The Tropical Fruit Forum

Which variety? Do you ship to NC?

Quote from: CarolinaZone on June 29, 2024, 06:43:41 PM

Zone 8...almost any thing. You only need to stay above 50 degrees F and almost any thing will survive. Not thrive but survive until spring. Citrus will work. White Sapote will work. Sapodilla will work. Mamey will work. Custard apple will work. Abiu will work. Babados cherry will work. You have to seal it well and you have to make sure you have enough compost stored inside.

You might be right. My thought was definitely bases on my Carolina experience and the fact that 32 at night  but 40 to 50 in the day. I can get well into the 70's in my hoop house on a 40 degree day. The temp inside may get into the 30's for a short amount of time but most of my plants have withstood it.
It would take an impossible amount of compost to heat a 20,000 sq ft glass single-pane greenhouse above 50°F in 8a Germany. I mean by all means start by putting in a large compost pile and add a temperature sensor, but Germany is more like Seattle than an east coast 8a in North America: cold and overcast for much of the winter.  When it's overcast and the outside high is in the low 40s°F with freezing lows every night for months on end, there's no way compost will work to heat it that much.

Look at the average low and high in winter, it's not like the zone 8 in the Carolinas:

As you may know from my past posts, I will periodically travel to nurseries and review my purchases. I also order quite a bit online. My last purchases were from Bob Wells at Sorelle Farms in Texas, Logees, and Peaceful Heritage.

Logees
If you are familiar with Logees, you know they sell what they say and their plants are generally healthy but they charge an arm and leg for shipping and they sell LITTLE plants. Logees strength is the variety of plants they sell. That said, they clearly state the size of the plants they sell. At one time Logees was the only place I knew of that had a variety mail order tropical fruit trees. Logee's does ship fast and Logees has a great website. Unless it's a plant that's available no where else  I would say Logees should never be the first choice simply because their plants are so small.

Bob Wells at Sorelle Farms in Texas
To be honest I have never had a bad purchase from Bob Wells. Whether in store or not their product is always good. If they say they are shipping a 5 gal size tree, that's what you are getting. I like that what they ship is not bare rooted and the root systems are well developed. All trees Blenheim Apricot, Reliance Peach, and Sweet Treat Pluerry.They all calipered more than an inch all of them 4 footers.  Bob Wells ships everything to most states except citrus. The website is great and easy to navigate.

Peaceful Heritage
Peaceful Heritage is a newer vendor to me.   You can tell they are small operation and not very well developed in terms of their web operation.  According to their website they sell a wide variety of fruits and vegetables some of which you will not commonly on other websites. If you look at some of their YouTube videos you can see that they promote their operation in a way that makes you think that they are knowledgeable about what they sell. I actually found out about them searching for pawpaw videos. A poster on another website said they were a source for Horn's White Pawpaw and I decided to see what they had to offer. They sell the standard pawpaw cultivars you see on on there websites: the KSU's, the Petersens' and the old cultivars like Pennsylvania Golden. They also sell some of their own cultivars with names like Sri Vishnu and some of Lehman's cultivars.

My experience is that they are a little sketchy. This year I was late on my purchases and I decided to give them a try since they had some cultivars of pawpaw that I could not find anywhere else. I went to their website and they were sold out. They were selling a $50 VIP list that was supposed to allow you to buy trees when they were ready. Once it came out  I ordered the trees that I wanted and was promptly informed that they only had what they called "supreme" sizes left. For $150 a tree I was expecting something special. This is what I got after a grand total of $400( two trees $40 for shipping. No the VIP did not apply to the purchase).

The Package with two trees.

This is high graft done with what looks like graft wax.

Both trees out of the box

Youcan see the length of the tree.

You can see this is quite a small diameter.

These are not $150 trees. No way in the world the word supreme applies to these trees. It's like he's grafting high to make it look like it's an older tree.  A one year old graft on a 3 year old seedling is not a 4 yr old tree. I would not recommend Peaceful Heritage for pawpaw purchases. Their confusing sizing and their VIP sale tactic put them in the same category for me as some of the other internet operations that have not the best reputation. I am going to have to mark them off my list like I did Seamus O'Leary.

I want two cedar bay and two garnets. Thanks

It all depends on what you like. Are you a collector like me or a connoisseur? I have heard this and I believe it" Maybe you haven't tried a good one." I have had an excellent white sapote. I have not had an excellent black sapote. Because I have had a substandard white sapote I believe there must be better tasting black sapotes out there. I also think your expectations effect what you experience. If you are looking for something that tastes like chocolate it will disappoint. Black sapote tastes more like a mix of raisin and molasses than anything else in my opinion because that is what a dried persimmon tastes like. White sapote does not taste like caramel to me and neither abiu. Maybe I havent had a good one 

Are you sure that there are some of both.

That is strange. I have texas persimmons and americans that i bought in pots and they transplanted just fine.

Guys. I messed up and cut a mamey in half and it is rock hard but orange. Any chance it will ripen or should I throw it in the trash?

This is an Emperor. Any idea when I should harvest it? Strangely enough this is the only fruit on the tree. I am not sure when it flowered, how many flowers there were or how it was pollinated. I have another in the garden that I think is a Mauritius. I killed them for years until I realized how to take care of them in the winter. My longan fruited this year too. I need to take a look at it to see how it is doing.

I have killed every wampee I have had. I am still willing to try though.

Yet another perspective:

There are those who might shoot a fruit thief, but not to kill.

A shotgun loaded with rock-salt could be a memorable reminder to lay off nabbing fruit uninvited.

That actually was a not too uncommon remedy for this sort of thing some decades back.  It seemed to work.

Just sayin'

Paul M.
==

You beat me to it. That or a squirt of water from the hose. The problem is nowadays if yiu squirt someone with a hose you will get an assault charge, medical bill for the fall they took, and a lawsuit for emotional stress they suffered from getting caught and squirted while in your yard stealing from your tree😉😁😉😁😉

Quote from: hammer524 on September 06, 2023, 02:40:41 PM

Thanks for the report. I was planning on making a trip to Socal to check out the nurseries in a couple months. Is there a nursery that stands out for more unique/ rare plants. Or is it best to reach out to forum members

Ong nursery is supposedly amazing. San Diego area only open on weekends. Pricey but good.

Los Angeles area check out Mimosa nursery. There are three 'Mimosa Nursery' locations in SoCal; I would not recommend the one in Anaheim. The east LA one is pretty good, the other one (Rosemead?) is IMO the best.

I have meaning to take trip to East LA but Rosemead? Did I ever tell you guys about the time I visited there and met the old cranky Chinese guy?https://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=40308.msg396957#msg396957

Quote from: hipasfolk on September 11, 2023, 07:58:54 AM

Guess they didn't read The Little Red Hen as a kid.

 😂

Oh, they read it. They read it. To one group it is a story about hard work and the rewards of it. To another group it is an instruction manual on how to wait. I'll wait until this chicken makes a crop of grain and fattens up. Then I will steal the grain, kill the chicken and make chicken sandwiches! They don't think far enough ahead to know that they will starve from laziness and or incomptence the next year.