The Tropical Fruit Forum

They pollinate themselves for the most part but the net holes are big enough for air pollen etc to flow freely but small enough to keep the bugs out which is why you need one designed for greening protection and can't just make any type of net around it. Though I guess a really fine mesh with good air flow would probably work.

Sugar bell will stay relatively healthy and producing with greening but there will be some loss of vigor. Not as tough as poncirus. So it's better to leave the netting on. The one in my dad's yard the leaves look a little light, like it needs fertilizer but it has fertilizer. Growing and normal so there's slight damage. The other trees planted at the same time are half dead or small and weak. It's definitely better than most. But the swingle which is really old super dark leaves ultra healthy. Same with sour orange. They are totally unaffected. Sugar bell is slightly effected but not too badly

Transgenetic is the answer?

This would be the easy way but the public is against it. There is one gene for pierce tolerance in Vitus arizonica grape. They cross bred it each time testing for the gene then verify pierce tolerance until they got plants that are 1.5% arizonica but pierce tolerant. It took them 20 years. I guess they earned the patent on that one. Could have just inserted the gene but there's regulations or no one wants to buy transgenic.

In the wild citrus usually don't fruit until it's a big tree after five to seven years. So it's good to pick some fruit off when green because this amount of fruit will drain energy on the plant.

Asian grapes originated in Missouri as lubrusca vinifers hybrids. In Asia they bred them for larger size. Essentially the flavor is of American grapes.

Pierce disease which is fungus spread by a bug similar to citrus greening eventually kills southern grapes. A cold winter will kill pierce and the bugs that spread it so not an issue north of the mason Dixon line. There is no cure only planting native grapes that tolerate pierce. Then you have fungus from the high humidity.

The best grapes for Florida are zehnder hybrids z86, cab zehn, and dunstans dream are the main ones. These are 3-6% muscadine crossed with other natives like aestavalis and selectively bred for many generations. Zehnder grew them in south Carolina with no spray. They will be damaged by fungus and could benefit from spray but they will survive. The flavor and wine is outstanding from these grapes.

To a lesser extent taris burgundy. I have a bunch of crosses from these grapes I have been selecting for toughness. As a whole coastal south Florida will be a struggle to grow grapes more of a novelty as the humidity is around 100% and too much fungus not enough of a winter for dormancy. Central and northern Florida these varieties will grow really well.

Razzmatazz is a muscadine hybrid that will do well in Florida and bear year round. Fruit is only average ok though. I will unload some of my stuff later in the year. My seedlings just came up so they need time to get big and ship and they die back in shipping and look bad on arrival but will grow back once planted. I also root some of my better crosses but they are in dormancy now.

Besides those Suwannee and stover are pretty good. Again spray recommended but will survive with a lot of damage with no spray. Grafted on native root stock they do better. They are complex hybrids with Florida native grapes like aestavalis. Dunstan 370 is good.

Blanc du Boise and Daytona have great fruit but very disease prone and nearly impossible to grow without constant spray. Same for Victoria red.

Those bilobed leaves look the same as the wild orange I found. It is not the best tasting but decent to eat with only a hint of poncirus in the fruit but the plant seems disease free and immune to greening. The pummello above could have cross pollinated with root stock. if it was something like swingle and only 1/4 poncirus it might be decent to eat but not great like the orange I found.

I don't think it's citron.

3/4 lemon 1/8 grapefruit (or less likely pommelo), 1/8 tangerine seems consistent with the flavor, appearance etc.

Zone 10? Red banana though box it in somehow so it can't spread too much (like now around it, put on side of house or some barrier). Slowly over time they spread and eventually every where years later. I never saw honey suckle in Florida.

I don't know about the heritage variety. We had raspberries and blackberries in Florida. Raspberry does worse than blackberry and some varieties are more heat tolerant than others but generally speaking they survive heat and will even produce berries but they grow better in cooler climates. I doubt that it would die.

Florida is Jurassic Park type of insect swarms but I have seldom seen them on citrus other than that one caterpillar that feeds on citrus which you can easily kill by hand. Citrus greening is the only real issue which there is no cure other than the netting they invented. Sometimes black mildew on leaves from humidity which doesn't harm the plant other than blocking sunlight needs cleaned off. I did get tiny slugs eating sap in my container citrus up north. The ants would probably kill them in Florida.

Citrus is super easy to grow everyone is over complicating it.

In terms of ordering a box of honeybells or citrus it was always high but like $25 for a box of 15 or 20. Now it's $100. It's outrageous. Same with road side oranges. Used to be cheap as dirt now super high if you can find them. Usually they are passing California oranges off on the side of the road. Maybe $12 wholesale. If you have a good tree you can make some money selling them mail order.

The Florida fruits are just super juicy compared to everywhere else. Second best is Brazil. Cali and Texas are dry fruits though people on here before said how good California oranges are. People pay for Florida oranges because they are the best. Well used to be before greening.

But money is an issue because Florida land is going up. They sell their land which becomes houses. Or switching to peaches. There's less groves than there used to be but still a lot. The answer are new citrus breeds that are disease resistant and have good fruit.

Just buy scrub jay land and grow your garden on it if you are willing to travel to harvest it.

I'm in Charlotte county. This place is not only not what it was ten years ago, it's not what it was two years ago. We had a massive influx of new residents during COVID. Real estate prices and over population is out of control. Many working people who lived here their whole lives are moving out and I will too.

If you go east of punta Gorda toward arcadia it's ok. Poor people are spilling out of port Charlotte into that area along with massive Hispanic immigration but not nearly as bad as the coastal areas.

There's a lot of woods there but you'll have non stop planes buzzing over head, lots of drug smuggling and dope heads and it's still over priced for what you are getting. If you absolutely must live in south Florida I guess it's as good a choice as any.

This is the border zone for mangos, coconut etc. Sometimes you can get them surving if you get lucky with warm winters until they are big. Fort Myers is where mango, coconut growing starts in full.

Naples is also an over crowded nightmare where you need to be a millionaire to buy land.

A tiny house in port Charlotte on a less than quarter acre lot which cost $80,000 in the year 2000 is over $300,000 now and good luck finding a house for sale because there's more people here than real estate.