The Tropical Fruit Forum

I agree, Tropicaltoba. One of the best things about my greenhouse is being able yo enjoy it! I don't move plants outside. The high desert sun bakes them. Have enough fans in the summer that it is pleasant year-round.
Plus, there is always the pub...


In case the print is too small or blurry to read, it says "The Laughing Impala Pub, est 2018"

I have read that to produce fruit, olive trees need chill hours. Mine are seedlings, and 4-18 inches tall. Do they need chill hours, or can I leave them in my greenhouse all winter? Minimum temp in here is 50 f.

Thanks!
Carolyn

Any chance it is being Zoomed?

Carolyn (in Idaho...)

I have slogged down that same rough road.  My trees are really big, and many times I can't see pests (almost exclusively mealybugs) until the population is high. The beneficials I introduce can't reproduce as fast so the mealy bugs gain the upper hand.  If the mealybbug population is too low, the beneficials starve.

I also need to be really careful with sprays because of my birds.  I have had horrible luck with oils sprays. My plants with fuzzy leaves just curl up and die. And mealy bugs are very hard to kill. My granddaughter did a science experiment last year and we treated mealy bugs with several things including hort oil and rubbing alcoho. Slowed them down, but they recovered in days. We watched new hatchlings crawl around with the aid of my USB microscope. Speaking of birds though, the one pest I can control are earwigs. The quail love them!

For everything else I use systemics.  I can treat two or three times and it drops the nuisance bug population down to nil, then I monitor and only use it again when I see problems.  So I sort of get into a cycle of three treatments, go two years in peace, three more treatments, etc.

I do have to spray the spider mites, so I drag what I can onto the greenhouse porch, and for the rest I shift the birds into the tropical house to treat the orangerie, hose down the bark floor to wash any dripped stuff away,  let it dry thoroughly, then reverse.

Guess that's the price for operating in a closed system...

Carolyn

I have grown these both from seed.
My first thought is that are you SURE you have Lulo, and not Cocona (S. sessiliflorum)?
Lulo does come up pretty quickly, I think about 10-14 days.  However, Cocona can take several months. It is weird that way, compared to other nightshades. I agree with you that nightshades are usually pretty speedy germinators.
And I can't say I have ever had a "bad" batch of Lulo seeds.  They last a long time in storage, like most nightshades, and I have planted seeds that are several years old and had good luck.
Where did you get them? If it was EBay or Etsy, they may be mislabeled, so I would give the seeds more time (if you want Cocona...).

Carolyn

Thanks, that was fun to watch!
As far as the taste descriptions being "off", I know my husband and I can eat the same fruit and give totally different taste descriptions. Weird how that happens.

Carolyn

So I just bought a 4 ft x 16 ft hog panel and cut it into 2 ft pieces.  Made a triangle, and set it on the pot.
The plants are not doing it justice right now because I just whacked it down after blooming.  It was draping over the top. What I need to do is put pipe insulation along the top to help them from breaking from the weight.

Mine grow up a triangular cage made of heavy wire "hog panels".

So, I have been growing bananas for years in my greenhouse in a 25 gallon pot. I am on my tenth generation, I think. I get fruit every year, and save one or two pups each time.
The original corm was purchsed from Going Bananas as a Double Mahoi. Forget the double part. NEVER done that.
My plants gets heaps of water, fertilizer and sun. Has about 100 bananas set on now (that always all ripen at once! Argh!)
But the bananas are always small. About half sized. They taste heavenly.
Now, I don't mind the small size because we have grandkids and neighbor kids who like little bananas.

But I am wondering what causes the small size?
Not enough fertilizer or water? They get Miracle Grow at twice the label amount, frequent water, well-draining soil.
Pot too small?
Not really Double Mahoi?

Any ideas?

Carolyn

I also notice that these are perfectly ripe when only half yellow. I they turn totally yellow the fruit is brown and mushy.

I used to mix up all sorts of stuff, when my back was younger and stronger. Now I buy the bales of Kellogg raised bed mix and cut it about 60/40 with perlite. Because there is a perlite mine here in Idaho, I can get it really cheap, but I also have recently started using Turface, which I love. Right now I am about 60% raised bed mix, 30% perlite and 10% Turface. Then, because I keep worms, I always dump in a bunch of worm compost, nice and dried out. 
With my bigger 25-35 gallon pots, I have drilled 2" holes around the sides. Stuff falls out at first, but not too bad.  I do this because I really want some RootMaker pots and tried to copy the concept just a little.
Last year I grew mushrooms in the holes!
I also put medium chunk bark on the tops, to keep the perlite from all drifting to the top.
I have over a hundredd trees in pots in my greenhouse. The really big ones rarely get repotted unless I have some srious help.

Carolyn

I actually had a Nile monitor as a pet, years ago, and her name was Godzilla, for exactly the reasons we see in your pics! I still have a couple scars from her. Once they bite, they don't let go, they just keep shaking you until you rip apart into bite-sized pieces.  Used to use a spray bottle of vodka to spray her face so she would let go. Switched to rubbing alcohol when my son drank the vodka.

After she got loose and attacked my little dog then cornered my cat on top of the fridge, my boyfriend said it was him or the lizard. Married 23 years, no regrets, and no 6 ft lizard (didn't kill her, actually found her a home...)!

I did find that hotwire can work quite well, especially if you use the wide orange hot "tape".  Godzilla did not break through the tape, my son had turned it off to clean her cage and forgot to plug it in again. They WILL continue to test it, so you can't train them like a horse, but it does keep them out, or in. And it is very cheap compared to other fencing. The optimal height for my situation was 4-6 inches, but a double strand at 6 and 12 might be best for you, given the size of your lizards.

Good luck!

Whoop whoop!