Oh good so it's not just me that has a painfully slow growing pitomba. haha 

-Luke

Great photos! I've never seen such rounded pods before. Do you remember if it was a special variety?
Ah HA! i see in the first photo they too have the brown leaf edge(top of photo) so i'm not the only one heheh.
I have heard they like 80% humidity. I need to take some measurements but i'm going to see if i can fit the two of them into one of those 5 shelf mini-greenhouses from the big box stores.

Thanks,

-Luke

Sent you a message Kevin :-)


The carambola at the nursery here is Kari, but is not in bloom as far as i remember.

Thanks!

-Luke

Hi Guys, thanks for the suggestions! Kevin i definitely agree the natural humidity (or lack of) here in CO is probably the biggest battle. I did notice a significant improvement in the plant when we set up the humidifier directly on it. We used to have it across the room, but when we moved it right next to the plant, the new growth survived rather then died out.  Kevin do you have a greenhouse that you were growing them in? I would love to hear more about your experience, i don't know any one else who has a cacao plant.
Anikulapo - since owning it, it has flushed out twice now. the first flush dried out(prior to moving the humidifier on the plant) and the second survived but was a pale yellow. I know i have seen photos of cacao in its natural habitat and it's flush color is beautiful, deep and rich. I'll look  into turfpro (i'm not familiar with it at all). And a PH test is easy enough.

BTW here is a picture from 1-2 months ago, just after the new growth reached full leaf size. You can see the humidifier behind it. The plant is sadly worse off now than it was in the photo



-Luke

EDIT: Also, in regards to watering, what schedule does everyone else water at? As i said i let maybe the top 2 inches dry out, but the cacao is in a very deep container, i'm just not familiar with its root structure and root watering needs.

Hi Kevin, There is a nursery here in town: Fort Collins Nursery that actually has some carambola in stock. I think they only have 1 left, it's about 7 feet tall. ...Just incase you wanted a second plant :-)

-Luke

Thank you for the welcomes! Harry - it's like the fish that got away without photos right! Well here's a random assortment of photos of much of our tropicals:
Our Cacao(and in fact we JUST picked up a second one, identical size, it was 75% off!) More on the cacao later, it's not doing as healthy.



Some cherries on our coffee tree, which is where the coffee seedlings came from ;-)



Our ruby guava and lisbon lemon getting a shower. the guava shocked after bringing home from the nursery and dropped all of its leaves, but it is mostly all regrown now - fast grower!



two shots of our two jobas. these are one of my favorites and they do EXCELLENT as 'houseplants'. they just keep flushing out new growth




Our loquat when it was blooming

The last of the loquat fruit harvest. The fruits were starting to split so we pulled them all off. We harvested maybe about half as much prior to this photo as well. Not bad for being indoors!


Our loquat and our two poms during Xmas. We dressed up the poms as charlie brown christmas trees!


two of the 4 passion vines. This photo is from atleast a month ago, and has continued to grow. Will be stringing up some rope outside for this to continue to grow. These two are caerulea. The other two are edulis and are much smaller(started at different times)


Here is an old photo(5 months ago) of a lot of our tropical seedlings getting a shower

Here's a recent photo. I can get individual photos if anyone wants. But up there are cherimoyas, sugar apple, the starfruit, pitomba, lychee, loquat, pineapple guavas, pineapples, goji, avacado, lemon seedlings etc.


And our strawberry tree/jamacain cherry.


Lets see, your other questions. I haven't been at the hobby long. Maybe 3 years. I've been big on growing veggies and such for maybe twice that long, but only got into fruit, and then tropical fruit within the past 3 years. Since then it's just gotten exponentially 'worse' haha. It's painful to go to the nursery and see tamarind, macadamia, flowering mango and papaya and dragon fruit etc etc plants and not be able to take any home(we already have a jungle of a house! haha). Although i am lucky that we found a nursery that carries that stuff! I think i may have helped persuade them haha.

As you can see, all our seedlings are small. most between 6" and 2'. None of the seedlings have flowered or fruited. The only things that have fruited were the larger plants purchased from the nursery and i added "Fruiting" next to those ones. All of nursery plants we have bought are in the 3', 4', 5' 6' range.
I live north of denver, CO. Elevation here is about 4,600ft, can get very windy, and has a humidity of about 20%.

Right now, my biggest issues are the cacao and surprisingly the starfruit. It only recently started having troubles. But i can start a new thread to see if we can get some assistance with those.

Enjoy the photos!!

Luke