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I wish I could grow lychee or logan in north cal 9b. Are you selling the fruit? Im interested in how it taste.I know some people in Northern CA 9b are getting fruit from Kohala longans. I’ve been growing some longan seedlings in Napa with virtually no protection and they seem very hardy, but very slow growing. Worth a shot!
Not fammiliar with your climate, but here i regularly see late figs hanging on the bare trees. If i am not mistaken breba crop grows along with the first vegetative growth, the figs do grow faster the first leaves but they are always growing together.
Here in fall and in winter, in Sofia ive seen trees full of figs, those are eather late figs or caprifigs. The caprifigs are the male figs, in which the fig wasps stay trough winter.
Capris ive heard do not ripen like regular figs and just stay dry and basically unnedible, if the plant that you found doesnt produce an edible fruit sometime next summer, theres a chance it is a male caprifig.
By the way i dont think that cold makes figs sweeten up, guite the opposite! With my fig i just stop harvesting whats ripening on the plants after 15-20 of september, the fruit is just not sweet and rather bad tasting if ripened in cold temperatures. Energy for fruit development mostly comes from leaves, i guess figs are kinda an exception with their breba crops, which i think are nurtured from the plants stored energy, at least until the first leaves start to photosintesize.
So maybe go to an Asian market and start planting a bunch of kohala seeds from the fruit, same with lychees.
Psidium guajava *barely* works for me here in 9b much further south than you. I don't recommend them. There are tons of other superior psidiums for you. Long leaf, guinense, "Skittles" guava, and so on. Anything small fruit. My guajavas get burnt back from frost too, lose about 6-8" every year but they grow 1' so it's a net positive. I like the look of them, and they do fruit if we get hot weather in the fall / winter (not this year). Long leaf guava is probably the best for me, overall, and is done fruiting well before it gets cold and is basically same flavor profile as guajava anyways.
I'm probably really similar to you, Bush2Beach can confirm.
Sabara jabo kicks ass for me, in pots. I have a really big one deep in the oaks and it does great. It gets snow on it sometimes and no worries. I don't bother covering it anymore even down to 25-30f. It hit 25f a few years back and didn't even lose leaves.
Success stories for me:
Longan - it loves alkaline soil and water and we have a lot of that in CA. Can't recommend it enough.
Jabo - see above, but forget about reds, scarlets, whites, and so on. Just stick with Sabara and get as big as you can afford.
White sapote - grows fast as heck
Pitanga - they do ok, kinda depends on weather for a big crop. I get tons of flowers but often it rains and that's a no crop situation then
Cherry of the Rio Grande - this is my #1 eugenia recommendation. It is a heavy fruiter and grows extremely fast and takes no damage from frost even visibly on the leaves
Guabiju - in ground through winter (under the guajava) and it's explosive now
Loquats - easiest subtropical fruit tree, for real, just get a later flowering cultivar and you'll really have success. I have one that is a seedling planted in a 10" area between oaks, left it for the laughs and it actually fruits 7 years later! It is in 100% shade.
Things that work marginally:
Mangoes - yeah they can kinda limp along, but not really. They'll die eventually. I still plant them but don't know why, mostly just dreaming that one will survive winter
Annona - they do ok, but not spectacularly. They get beat back by winter too much to succeed
Vanilla ice cream bean - same story, they do well but then lose almost all their new tender growth in a cold snap
Garcinias - they grow ok then die when it gets really cold out, even in the greenhouse mine didn't make it
Jacks - forget about it, you maybe will get flowers maybe even sets but it's not a long enough season to ripen the fruit (I am trialing kwai muk now)
Citrus - does ok, but not really. It would help if the deer didn't love to eat it
Avocado - trialing them first time this year and it's not looking promising, only one is growing marginally well (sir prize)
Acerola - I have had a few make it through winter in pots, but not really. Trying it out in ground now with a big one
Hope that helps
The stalled ripening on psidium guavajava can doom them with rot and splits easily. I haven’t eaten a good one in years.
I tried to kill all my in grounds to the ground.
I hear people ripen them in San Jose & east bay which is hotter and drier in all seasons
It’s worth a shot with less fog and more inland heat.
Jabo, White Sapote, Macadamia should all do well for you. Would also consider Psidium species and hardier Eugenia species. For annonas would go with Cherimoya and Atemoya. Longan should well long term.
Thanks for the suggestions! Good call on Psidium, do you have any favorites? I do have young strawberry and lemon guavas as well as whatever the white available from Four Winds Growers.
I really don’t know much about Eugenia yet. I have a couple Surinam Cherry that are doing pretty well. I had fruit from a friend and found it very interesting. Maybe I need to look more into this genus…
Macadamia! Dang! I hadn’t thought about that at all. Gonna need to give that one some consideration for sure.
My favorite Psidium so far has a Tawainese Emperor type seedling I tasted.
Alot of subtropicals will do well for you.
Some things will grow marginally but not fruit.
Most everything will prefer getting planted out as an established 5 gallon.
People reading 9b that have never been to the north bay /napa/lake/sonoma will not have great guidance on what will do well in your climate. Don’t bother planting Bananas unless you have a year round above ground water source.
Stick to sub tropicals over any tropicals.
The lack of humidity is rough on alot of tropicals and your lows are a bit too low anyhow.
White sapote, mac nuts,loquats, cherimoya maybe, pawpaw, will do good.
Jaboticaba you can keep alive but don’t put them in the ground , keep them in pots with filtered light of oaks during mid day.
Just trading for and getting seeds is a funner way to experiment then buying and killing expensive grafted tree’s that your not sure yet are suitable for your climate but you want to experiment anyhow.
Get some good banana variety like raja puri which tastes better than store bananas and is fairly cold hardy.
Plants contain a large percentage of water so when you have large trees or a body of water nearby it helps modulate temperature fluctuations. This is why you have wild temperature shifts in the desert or even in grasslands where there isn't a lot of water filled vegetation or bodies of water to modulate temperature shifts between night and day. I don't think the frost makes much difference, seems to be more about temperature. If its frosting on one side of the yard and not the other its probably a temperature difference though.
Jabo, White Sapote, Macadamia should all do well for you. Would also consider Psidium species and hardier Eugenia species. For annonas would go with Cherimoya and Atemoya. Longan should well long term.
If your jaboticabas are sabara they will probably be fine. They can take frosts and prefer some shade anyway. I planted one under a crape myrtle this year and it was doing fine until early fall and the sun changed angle, and cooked almost all the leaves!
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Tending the Wild by M. Kat Anderson
Water in Plain Sight by Judith Schwartz
Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond by Brad Lancaster
The Perfect Fruit by Chip Brantley (story of Floyd Zaiger, Dave Wilson, and some of the largest growers in California)
The Resilient Gardener by Carol Deppe
Frutas no Brasil
I have many wild foraging books as well, top four are:
The New Wildcrafted Cuisine by Pascal Bauder (foraging/cookbook)
Incredible Wild Edibles by Samuel Thayer
Around the World in 80 Plants by Stephen Barstow (Somehow another author published a different book under same title)
-Stephen Barstow has a website called Edimentals
https://www.edimentals.com/blog/
Edible Wild Plants by John Kallas
Top three were Sakip, Ikeda, and Chu Leon.
I had the opportunity to taste about 7 varieties of longan side by side and there are definitely differences in flavor in the varieties.
