looks like the shape of Mark in Texas' picture of plastic ones, almost vial-shaped. It is at a point where it needs to come out and be planted, but was quite healthy in this thing. So I would say, just research how long/how much space the taproot will need at the 2 year mark, and make a container for it.

If you use the plastic water bottle, make extra sure to give it plenty of holes - firm plastic does not breathe well at all, so it will need a few more than some of the other materials that give more with the expanding and contracting of soil and the change in size of the plant. A few in the bottom for drainage, and maybe one every 2 square inches or something around for air circulation. There is no problem with putting too many, if it dries out to much you can just put a plastic bag loosely over it to help keep the soil moist.

You could also build a suitable pot out of scrap wood and drill holes, for something that will easily last the 2 years, especially if it will be outdoors some of that time.

Personally, I would just stick it in a bag that I stapled to the shape of what I want. It will take all of 2 minutes to make, and last 2 years. Punch a few holes, stick it in a vase or lean it against something heavy, and you're done. Only because I find hard plastic more difficult to worth with to make holes, and it holds moisture so well you have to be really vigilant about mold or root rot. Not impossible though, I just find it higher maintenance. The bag, if made a little loose, allows plenty of room for the soil to breathe and shift a little, which plants seem to like.

Maybe it doesn't matter for just one pot, but I do find that the obsession with gardening adds up quickly, because all it takes is successfully growing one plant before you find yourself starting to grow hundreds, and so nearly-free solutions become a must! I have hundreds of grown plants right now, and including the seedlings maybe a thousand, so if I didn't keep it simple I would be out on the street!

Too bad you don't live in Mexico , I have lots of them .

If only! Could you share some pictures of them?

Very weird - somehow I quoted my entire response on April 21. Just saw it and fixed it, sorry.

Today I planted some seedlings of vining plants that I sprouted in one of the plastic bags with the styrofoam. It was interesting, they had grown so much so quickly (2 weeks exactly from seed and they were already 2ft tall with leaves the size of my palms!) I had trouble separating them all. Some roots had grabbed onto the peanuts so much already that I just planted them in the ground directly with the peanuts attached so as not to have to break the roots. So yeah, they seem to like it.