What special or rare fruit trees can be grown in San Jose, California?

[HoangNguyen]

Cool_man,

You live in San Jose too.  What is your zip code?  mine is 95122.  What is variety of your lychee and longan? were they in containers when they died?  Sorry to hear that.  You should air-layer them before push them to their cold limit.  It is easy to air layer them. 

[Cool_man]

Hoang, I'm in 95118, I have no idea what type of longan and lychee I had, yes they were in 15 gal container sitting on the edge of my deck under the arbor, full morning sun until noon, bright and airy,  the afternoon sun we have in this area is so harsh on tropical plants,  they were given (confiscated) from a friend. I was not really into tropical fruit tree gardening at the time ( just only ornamental flowers and dragon fruit) but started to have interest in tropical fruit tree since my trees died and I'd like to take on the challenge of successfully growing tropical fruit trees in this area and hopefully can have some tropical fruits in the near future.

[HoangNguyen]

Coolman, do you have the picture of your lychee and longan?  Were they in containers for 7 yrs?  Did you ever re-pot them?  You started your collection.  Where did you get your Hak ip lychee, and DR longan?

[Cool_man]

Hoang, I'll try to find the old picts, they were not that really big trees, I pruned them hard every year to keep them at around 4-6' tall including pot. I change the pots when I got them and have not since, I used fast drain mix 2 parts pine bark 1 part perlite and 1 part crushed lava rock and 1 part worm casting compost, similar to what they call gritty mix now a day, and just top it off with more mix and worm casting when the soil  settled down every year, one thing that I have been practicing for quite a long time now is that all of my pots are drilled with quite a few holes to help with drainage and preventing root bound problem  very similar to the commercially available air-pot, just imagine the plan old black plastic pot with 1/2" holes everywhere and cheap I don't use any commercial fertilizer, just strictly worm casting from my vermicompost and compost tea once every 2 weeks.
I got the longan and a few others from Roger Meyer in SoCal and the lychee from one of the home grown private nursery also from SoCal (Craigslist), next on my shopping list are mango trees, maybe get some when I visit SoCal next month, are they expensive?

[HoangNguyen]

Coolman, add cherimoya and white sapote to your collection list.  Cherimoya handles cold better than sugar apple.

[fyliu]

Coolman, add cherimoya and white sapote to your collection list.  Cherimoya handles cold better than sugar apple.

Graft the sugar apple onto cherimoya when you do get it, as insurance. I grew sugar apple 17 years ago and it didn't make it past the first winter in SoCal. The roots couldn't handle the cold.

[Cool_man]

Definitely sugar apple, and cherimoya will be on my list. My wife and I really like the sugar apple, even though not too many people like the fruit because of too many seeds and grainy, but it just bring back the memory, we have the sugar apple tree when I was a kid in Vietnam. Did I mention that the last winter also took away my good size sugar apple, black and white sapote? I thought the sapote was suppose to be cold hardy and planted 1 of each in my front yard, they were all dead to the root. Now I have a fig tree in the place. Just saw a couple of 3 gallon honey heart cherimoya today at home depot, they were around $30. I'll try to get them when I have time this weekend.