The Tropical Fruit Forum

Finally pulled the trigger on a Jenny to leave space for another fruit, instead of fully covering the wall with male and female kiwis.

Another idea popped up on my mind. As I don't really need to have a heavy crop, would it be possible to grow it in a container with a "portable" support? In other words, the support will not be the wall but bamboo canes or something different put into the container as well.

I am also interested in the containerized kiwi idea, althought  i think mini/ arguta kiwis would be a better candidate for this, as they arent as agresive growers as the regular ones......

Has someone used the crushed seeds of cherimoya to make an insecticide? Can you share the recipe on how you did it?
Does it have any worthwhile effect and on what pests is it most effective against?
My cherimoya started fruiting and i have a load of seeds that i dont know what to do with, i would like to try to make this insecticide but not without first consulting the tropical fruit gang haha 

Aiptasia904, our winter this year was just a subzero week in february, got down to minus 12 C , otherwise the rest of the period was overly warm.  My trees are just now starting to wake up and swell buds, stonefruit being the first to do this, as usual. My arguta kiwi vines are also waking up , which i thought is a little strange but i dont really know at which time they woke up last year so ...
And yes , the waking up too early is kinda the essence of the problem, with those warm spells/periods trough winter.
I should probably start to write down dates of flowering for my trees ,so i at least have some data to compare from year to year. Cant really remember anything regarding flowering periods from last year lol....

Oolie, thanks for the heads-up up! My fruit is very good on the first year of fruiting, at least by my standards and limited cherimoya taste experiences(cultivars).
If they improve over time its just a plus !

Cool, very jealous. I’ve never been able to find one to taste in Canada. I just started mine from seed 2 years ago. I looked for years but I couldn’t get cultivars this far North. Is it the same requirements as sugar apple? What size of container did you use? Also when did it start flowering and how big is it now? Any other tips/tricks?

dont really know how cherimoya compares to sugar apple, ive heard that cherimoya is the easier to grow from the two. The plants were grown for the first 2-3 years in pots progressing in size, the final one was like a  20 liter bucket. I planted them inground in the greenhouse, 2 summers ago, they flowered for the first time last winter. This summer i trigerred them to flower by leaf stripping and pruning in july, they flowered trought August and i hand pollinated every single flower.
I have pruned them alot of times, i am actually wating on the fruits to all ripen now so i can prune once again and leaf strip, i hope to trigger an early blooming. They are hitting the top of the greenhouse now at around 2.5 meters.
I am still learning how to grow them as succesfully as i can, dont have the experience to have my own special tips regarding growing. I may have just one such, havent seen someone else doing it but for just a few plants like i have, bagging the fruit keeps it safe from falling and destroing itself, theres also the benefit of it hanging on the tree for the longest so it probably sweetens more. I found thet the fruit ripens fine ,even if the core pulls out, i did had just a little mold on one fruit but really not bag when i expected them holes to be full of mold in a day. Also you may want to be carefull with neem oil around your cherimoya, i burned mine exactly when they started setting fruit and now the fruit has those scars from the neem, it burned some of them quite bad, along with some of the leaves.

YES!!!! Thank you, I've been really careful only every 4-6 days, I uncover the very top part to check for root growth and if its still alive but was very surprised this time!

I don't know if this sounds dumb but would it be a good idea to maybe rub off the smaller growths? I don't think it'd be best for the plant to throw out 10 new shoots or if it'll prioritize by itself but its also insanely stressed and I've went way too mad scientist already

i would suggest to not disturb it any further, rubbing off the buds creates a pathway for pathogens, which at the stage you plant is in can be lethal, also the wounds will be too close to the soil, having constant moisture on them. Remove some of the soil around the seedling, just a little bit and do not cover it again, let it breathe.

1rainman, yeah i do know now, in the past when i had the plants that got shredded i doubt i knew it would be ok, i remember the day before, nice whole leaves, beautifful to look at, the aftermath was like it was in a fight with 1 billion cats wow, coudnt stand the sight....ive thought about having a hardier breed of banana ,like orinoco, which i will dug up with soil in winter and store in the basement.


Can anyone reccomed a hardier banana species with edible fruit, orinoco comes to mind, what else?

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.

Holy sh*t ,and this is a dwarf? The plant looks perfect, congrats on this acheavement .I remember that my neighbours had a fruiting banana inside their house ,near a east facing window, potted, i think it was a cavendish of some sort, from the dwarf ones. I was very young back then ,very much into plants as i am now and when i saw it i was just speechles haha. I remember that moment some 12-15 years ago. I think that that was the moment when my interest towards tropical fruit began to grow.
Anyway i took a leaf from this banana plant, thinking i could root it in water, what a dummy haha.🤣🤣
Actually i had a cavendish that i was growing in a plastic barrel, the plant was quite big yet it most sertainly was a super dwarf cavendish, stem was no more that a meter, very fat at the base. Fast forward to one summer when a hell hail shredded the leaves and i just coudnt look at it anymore and chopped it. It was such a beautifful plant, i really like bananas visually.
Thanks for the tips regarding growing, knowing that they dont need a huge pot to fruit will save some headaches along the way.

I'm not a huge fan of dealing with live plants myself, so I prefer artificial flowers. Thankfully, there are lots of great options out there that aren't inferior in quality and beauty to real ones but don't require so much time for care.

I know thats a spam but i just wanted to say, i hate artificial flowers and plants with a passion + this forum is not the place to discuss artificial flowers or plants! Peace ✌

I've tried with semi dwarf varieties in 25G wood containers, they produce great for a year or two then start declining unless I put them in the ground. I suspect combination of getting rootbound and high soil temperatures. But I have one of those super dwarf ones in a container it is is still growing great with no issues, so I think it is important to start with a dwarf/superdwarf type if you want to keep it potted up for more than a couple years

I am surching for those super dwarf varieties from quite some time, search continues, they are very rare here..

would it work if instead of a full trellis, there are only some supports along the wall? For example, I have a espalier pomegranate and a pear, and I don't have a specific support for them, just when a branch has sufficient growth, I add a new support (hook) and let it be until it grows again.

I guess this maybe is not possible with kiwis?

Heres a fast scetch of one possible way to do it

As a most efficient and beautifful way to do it, would be to fix cattle pannels onto the wall, with some distance between the wall and the panel. Thats what i would do, i am also thinking of how to use the vertical wall space that i have and will probably do the cattle panel thing or a modified wire idea.

You can stake the bigger branch , support it so it stais vertical and now you have a new leader. Plant will focus its energy towards it and by pruning you can force it later to produce side branches.
The other idea i would have is to graft a desired variety in the bare middle, if it takes it may become a new leader, right now the plant probably wants to have growth in the center but may be too weak to wake up the dormant buds that may be lurking there.

Thanks! I will then try the 2 grafted plants that i have in pots , i may try to form them as espaliers so i can place the pots near the wall of the house.