The Tropical Fruit Forum

I need to plant a Star Fruit tree, and with their heavy production, I only need one tree. But which variety tastes best? I've had Kari and Fwang Tung but wanted to try a few others so I ordered a variety box from Lara Farms. The box included 16 Star Fruit, with 4 each of Arkin, Fwang Tung, Kajang and Sri Kembangan.



What am I looking for in a good Star Fruit? I eat it as a refreshing, hydrating snack after I've been outside working in the heat - nature's Gatorade. For flavor I like slightly sweet with a bit of tart and a mild fruity flavor. It should be watery and weak, like a cucumber mixed with an orange. I prefer Star Fruit with a crisp, snappy texture even when ripe.

Arkin Carambola: mild watery flavor reminds me of Meyer lemon, like a weak lemonade with equal sweet and sour components. Only faintly sweet with some acidic pucker. The small fruit has good crispy texture even when ripe.

Fwang Tung Carambola: more prominent flavor that tastes of plum and nectarine. Moderately sweet with much less acid to balance than Arkin. The very large fruit could be slightly crispier when fully ripe, but it's still has some snap and body when ripened to sweetness.

Kajang Carambola: the first Kajang I tried was insanely sour, it must have just been a bad one. The others in the box had an excellent more intense flavor reminiscent of fruit punch. Quite a tropical taste. You will taste some sour, and I wish it was just a little sweeter to balance the acid component. Decent crispness even when the fruit is overripe. Medium sized.

Sri Kembangan Carambola: pleasing flavor that tastes of tangerine and green grape. The milder flavor is more toward the cucumber end of the Star Fruit flavor spectrum. Not fruity enough for my palate. Slightly sweet without much acid punch. Wish it was a touch crisper when ripe. Medium size fruit.

Of those 4 selections, Fwang Tung was a clear winner for flavor and the large size fruit also helps make the case. Keep in mind that the ripeness has a huge impact on flavor, and the fruit seems to vary from piece to piece. I still want to taste Bell and Lara, they both have excellent reputations for taste. Xain recommends Bell very enthusiastically and I definitely trust his judgement.

Tasting Mamey Sapote convinced me to go past backyard mango grower to crazy fruit tree collector. On a trip to Xain's World to buy Mamey trees, Xain sold me a Whitman Green Sapote tree and since then I've been looking for an opportunity to taste the fruit. I've heard several people say they prefer Green Sapote to Mamey Sapote, so when I saw the 5 pound box of Whitman go up for sale on the Lara Farms website, I placed my order right away.

As he always does, Julian sent way more than the listed amount, about 8.5 pounds of fruit. At $85/box plus shipping, Green Sapote is one of the most expensive fruits available on the Lara Farms site and works out to over $10/pound. While that's a premium price compared to supermarket bananas, I don't know anywhere else that sells Green Sapote, and it's still less than some of the exorbitant fruit shippers in Homestead selling tropical fruit sampler boxes.

Once again, my expectations were confounded by the Whitman Green Sapote tasting...

General Notes: The Green Sapote fruit is small, ranging in size from chicken egg to kiwi fruit. As the fruit ripens, the skin wrinkles and the color changes from olive green to coppery red. Most fruit have a single seed with a hard wooden shell. The flesh is pinkish orange in color and can be scooped out with a spoon. The overall unimpressive external appearance might explain why Green Sapote has remained such an obscure fruit.


That's a teaspoon for size comparison!

Texture: Firmer flesh than Key West Mamey Sapote (which I find creamy when ripe), and slightly lacking in moisture. Even when the skin is wrinkled and soft, the flesh has more body and chew than I would like. At least you can peel the skin off easily with a paring knife. Each fruit also contained a few small fibrous shards of debris near the stem end, requiring care to avoid when eating, along with some firm areas directly around the seed.

Sweetness: moderate sweetness, slightly less sweet than any Mamey Sapote that I've tried. I expected sweeter.

Flavor: After trying more than ten fruit at different stages of ripeness, I am still struggling to define what I'm tasting. Yes, it's similar to Mamey Sapote, but lacking the complexity and depth of flavor of Mamey. It tastes slightly like Sapodilla, but without the sweetness and background spice. The Green Sapote reminds me of a roasted carrot with a little more sugar, not the most tropical flavor. The exotic notes that make Mamey Sapote so intoxicating are missing.

Uses: Probably best to just eat the fruit with a spoon - it would take a lot of work to break down 5 or 6 of them for a milkshake.

Rating: Whitman Green Sapote  ranks behind Mamey Sapote and Sapodilla for me. The small size and flat flavor are clear disadvantages. It does fruit in the dead of winter but you can find Sapodilla (and some Mamey cultivars) available around the same time as Green Sapote. The reputed cold-hardiness of Green Sapote may give some advantage over Mamey and Sapodilla to growers in colder climates and maybe that is where the real value lies.

Bill Whitman did some amazing things with tropical fruit, and one of those was getting Green Sapote to fruit in South Florida. However, this selection, the Whitman Cultivar, needs more development. Like the Haden mango, it should be considered a starting point from which we can develop larger, more flavorful and sweeter fruit, from more precocious trees. The lack of Green Sapote cultivars (only 2 or 3 available?) shows that very little work has been done with Green Sapote and there is a lot of potential for improvement by the kind of people the read this forum.

My aunt asked me about planting some fruit trees. She's in Mobile, in a thin band of Zone 9A near the Gulf of Mexico. I thought Persimmon would be perfect, I know it thrives in Louisiana, but I just don't know what varieties do well there or any local nurseries.

I'd like to pick out 4 or 5 non-astringent varieties that will do well in that climate. Any suggestions for cultivars and nurseries would be gratefully accepted. Thank you!

In my ongoing quest for winter fruit, or any fruit outside mango season here in South Florida, I decided to learn more about the Canistel and taste a few before planting a tree. The trees look beautiful, and so does the fruit. I have heard mixed reports about the taste, with stories of trees fruiting abundantly onto the ground because owners don't care to eat the fruit.

Ross Canistel rates as the top candidate based on other reviews. But Ross hasn't been available on the Lara Farms website since I've been checking. They don't offer a variety box so I started off by ordering 5lbs of Trompo and 5lbs of Oro. The Trompo box arrived first, and the "5 pound box" actually contained 9 Trompo Canistel fruits weighing over 9 pounds. Quite generous! Each fruit had been carefully wrapped in packing paper. They are firm to the touch and the skin is as golden as sunshine.

Trompo Canistel tasting...

General: I let the canistel soften until I could crack it in half with my hands. The golden skin turned brown and scaly as it ripened. When I opened it up, I was struck by the heart shape of the silhouette. How unique!  Each fruit weighs about a pound and contains one or two seeds with the same wooden shell as a Mamey. The seeds pop out easily.



Texture: The central meat around the seeds is soft and creamy like soft serve ice cream. Closer to the skin, the flesh gets firmer like a carrot, forming a crumbly outer rind that won't spoon out and tastes less appealing. I have tried letting the fruit ripen longer to see if the whole thing turns creamy, but no luck so far. There is latex in the fruit, which won't bother you as you eat the first few bites. But after finishing an entire fruit, your lips and even your teeth will be sticky for a while. The latex is a drawback, especially for civilians outside the tropical fruit cult who you might share the fruit with. They don't understand that sometimes you have to suffer for fruit 

Sweetness: candy sweet near the seeds, and moderately sweet near the skin.

Flavor: The base flavor reminds me of candied yams topped with marshmallow and cinnamon. The sweetest central parts hint at an unnatural sweetness like cotton candy or candy corn. The more natural taste of the middle and edges brings to mind roasted butternut or spaghetti squash, and balances the candy flavors. At the very outside it gets more like an underripe carrot.

Uses: Perfectly usable as a traditional fruit, just crack it in half, chill and eat with a spoon. I would love to scrape out the flesh from a few Trompos, blend them up with a dash of milk and butter, and have that as a side dish with pork tenderloin medallions and savory gravy. I could also see the fruit made into a sweet and spicy sauce by blending with some roasted hot peppers and vinegar, perfect for a burrito or taco. It would work well as a dessert by taking halves of the fruit and putting a scoop of cream cheese where the seed used to be, topping with chopped pecans, then baking.

Rating: I love growing and eating sweet potatoes, but I hate digging up sweet potatoes. What if every year at Christmastime I could have free sweet potatoes that fall off a tree, already candied? The Trompo Canistel is delicious and could be the answer but there are some major drawbacks. The latex is a serious issue that makes eating less pleasant. You have to add a warning about latex allergy when you hand out or serve the fruit. Too much of the fruit ends up as hard, inedible rind even when the middle is supersoft. Perhaps letting them fully ripen on the tree would improve those issues. If it does, then Trompo Canistel is a winner. Until I taste other varieties, I will reserve final judgement on planting a tree.

I am hoping to find a decent source of composted manure that I can use on my bananas, papayas and younger trees. I've been buying bagged Black Cow at the big box store but it's up to $7/bag these days. Any ideas within a 50 mile radius of Port St. Lucie?

Horse, chicken, rabbit, goat, whatever 

I never gave much thought to the rootstock of a grafted mango tree, and what impact it might have on your results growing the tree. When you buy a tree, you never really know what kind of rootstock you are getting. There could be a hidden problem that takes years to reveal itself.

I've watched a few videos and done a little reading on the topic of dwarfing mango rootstocks. Are we still waiting for the ideal solution that gives a productive, precocious tree of manageable size? In theory we are searching for a polyembryonic mango tree that fruits well at a young age and grows compactly rather than slowly, and when used as a rootstock will regulate those traits (to the degree it is possible) in the grafted scion?

Have any advancements been made in this area in the last couple of years?

I'm going to plant a couple more Sapodilla trees to join my Silas Wood and Alano. Alex Salazar mentioned the Thomas cultivar as "exceptional" and the most requested variety he grows at Tropical Acres. I am considering planting one, but the only place I can see that sells the tree is Lara Farms, as a 1 gallon.

The forum and the internet as a whole don't contain much if any information on the Thomas. Here's a tasting video, for what that is worth. The fruit is large and they eat the whole thing rather eagerly:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUXAv4iXMqs

Is anybody growing the Thomas Sapodilla? Where did you get your tree and what has your experience been so far?

My next door neighbor is putting their house on the market. If you are looking for a house in South Florida (Zone 10A) where you can grow tropical fruit without having having to maintain a massive yard, this might be a good choice.

The house itself is about 1700 square feet, 3 bedroom / 2 bathroom, 2 car garage, concrete block construction with a swimming pool on a 1/4 acre lot. Large screened patio and paver driveway. Metal roof and high 10 foot ceilings (a rarity in South Florida) with recently installed hurricane windows. Lots of privacy on a secluded cul-de-sac with a river view from the side yard and screened patio. The house has been well maintained and the neighborhood is beautiful and safe with nature trail, park, baseball field and other amenities. Perfect for a new family or retirement.

The fruit tree situation includes mango, mulberry, sapodilla, banana, Jamaican cherry and a few other fruit trees that were planted at the back edge of the lot about 2 years ago and many are already producing.  You are off to a good start and still have plenty of space still left to plant more trees in the back and side yards of the pie shaped lot. That's a plus because the people that walk and drive by will have no idea from the street there's a fruit farm in the back.

Right next door you have me with 8 varieties of mango, 5 varieties of avocado, many banana cultivars, pineapple, sapodilla, mamey sapote, finger lime, coconut, loquat, ginger, turmeric, etc. I have a big pickup truck and know all the tree sellers in the area. We could work together to maximize the number of trees and productivity of the combined lots, share fruit and plant complementary cultivars for year round production. I am happy to tell you everything I've learned in 5 years of building my tropical fruit paradise so you don't waste time on the same mistakes. The local fruit club meets once a month at the botanical gardens.

If someone from the forum does buy the house, then I will throw in a 15 gallon mango tree (your choice of variety) as a housewarming gift and even plant it for you if you want. That should seal the deal! I'm not on commission or anything like that, just hoping that someone who loves fruit trees buys the house. 

There are so many avocado varieties that I have never even seen, let alone tasted. I would love to try more of them and I wonder if there would be enough interest on the forum to put together a very modest, non-commercial tasting somewhere in South Florida, at some point in the (distant?) future.

Without committing to anything, is there anyone that would be willing to participate? Maybe a meetup at a park where everyone can bring some of their avocados and possibly budwood. Or have the respective tropical fruit clubs or big nurseries already filled this role?

What time of year would be best, with the most type of avocados in season? Maybe December - January?

Any thoughts on location, even just starting with a city... would West Palm Beach be relatively central to the most people?

I am planning to put a row of Mamey Sapote trees in the ground that are currently in 3 gallon pots. The location is South facing, completely exposed to sun, has excellent irrigation and excellent drainage. It gets oppressively hot in the afternoons.

These are slow-growing trees so it will be years before they fruit and get tall enough to provide some shade to the back of the house. There will be a lot of unused space in between them, producing nothing. What temporary plants should I put around these juvenile Mamey Sapote to help support them and produce some food in the meantime? I want to strike the right balance and not rob nutrients and sunlight from the Mamey trees. Maybe a little partial shade in the beginning from the companion planting would help.

Tree ideas

• Jamaica cherry - grows fast, leaves an open canopy
• Ice Cream Bean - nitrogen fixer, fast grower
• Papaya - grows fast but will it deplete the soil?
• Mulberry -have some ready to plant
• Pigeon Pea - nitrogen fixer
• Banana - have plenty of pups in another area

Groundcover

• Pineapples - have plenty to put in the ground
• Mavuno cow pea - easy to grow, should enrich the soil
• Seminole pumpkin or squash - has struggled for me in sunny spots

I'm in South Florida, looking for two sprouted Dwarf Samoan coconuts to plant. I contacted a couple of farms in Hawaii that either don't offer them anymore or don't want to ship.

Anybody know where to find these?