There is a great deal of variability in the genera Nick mentioned.
Annonas: Sugar apple is your best be here, depending on exactly how much room you have. I have four-year-old sugar apples fruiting in relatively small pots at about 5' tall. A sugar apple can be kept in a 25 gallon pot pretty much indefinitely, but does not need to be in that large of a pot to fruit. Cherimoyas and custard apples grow larger and more vigorously. I have them in my collection, but they have never fruited and are growing a bit too tall. There are some rarer
Annonas with either somewhat lesser quality fruits or larger growth habits that I am not going to get into here.
Eugenias: Eugenias are great container plants, with the caveat that not all are suitable. Surinam cherries tend to respond well to pruning; they will get as large as you let them, but you can hack them back without them suffering. Their fruiting age and size (and fruit quality) is variable, but I have had one fruit at three years in a one gallon pot. I would avoid grumichama, pitomba, and
Eugenia leitonii; they either get too large or are too finicky. There are many, many,
many new species being introduced to the US that are relatively unknown as to how they perform as container plants. I will get back to you in a few years about some of those.
Citrus: I like citrus, but I find that they are harder to care for than the Myrtaceae now wildly popular among rare fruit growers. Root diseases and spider mites are problems, at least among mine. Other growers do not have those problems. Another forum user, Brian, does a great job with citrus in Pennsylvania.
Guavas: Your standard
Psidium guajava has not been a standout in my collection. I have a Columbian red guava. It wants to grow large, yet refuses to fruit, despite being four-years-old. This can be alleviated by buying air-layered cuttings from fruiting plants, but those can sometimes be hard to find and expensive. If you can find a reputable grower with a variety you want, that would probably be the way to go. I really like
Psidium striatulum, which fruits young and at a small size. That species tops out at 10' tall in nature; you can prune it to be smaller and more compact. Its foliage is quite ornamental. Its fruit is just as good as a commerical red guava, in my opinion. Like
Eugenias,
Psidiums are getting a lot of attention from growers due to new species and varieties coming out of Brazil and Argentina. Some of them have some promise, but the jury is still out.
Jaboticabas: Also variable. Red hybrid and scarlet (escarlate) are the two best varieties for container growers. They fruit at a small size and at a young age.
Plinia phitrantha is another good choice, but I find that it gets larger, closer in size to sabaras and Grimals. That has not stopped me from having all of those, plus several other species in my collection.
For all these plants, be aware that they will not fruit as quickly in more northern, temperate areas as they do in Florida, California, or Hawaii. That is simply the nature of geography. In my experience, add a year or two to account for that. So, if people in Florida can fruit a species in three years, plan on it being four or five years for you. That is not just my experience; Jay (Tropical Fruit Hunter) has written about having similar experiences with delayed fruiting in his Ohio greenhouse.
I am not writing this to discourage you, just to provide a little advice. Go out there and grow what you want to grow, even if it is going to get stupidly large (my jackfruits and mamey sapotes). Just remember that this fruit growing hobby is supposed to be fun and provide you with delicious fruit, not something where you are aggravated at large, non-fruiting plants. Avoid that.
Show Posts
