The super flavored yellow skin one sounds like Mexican Cream to me. I love the strong guava aroma. I have grown many from seed and none of them have been anything like their parent. Whereas Mexican Cream is small and very yellow the babies have been extra large, green skinned and white on the inside with a more pear flavor. Nice but very mild. I may have to check out this Lemon Guava from Florida.

The trees in my yard are just now opening up. If we don't get another freeze it should be another bumper crop year.

Just for kicks I dug up suckers from my number 1 producing tree and spread them down the row. Some of them were 3 or 4 feet tall. At this point it looks like almost all of them have made it through the torture even though they didn't have many roots and I basically hacked them out of the ground with a shovel. I think these trees are tougher than the reports. It will be another month before I know for sure that they have survived fully.

I have to cram everything into the greenhouse for the winter so I can only tell you what I stuffed into it. I can't see into all the corners, there are so many plants so it will a couple of months before I know who survived. Every May is a lot like Christmas for me.

I have just about every type of citrus, about half of them are small and kept pruned as patio plants in smaller pots which get moved outdoors for summer. The rest are kept in extra large pots and allowed to grow big. I have to prune them after they fruit (this seems to help with bug control) otherwise they would sprawl too much for the limited space. Even though I have some of the "hardy" varieties, all that are in the ground outdoors have suffered or died so I am now just growing them in pots.

I have strawberry guavas and regular guavas - seed grown so the fruit varies a bit from the parent. My situation seems to grow guavas well so I will probably break down and buy a grafted plant soon. I would love a Mexican Cream. The seedlings I've grown from store bought fruit have not had the fragrance nor the flavor.

I have an old Lychee also grown from seed. It is maybe 4 feet tall and around 8 years old. It would be much taller but everywhere I place it it gets hurt or munched on by the local Cotton Rats or squirrels. It has finally gone an entire year without having an oak branch fall on it, another potted plant tipping over and crushing it or the rodent damage. It is finally really growing and putting on large leaves.

I have a few purple passion fruit vines, one of which produces fruit (the native passionvines in my yard have great flavor so I am not inclined to growing the tropicals anymore).

I have a huge Cherimoya grown from seed (it is the yellow leaves in the background of the photos posted earlier). It blooms all summer long but I have never been able to get it hand pollinated. I plan on cutting it back and repotting it into a pot that will be easy to move in and out so that I can place it in the shade outdoors during the summer.

I have a Sapodilla that is finally big enough to fruit. Grown from seed; and a Jaboticaba, some White Sapotes that will be big enough in a couple of years. Seedlings in pots are Luc's Garcinia, Achachairu, Miracle Berry, Ogeechee Lime (hardy), a cluster of Opuntia ficus-indica (from green when ripe fruit) and a broad collection of Solanums. You can see the large leaves on one of the Tamarillo's (from Oscar I think). I also have some Bael seedlings from Roy in India, they come inside the house in the winter, the greenhouse gets too cool for them.

I'm in zone7 and must rely on a greenhouse to grow guavas and I depend on my local Asian market to buy fruit from and I start a lot of seeds. I have never had a guava grow true from seed except one time with the Giant Asian White or Apple Guava. Mexican Cream or any of the rich pink inside ones throw fruit of all different colors and flavors when I've grown them. I have three in the greenhouse now that should fruit this year, if I don't care for the flavor they will be pitched and I will just break down and buy a named variety. Space is limited in the greenhouse so they have to taste good to keep a spot.

I can send you seed from this years fruit (they were in flower before the smaller Naranjilla). They may struggle for you in the heat of summer. I have to grow mine in the shade and they still pout when the days are over 90. The flavor is odd, pretty sour and with an odd chemical tang I haven't tasted in anything else before. If you cook them with water and sugar they get a citrus flavor with a strong note of mango. In South America they usually just juice them and blend them with orange juice or sometimes Tamarillo juice.

I need to take a photo of the Opuntia ficus-indica I grew from seed (grocery store fruit) inspired by all your posts about prickly pears.

I've sent you seeds before and believe I still have your address.

Tis the season for tropical eggplant relatives to ripen. Most years I only grow one species at a time in order to have clean seed since all of these will cross with each other. I've had better luck getting early fruiting by rooting cuttings in the fall, overwintering in the greenhouse and planting out the following May or whenever night time lows get above 50 degrees F, so this year I went ahead and let some of them fruit. I've heard that Cocona crossed with Lulo makes a superior juice so I may attempt that cross next year. This year has been very hot and extremely dry so I'm surprised I got anything off of them. I'm in zone 7b (Raleigh NC)



Naranjilla  Solanum quitoense




Lulo  Solanum quitoense 'Lulo'  (scientific name is in dispute) I treat it is as an improved cultivar since the fruit is so much bigger





here's a shot showing both fruit side by side





Cocona  Solanum sessiliflorum      just starting to flower. these are seedlings I plan on planting in the ground next spring.

Those are grand ideas. I made jelly with some of my fruit last year and it took a while to find enough ripe fruit and process it into juice. Even with my super fruitful vines. I think a bigger market would be with the medicinal herb folks. I don't know if it is the dried flowers or leaves or roots but there is a demand for P. incarnata plant parts.

I've always sown the seeds in the fall and looked for sprouts the following summer - let winter do the hard work. Sometimes they sprout earlier and sometimes later. There is always a crowd of pots off in the corner of my garden during the winter. Even though I have a greenhouse where I sprout and root all sorts of plants, I find that winter hardy plants do better if allowed to sprout the normal way rather than speed things up in the heated gh - in the end you end up weak plants.

Many years ago I used to be a licensed wildlife rescue volunteer (I was working as a zookeeper at the time and lots of wild orphans showed up at the zoo's front gate). I raised hundreds of baby squirrels. Most were too wild to consider keeping as a pet but there was one that stayed tame for a few years. I named him Spasm (Spaz or Spazzy for short). I never kept him in a cage, he just came and went whenever he wanted. He loved all humans and did the purring noise and growling noise just like Earl. Some people he would want to wrestle with others he would act nervous around. He was actually a great pet while he stayed around. After a few years he started spending more and more time up in the trees and he eventually never came back down to anyone, including me. Usually squirrels get to a point where they start biting and you gladly take them to the forest and freedom, but Spasm was always pretty calm.

I collected mine from the wild by gathering seeds and they've always been true to the original form (shorter vines with tons of flowers and large fruit). I'm getting ready to try rooting a bunch of other stuff so I will snip a few of these to see if they root.

There is talk that someone involved in horticulture at some university years ago was trying to develop commercial P. incarnata and also hybrids with P. edulis. With the goal being better flavor, bigger fruit and adding some cold hardiness to P. edulis. He accomplished the crosses but nothing ever happened to his research as far as I know. Local researchers/friends of mine are hoping to find any plants or material he may have left behind. I think he was based at a  school in Florida and that this was many years ago. They mentioned all this when they toured my garden and saw my wimpy collection of passionvines.

Here in Raleigh NC, with NC State, I get toured by hort people all the time and more than once someone that has lived in South America or Mexico just happened to be here in the fall when my vines were dropping fruit and even they remarked that the flavor was just as good as P. edulis back home. My only complaint is that the fruit is never full of juice, the air space inside is too big.

I have the same problem with any Passionvine I grow in a pot. I use just regular bagged potting soil. I should probably add some compost. They do seem to be hungry plants. They probably want a dilute fertilizer treatment every week, which is what I do for my citrus trees but for some reason I never think of doing to these guys even though they are near each other. I will say that my P. edulis suffered greatly and then all of a sudden turned around and now look super healthy. I thought they were going to die. Maybe their roots have grown down into the ground through the drain holes in their pots. I won't know until winter when I have to move them into the greenhouse.

As far as the P. incarnatas growing out in the yard - my soil is medium quality, kind of sandy in spots, kind of rich and dark in spots. I cannot determine a rhyme or reason for the spots they pop up in, so I'm not sure if it is soil quality that guides them.

Yes, you're grafted vine would die back and next years growth would revert back to the rootstock. I would be better to try and root cuttings, but I don't know when to do that with passionvines.

I wait until the spines/hairs are easily brushed off the fruit before I harvest mine. They are harsh flavored but work well mixed with other juices or sweetened.