The Tropical Fruit Forum

Hi All, I bought a pawlonia root cutting in February and it's now about 2' tall and wide. I planted it in played out soil that was range land for 100+ years and have only given it supplemental water every few weeks in our S. Texas summer. In our conditions it is a really fast grower, and we need shade. I don't doubt that it is invasive in some places, and maybe even our area, but if so, it will just shade the mesquite and weesatche thickets.
D

That is awesome! I'd love to get some of those seeds if it's   possible. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Regards, Dan

I've introduced pines to my place so I'll have needles and cones to use for mulch. Now I'll have to find other plants/trees for this purpose.
D

We get about 30 inches of rain annually. They get supplemental water every few weeks when we are there. No pollen that I've seen. Just long catkins. I'm just going to put some new blueberries elsewhere for fruit and keep these for shade. Thanks, D

I really appreciate the input folks. Grafted mulberries are not common here. These are probably the only ones I have seen. I bought them at a charity plant sale. They have always aborted the catkins, but the root stock one sets tiny white fruit.
I guess I could be starving them. I mostly use the bedding that comes out of our guinea fowl co-op for soil feed around them, and that not heavily. They get compost/molasses/whatever-else-I-throw-in-tea periodically. I'll step that up and give them more water when I can and see what happens. I need the shade regardless.
Achetadomestica - I'll p.m. Let's do some trading!

Regards,
D

I appreciate everybody's input. They are grafted. I planted them (and a bunch of other stuff) on the leading edge of what became a 3 year drought. I planted 3 alleged Pakistan varieties. We aren't there all of the time and they aren't irrigated, so 1 died back to the rootstock. The other 2 struggled. The root stock tree is stunted and makes small white berries, but the other 2 just make catkins. Somehow it escaped me that there are male/female mulberries. Maybe they grafted male stock? I've got lots of room, so I'll plant some more and watch these. I don't want to cut them down because we need every tree we can get. We are on old range land and shade is hard to come by!
D

 In answer to your second question....yes I have often munched the untouched side of figs, apples, jujubes, pears, Barbados cherries etc. I had a guava in my yard that the squirrels would bite every fruit. I often had to pick them up off of the ground to taste one. We all have to eat, right?
D

Hi folks, My name is Dan. I've been lurking here for quite a while and learning a lot. I live in Houston, Tx, where I make my feeble attempts at propagating plants and trees that interest me. Most of my plantings are on our place near Victoria, Tx, where we will eventually retire. Down there we have beautiful sandy loam, and fairly unpredictable rainfall, so have to irrigate.
We started off with low chill temperate climate trees and bushes but are starting to incorporate more sub tropical material.
I am working on plans to convert one of our small barns into a greenhouse - sort of. We generally don't get more than 20 or so hours below 32° in the winter but might be 80° the next day, so I'm concerned about cooking them as well.
I won't bore you with a lot of detail about what we have. The usual fruit trees, grapes, blackberries, sugar cane (when I can keep the wild hogs out of it), almonds, olives and am growing, sprouting, rooting a bunch more exotics that I have learned about from y'all!
Again, Thanks for the wisdom you share. I hope I can be of some help as well.
D

Impressive. I didn't know about those. Thanks for posting them.                                                                       Pokeweed.

There is a lot of avocado and citrus in and around San Antonio. He just needs to be careful about placement. The soil is very calcerious in some areas, so needs some remediation.