Not sure how I never heard of the Tropical Fruits store in San Jose... and I've driven right by there.

Not a lot ripe in January other than citrus. In January are the annual CRFG scion exchanges which are a sight to behold for fruit growers. Occasionally, someone brings in something fun to taste.

Another interesting place in NorCal to try fruit is Berkeley Bowl in Oakland, they sometimes have something unusual. They usually have the most cultivars of the common fruit to. Usually 20+ varieties of apples, should have close to that many varieties of mandarins. Plus they are all labelled by cultivar.

A local CRFG member just visited me and showed me pictures of a mango tree growing in front of a motel near Santa Clara University.  The tree looked healthy, probably 10 feet tall and very bushy (maybe as wide as tall), and had many fruits hanging.  He said the Indian family that owns the motel planted the tree quite a number of years back, and gets fruit every year.  He said that there is another motel down the road that also is likely owned by the same family, also with a fruiting mango.  They also have a fruiting Jamun tree.

I visited a place in Palo Alto a few years ago with a 15' tall curry leaf planted by an Indian family. It was absolutely lush and very leafy. I've also spotted a random fruiting wampee tree on the Stanford campus that appears to be thriving for several years despite complete neglect.

Quote from: murahilin on March 13, 2012, 06:06:23 PM

Quote from: fruitlovers on March 13, 2012, 06:03:22 PM

Would be great if i have a page i can give people to look up. I just made a list of places to visit on Big Island for a visitor from California. I forget now how many times i've done this for visitors??? Gets kinda olde. Murahilin, you should break the list down by each individual island: Oahu, Kauai, Molokai, Lanai, Maui, and Hawaii (Big Island).
Oscar

Oscar, I was planning on using you as my source. Lol

If you still have the list you made for a visitor from CA can you please send me a copy? Thanks. I will divide it up by island... also, what is the easiest way to get from island to island?

Yeah, i figured!  I don't mind being the source because i'd rather just do it once, and have the link to give to people in the future. The easiest, and ONLY way, to get from island to island is to fly. There are 2 airlines that fly interisland: Hawaiian and Go!
Oscar

Oscar,
Did you ever get around to posting this? 
Just booked a flight with my family to Hawaii for August (Oahu, Maui, Hawaii) and I of course need to see every single great fruit related thing in Hawaii. 
-Jason

California is Mediterrainean weather so anything that don't normally grow in this area or this climate would be rare by CRFG standard. I agree there are meetings that feel too "normal".

Blueberries and pawpaw were rare because they didn't normally grow in places like San Diego. But these days with the antioxidant food popularity seems like every gardener in California is growing several blueberry bushes of some Southern Highbush or Rabbiteye varieties.

Up here in northern california the typical 'rare' is simply rare cultivars of temperate fruit, citrus and avocados. Nothing wrong with that, I love growing stone fruit, but I wish more members were interested in going beyond stone fruit and apples. There are a few growing white sapote and cherimoyas and still fewer (like myself) growing rarer things.
This September the Festival of Fruit is going to be amazing. It will be in Santa Rosa held concurrent with the National Heirloom Expo which was a huge event last year for those interested in heirloom varieties and annual crops from seed.

If I join CRFG, how do I know which chapters meet where? I am allowed to go to any one of these correct? I dont see the full calender of meetings, I think I will participate in it for sure, will get to meet folks from this group as well.

There is the chapter map:
http://crfg.org/local.html
State membership gets you the magazine.
Each local chapter usually runs its own membership which ranges from $5-$15. Some chapters are small (~30 people) with some being large (~200).
I'm a member of the Santa Clara and Monterey Bay chapters since 2008 when I bought a house and got the fruit obsession.
You can join any local chapter you want and like me can join multiple. Joining multiple chapters sometimes has its benefits such as special fruit tastings and early admittance to scion exchanges along with the chapter meetings.

Tim got the same ones at my local Costco last week. They are pretty good, better than the Ranch 99 ones I got a few weeks ago.
Though I'm not a true lycheeluva because they are still sitting in my fridge. 

Plant patents should be respected, the effort that typically goes into breeding costs $$$$ and in order to continue their breeding programs they need to make back that $$$$ with the small $ they get from selling the patented varieties. Everyone wins with plant patents because the breeders continue to have a means to recoup R&D costs and the public gets superior varieties.
Murahilin already posted a link to my US plant patent spreadsheet above but looking at it you will notice few subtropicals. I think this is due to most of the US being unable to grow subtropicals along with an undiscerning public which still thinks a Tommy Atkins is what a mango is supposed to be.
In general few of the patented plants are even consumer varieties anyways, they are often commercial bred varieties optimized to commercial growing (ships well, even ripening period, little blemishing, etc.) not to home growing (taste!).

Now as far as anyone enforcing the plant patents... nobody is going to come to your home over you reproducing a single patented variety, its only worth it to go after commercial growers and sellers. I remember that some people here in the CRFG have wanted to graft on some patented scions and were willing to pay the patent owner but they weren't setup to take money from a home grower.

Funny this topic came up. Was taking a walk on the Stanford college campus last night and spotted a citrus relative plant by the mausoleum. Upon closer examination of a fading attached aluminum it was a wampi, thriving here since 2008 in an obscure location.
Really nice that wampi thrives here in Northern california. When I finished my walk it was too dark to go back to the tree for scions, but I may have to make another visit to the tree 
Commercially I don't think Wampi is available in California, and if it is in southern california I wouldn't want anyone bringing it to northern california.
There is a Wampi collector a few miles from my place whose number I got ages ago but never called, may have to give him a call and see if I can get a plant.

I think everyone can at least agree that vermicompost is a good solution for organic nutrition in containers.
I am dead set against compost tea, though I can see the appeal in containers vs. compost. Container growing is a different beast from in ground growing. I just can see compost tea as being any better than the synthetic foliar fertilizers (i.e Dyna-gro foliar pro and similar). And with the risk of E. coli in my food plants I think I'll stick to my synthetics as safer. Maybe they aren't organic but organic is far from always being better.

The one argument possibly made against this is the synthetics lack mycorrhizae, though if you are concerned about them, special mycorrhizae packets are available which are certain to contain the appropriate types as opposed to compost tea where who knows what is growing.

I just completed my carport greenhouse a few weeks ago with my neighbors help
Pictures
I'm located in a typical california coastal climate, so won't need to do that much cooling and I'm hardly even considering heating.
I've got a 3 speed greenhouse fan for cooling 1k/2k/3k cfpm with thermostat for controlling the fan.
I'm not planning on running heat in the winter so it will get down to the 30's. Still need to wire up the electrical... 

However, I haven't yet figured out the watering situation since this greenhouse thing is new to me. I'm thinking of running misters while the fan is on for evaporative cooling and increasing humidity. I am planning on running a timed drip-type system with sprayers for overhead watering. I'm not sure if the misting line is overkill.
Should I also run a humidistat and control misting/watering that way?

Any good resources on home greenhouse environment controls?

Where is the best place to purchase home greenhouse supplies? I want better than the super basic cheapo stuff and I can't afford the high end professional stuff.
I purchased the fan from ACF Greenhouses and was satisfied with the service from them.

Yeah, even though there is no real need to worry about parasitic plants the USDA pretty much blanket prohibits them all:
http://www.aphis.usda.gov/plant_health/permits/organism/downloads/parasitic_plant_genera.pdf

Can I eat my screen? That looks yummy. Thanks for the comparison shot

I've eaten them. Tart, less pleasing than normal guavas, smaller than strawberry guavas. Positives are they are bite sized, and the El Salvadoran friends who saw that I had them got super excited, flavors of home. There was a "commercial" op in SoCal that shipped them to the hispanic markets up here in northern california two years ago, but haven't seen them since.