With the cold having killed off a good chunk of my tropicals, I was thinking on more temp hardy trees. I grew up on an island in GA with 50 foot tall pecan trees all over the place that were completely without any sort of care. Any advice on keeping them here in central Florida? My local Tractor supply has a couple varieties I was going to grab.

I am removing harder to keep trees that have faded and am replacing them with easy to keep trees like loquats. I have Big Ed and Gold Nugget and some tree that was here when I moved in. Wouldnt mind an arvi. I just havent seen many sources of named loquats, especially here in Central FL. Any ideas for seedlings and nurseries?

As the title says, I am looking for one or two seedlings of this. I see seeds available all the time but every single time I have tried seeds they fail. As common as this tree is in Asia I am not really sure why its so hard to come by in the States. Thanks in advance.

I got back from a short deployment and holy crap did weevils go nuts. And the stupid snake head caterpillars, they were covering my normally healthy and strong Key lime tree. I drenched them in Adonis and sprayed them with a foliar spray with spinosad in it. I know the caterpillars are toast from the spray, will it take out the citrus weevils too? I pulled and crushed all of them I could find but its a largish tree so I am sure I missed some. Also quite a few on a nearby navel orange although oddly, none on the giant unknown orange tree next to them or on the pink lemon.

The weevils by the way are the grey with orange/red stripes that have made their way to central FL with these warm winters we have been having.

Its my 4th or 5th anniversary, whichever one trees or fruit are the appropriate gift and my wife wants to give me a tree. Ok, well I requested a tree over fruit, shoot me. Anyway I have narrowed it down to a couple trees on my bucket list and will be putting it in my new side orchard which is set aside for weird stuff. I can plant it full sun or partial sun and can place it to where it still gets the sun and is protected from uncommon frost by an oak tree. I am located in 9B near the St Johns river in between Cocoa Beach and Orlando. Adam got 30ish degree weather, it never dropped below 42 for us just to show a relative normal temp difference between our two areas, or to put it another way, my black pepper in a pot had no burn or anything from the cold and its by far my current most vulnerable plant.

Geography out of the way, I kind of have narrowed my choices down to a Rose Apple or a Cashew tree. Odd trees, but I do not currently own either of them. So hive mind, between the two, which would you go for and why?

Ok, now I am interested in this High density orchard idea. I didn't want to hijack the other guy's thread so I started my own. I am in the process of putting in irrigation(with a pick axe) for a new orchard and even after working in some new shadier spots, I still ended up with only 31 sprinkler risers. For the most part each riser is roughly 10' from the next. When I was sitting here this morning figuring out what to plant I was disheartened to find out I already filled the entire area with just the potted trees I have sitting by.

This high density thing though has my attention. My area is roughly 200' x 30'. Now what trees can I plant like this? I am thinking have the sprinkler sitting in the middle between the trees and use 360 micro-sprinklers. Would these combinations work?
2 black cherry trees or should I do 4?
4 of three different guava types
2 Spanish lime
2 Java plum
4 Sho Sahn -ealongotus latiforia (I think)
2 compact mangos Graham and pickering
4 Coco Plums

Then I have  7 single trees that get a bit larger or I only have one of. On the multi-tree thing I was thinking 2 foot not 18 inches since I have the space. Viable ideas?

Hey I am building a large arbor for my kiwi and was wondering if there would be a problem with using treated wood?

Hello, my plans for the year include these guys. Looking for Florida native Paw Paws, preferably some of the bigger ones, and hopefully someone has a clue where to obtain Black Cherries, the Prunus serotina variety which will fruit in Central Florida. I don't think Peitros paw paws are in business any more. I haven't seen the black cherry on any nursery list I normally go to.

Scratch the cherries, found a cheap source on amazon of all places.

I am very jealous. My parents neighbor in Savannah GA kindly brought me back into his garden to see his trees. He used to do alot of veggies but now mostly just a few cucumbers and tomatoes that he tries to get to before the raccoons. But his fig trees are giant and they are less than ten years old. His various citrus trees are nearing 8-9 feet tall at three years of age. He planted a pecan earlier this year and it has grown a foot and a half. The only thing I can think of is either the shade is making them grow upward faster or the soil is just that good. He just uses 10 10 10 fertilizer, no pesticides, no sprays or compost. He does have sentinel pines(the big 100-150 foot pines tree we have on the islands here) so his theory is the are too shaded and grow faster to get to the sun.

I think its the soil. I was digging up and relocating some of my moms flowering trees and bushes since thats a bit much for them these days and noticed the first 2 feet of dirt is the softest(once broken of course), darkest brown dirt I have dug through. A far cry from the crappy useless grey sand we have in Central Florida. I am guessing its just hundreds of years of the accumulated lush growth here on these islands with all their ancient live oaks and pine trees and the breaking down of the leaves and limbs and downed water oaks(they get to be about 100 feet tall and 5-6 foot thick before crashing down from water rot).

Now one thing I am considering after talking to my neighbor and my parents is amending the soil a bit for future plantings. I know, dont do it, but I see far too many good results from having good soil to start with versus my current growings which has many mineral deficiencies and poor sizes. My four year old naval orange for example has maybe grown a foot since I planted it(I have a few exceptions, my key lime growing into a 7 foot tall 6 foot wide bush in that same time frame). I mulch everything fairly thick and yearly as is. Im sure it helps. My neighbor across the street is going to be mixing miracle grow of some sort mixed with black cow(I assume he is getting a truck load, he has hundreds(yes hundreds) of backhoe holes dug waiting). He claims his current house in town has large number of fruiting trees done with this exact method. SInce I am removing some non-growing pear trees, I am going to try this method of planting out just to see. Its a couple of various guava trees.

As most people from FL can tell you, we have a problem with invasive water grass in our canals and lakes. I know seaweed works well providing nutrients and such as it breaks down. Would freshly harvested freshwater grass work as a mulch as well? Some of us could literally get more than we could ever use.

Looking for seedlings or grafts of either of these, must be in the continental US or Hawaii, I doubt seedlings from outside would get past customs although if you have a hook up then I am listening. Been burned too many times now by bad seeds to accept seeds and Dugentia never makes it past customs unless its from Hawaii anyway in my experience.

Links to someone selling one or both are great too. None of the ones I know of are selling them.

These first two are a tree next to my compound. No one has a clue what they are. Any ideas?



This is a massive mango tree on site with my work area right behind it. One of my crew ate a mango and said it was good til he found a worm.

This is one of several horses tethered on long ropes right outside the compound. He ignored the fresh apple I gave him but came running when I brought him a mango. This one has kinda been adopted by a few members of the local unit who give it food and fresh water daily since no one else apparently does. Its very sad and he has large ticks on his ears he wont let us remove.


The mango trees here are giant. I am used to the dinky ones we have in FL, some of these are bigger than live oaks. Soo many cool trees. Now that I have been switched to the night shift, hopefully I can get out and see some things. Any ideas on the weird alien fruit on the first tree?

I was thinking of planting some camellias under one or more of my shady oak trees. But then I got to thinking(always a big mistake) and was wondering if there are any fruit trees suitable for 9B here in FL that like the shade? Exotic or otherwise.