The Tropical Fruit Forum

I have a screen room that is 10' tall. It has 2 in ground planting spots with dwarf Pygmy palms. They looked great, but are now too tall and pressing on the screen, so they have to go. Those are the shortest palms, so I need a different plant. I'm wondering if there are any dwarf fruit trees that would produce in a screened in room without the benefit of insect pollination? I'm not willing to hand pollinate. Is anything self fertile? I know bananas are, what else? Would love put a lychee there, but suspect they need polinators. Any ideas?

Today's severe weather took its toll. My poor atemoya tree was snapped off about 10 inches above the ground=( Here it was last week:



And here it is all broken off=(
 


Here is a close up of the break



Luckily, the break is about 8 inches above the graft, so hopefully after its severe and unintended pugging, it will send out some new shoots.

So questions:

Would you have pruned the "before" tree? It seemed to me that it was taking on a pretty good shape with well placed branches. But it was not strong enough to hold itself up and I had it tied to a bamboo pole. Strong winds unfortunately broke the ties.

How do you encourage a new tree to grow a strong enough trunk that it doesn't need a support pole? Or do newly grafted trees tend to need them for a while? When I bought this tree it was only pencil thickness. The trunk is now about 3/4 inch in diameter. So increasing, but not fast enough to support its own weight. I'm interested to know if it would have been better to not have allowed this tree to get so tall before its trunk thickened up. Opinions?

I now have an "opportunity" to try a new shaping strategy, so advice is welcome...

Thanks for looking,

Angela

I am vacationing in ft meyer beach. Is there anywhere near here to buy tropical fruit? I know pine island has a mango festival later in the summer. Are there growers there that sell fruit to the public at other times? I'd love to find lychees or early mangos. Any suggestions?