I've never looked into growing any sort of palm, but you guys got me curious. The fruit looks amazing (as in, I'm gonna have to try some)! I happen to like eating heart of palm (veggie). For those curious, the Discovery channel did a "how it's made" on heart of palm here: http://science.discovery.com/tv-shows/how-its-made/videos/how-its-made-heart-of-palm.htm

Hah. Yeah I dunno why it was doing that, but it held that position for an entire day. It's starting to calm back down now.

Agreed.

But it would still be neat to have a thread where all of us Cold Climaters could check in on the progress of our jacks.

Hah. Well, we should start a thread called "The Great Non-Tropical Jackfruit Race" and post progress. I'm betting your trees are a lot bigger than mine! And hey... I may be farther north, but I think New York actually gets worse winters than we do here.

I'm with TriangleJohn -- up in a cold climate (Michigan), and my three longan seedlings were seed-grown. I can't tell you what type of longan they are, but they originate from Thailand.

I started them last December. They kept getting bigger until about... oh, March/April. Then when summer rolled around I tried putting them outside. They did OK, but they stopped growing. They also got a little wind damage, so I ended up trimming some of the leaves back. I brought them inside permanently in October and added some fertilizer to their soil. They've just started sprouting new branches and leaves. But at 11-months-old, the tallest of my longan is still only 7½". By comparison, I just measured my tallest jackfruit at 13", and they were only planted in September of this year.

I snapped these photos this morning:

Hah hah.  Actually, I'm not really a pro-sports person. But If I were gonna be shouting out a supportive mantra, it would be: GO BLUE!

Yeah I realize it's gonna be tough to get them to produce up here, but I'm gonna give it my best shot! If the market is really there for it, and they produce true to what the guy says the fruits are like (which seem to not match any other cultivars out there = I dub these "Michiganian Thai," just to be contrary and fun!), I do know someone who owns a greenhouse. I may talk with them about allowing me to rent/use a small section. Also, I may be swapping a few seedlings with folks in warmer climates who might have a better shot at that than I will. 

Wish we could figure out what cultivar they were. If they are what the guy says they are, then he doesn't know what he's got. Then again, he's only selling the seeds and not grafts. I wonder if it's just the fruits that are latexless, or if it's supposed to be the trees as well.


Edited to add photos of the growth progress. This is my biggest tree so far, at about a month and a half after sprouting.

So in September I received 32 seeds, which were described as latexless fresh Thai orange jackfruit with a description of sweet, crunchy and thick fruits.

I planted 32 seeds. I now have 33 trees? I mean, these two obviously are connected by the roots... but in all of my searching, I have yet to see two trees growing out of the same seed like this. Am I wrong? Is this common? Are they... "identical twins", if you will?

Edited to add: Is it possible that they both can and/or will survive being so close together?

Quote from: fruitlovers on October 04, 2013, 06:33:46 PM

Quote from: bangkok on October 04, 2013, 01:19:03 PM

My wife always warns me not to eat to many longans because that is dangerous. You can get fever from eating to much.

Also eating longans makes me feel warm, maybe that's how the word "spicy" can be connected to longan?

I max. eat about 10-20 longans at the same time, that's enough for me. If they are overripe i don't like them anymore.

The Thais have a lot of strange beliefs about fruit eating that i think are mostly based on myth. They also believe if you mix alcohol with durian that you will die or get critically ill. But there is no evidence of that.

Well my wife says that if young children eat too many longans they will get blisters in their mouths and even can get fever from it.

If you have never heard of it then eat more longans untill you believe it.

I can't eat loads of longans myself, after 20 i 'm tired of them but maybe some other forummembers with Thai family can ask them to see what they respond.

People must have thought I was crazy when I was in Thailand then. I must have eaten over 60 in one sitting with no problem. I absolutely love them!

Nice to have you on the forum, Cassandra! I have never tried longan, but have a small seedling, your love of them makes me wish I had kept more! Good luck with the jackfruit (another fruit I have not tried), I hope they all do well! Jackfruit are fast growers, so I have heard, and can begin flowering after barely a year.

 
Patrick, I was first introduced to them while staying in a small village up in the northeastern region. I don't know why, but once I started eating them, I just couldn't stop. I think I bought out all the fruit the local market had, which was maybe a few pounds (I suspect that they were at the tail end of their season). Then I bought another large bag of them at Suvarnabhumi airport on my way out of the country. They were my sustaining food for the flight home, since I ended up with last picks for my choice of "airline meals". Some folks say it's sort of a coconuty flavor. I don't actually think so. They are unique. And as for jackfruit... have you ever had Juicy Fruit Gum? I've been told that jackfruit is where it gets its flavor from! Folks in Thailand don't typically let their fruits ripen (case in point, green papaya salad is a favorite dish over there). When I had jackfruit there, it was yellow and OK, but the flavor sort of reminded me of a banana. Then when I got back to the states, I found a huge chunk of jackfruit at a local Asian market, and the edible pieces had a deep orange color. I brought it home, and that was that. Favorite tropical fruit #2. My other favorite I have not attempted to grow here yet; mangosteen. Fresh, it's awesome. Aged... well, trying to cut through the shell/skin once it's browned is like trying to saw through a log. And unfortunately all the mangosteen I've found locally is the tough stuff. 

I'm glad to hear that jackfruit grow so fast. I don't know what species of jackfruit I ended up with. The seed retailer just said the fruit is deep orange, sweet, thick and crunchy, with very little fibery membrane, and supposedly it's also "latexless". I personally didn't mind the latex. I actually thought it'd be cool to utilize the latex into materials for making art.

Good luck with your longan seedling! I hope you get some fruit from it.