The Tropical Fruit Forum

Millet,
Regarding the fertilizers, yeah it’s still a bit of an experiment/stubbornness on my part. For some of my older trees in big pots with lots of critters (worms millipedes)  it works not too bad provided the soil is warm during the winter. I’m trying a bunch of different things, green manure, bokashi/vermileachates, and vermicomposts. Once I’ve got the logistics/science all figured out I’m gonna try organic/synthetic and compare yields.

I was asking the question as it relates to grower personal preference due the fact that I have limited space and if one is significantly better than the other I’d like the extra room.

Rispa,
I like the red lime (kumquat rangpur hybrid) mostly because it is unique and very productive. Up here it’s hard to buy interesting citrus. The red is cool cause it has a unique flavour if you are used to standard citrus (lemon lime orange) and u can eat the peel. It’s also very everbearing and productive, just over our long dark cold winter and it already has 7 fully ripe and 16 fully formed fruits on. 4ft tree in a 25 gallon pot. They are also a good size, like a good Persian lime. Onlyissue is the seeds, I cut them in half and flick  the seeds out before a crush it in a cocktail.

Aip, thanks for the plant suggestions. Humidification at night doesn’t work in the winter cause even though the greenhouse frame thermally broken, water condenses on the frame at 0c, and starts to ice up on the frame at -15c. At -40c outside even if the room humidified the moisture won’t stay in the air and just freezes to the frame. I use the dehumidifier for when the sun is setting to keep it under 65%, as at that time the rh can temporarily shoot  above 80% as the inside temp drop from 28c  before it crashes down to 40% by the morning when the air temp is 17c.

When people say 8 feet tall they don’t include the leaves do they?

Hey everyone, I have limited space in my greenhouse and just got my first fruit of my baboon lemon. It was a nice size and looked good and was looking forward to making a couple of cocktails for myself and a friend, but was very embarrassed with the amount of juice I got from it, less than a tablespoon.

What do I do? Will it get better as the tree ages, or did it need more water etc. Or do I get rid of it in an attempt to save my reputation as a tropical cocktail connoisseur?

Here is what’s left after I crushed it trying to salvage my cocktail.

Carolyn,
Which ones have you found to be the best for eating out of hand?

Also have you tried groundcherries, I haven’t tasted them
Yet. I tried some last summer and they got hammered by spider mites. I tried them again this winter (not planned). They seem to also be aphid magnets, however they are still flowering and fruiting like crazy despite being infested. They were a spontaneous volunteer in one of my banker plant systems so I’m leaving the aphids be.

How do your citrus do at those temps? I’m worried there isn’t enough microbial activity to keep up nitrate production when my soils are under 15c.

So sad. I had a dwarf cavendish in a container that rotted as well just as it was flowering. I was able to successfully fruit a dwarf namwah with our any difficulty before the cavendish died. The only difference with the two was one was near a circulation fan in a warmer diet part of my greenhouse while the other was closer to a window.

I realize I have no where near the heat and sun of Phoenix but the low pressure misters work great along with air exchange. I live in the northern prairies, last summer it went up to 38c, but with low pressure misters (only 5 heads) and 1.5 air exchanges per minute I kept the greenhouse temp under 32c. With the air exchange alone it would have been about 45c (university of florida has greenhouse temperature modelling papers on their website).

Plantinyum,
Just a bit of info from a fellow cold climate banana grower who has a limited experience.
I grew a “dwarf” namwah to fruiting a couple of years back in a 35 gallon pot. I used a peat based potting mix top dressed with homemade compost. The dwarf tree had leaves pushing on the top of my 14’ ceiling at 18 months. When the give the height of the plant they only mean the stalk.

Also after it fruited (57 bananas) the mother plant got so rootbound the soil wouldn’t absorb any water. And the pups struggled to get large enough to flower in the same pot. When I finally gave up and cut down the tree, the soil in the pot was so heavy and dense with roots the soil was almost unworkable for composting and recycling afterwards. So don’t spend a bunch of money on a good potting mix. If I were do do it again I think I’d make a good portion of the soil from a homemade compost. Also I’m not sure what would happen if you used a smaller pot.

Yuhu, great link! Does anyone know how to tell when the flower is mature enough for this technique? I do t speak Spanish.

This is my passion fruit pot, same setup as my citrus 35 gallon. The hole is actually 1.5”. The pot lifters are 3D printed.