The Tropical Fruit Forum

What about the Physalis genus?  If I'm remembering correctly, they're all perennial in a tropical climate (and most work as annuals in a temperate climate).  They're not very big, and make delicious fruit.

You will get some decent die back below 10f, probably will lose all branches 1/4" or under. I would recommend protecting them for those stints. I am following along with a grower I know in 8B in BC, and he loses a good bit of his each year. The challenge you really have is finding a very early flowering variety, else the fruit will never ripen to completion, and you need to maintain second year wood new growth for flowers in Spring. The BC grower has fairly large plants, some well over 6' tall, so not small.

That's good to know.  We very rarely get temperatures below 10 degrees Fahrenheit -- it's usually just one or two nights out of the whole year.  It would probably be pretty easy to give the seedlings a wee bit protection during the very coldest nights.  Maybe stick a tomato cage around each one with a blanket over the top?

$200 was the most I have done for a single plant and I have done that twice.  One for a grafted Plinia Trunciflora and the other for a banana.  Those are outliers though, I tend to rarely go over $50 if I can.

Ooh, which banana?

$120 each for four Asian persimmons that I simply had to have . . . and all of them died in our summer heat the same year.

I'll probably start from seeds that are direct sown next time.  They'll take longer to fruit, but they'll be likely to have much stronger root systems (and be used to my very arid summers) by the time they're ready to fruit.

The coldest it got last winter was 9 degrees Fahrenheit.  It usually gets slightly colder, down to around 7 degrees.  So I'll see what happens this coming winter!

I'm not planning to protect them at all.  The whole point of buying seedlings from the most cold tolerant cultivars is to find feijoas that are happy in my climate without any fiddling.    All the seedlings I bought came from moms that were hardy to 7b, and I think one of them may have even been hardy to zone 7a.

Just an alternate thought: You could plant a few rooted cuttings (or seeds) about six inches or a foot apart, and take care of them all, and see if they all do well that way.  I don't know if this is true for loquats in specific (so someone please correct me if I'm wrong!), but with most species, if you plant a few baby trees very close together, they will grow up to behave like a multi-stemmed tree that already has a pollination partner.  That may be a way to grow several varieties in a space that could otherwise only fit one tree.

Just a thought, in case that sounds appealing. 

The greenhouse is 13 feet by 10 feet, so it's 130 square feet.  About a quarter of that square footage is taken up with a 250-gallon IBC tote (a.k.a. rain tank) and two 50-gallon water barrels.  I put plants in pots on top of those, so the lost growing space is somewhat reclaimed.

Another quarter of that space is taken up with the unfortunate necessity of having a pathway.  (Laugh.)  I've decided all the pathways in my garden should be deep mulched in wood chips with lots of wine cap mushroom spawn added, which includes the pathway in my greenhouse.  Since fungi don't need any aboveground parts except the fruiting body you harvest, why not use all those "wasted" pathway spaces as mushroom beds?  (Which will hopefully also help the plants in the garden beds grow better, since wine cap mushrooms are a mycorrhizal species.)

It's a cheap greenhouse.  I bought it on Amazon for $160.  The plastic cover is flimsy and would definitely be falling apart by the end of one summer if I left it on in summer.  (Our summer UV tends to be extremely high.)  So I took it off around June 1 (our last frost date is April 15, but we sometimes get surprise mild frosts as late as May 15), and I will probably put it back on around September 30.  (Our average first frost date is October 15, and we get our average first hard freeze November 15.)

Taking off the plastic is a bit of a nuisance, and putting it back on will be, too.  It's also a little bit of a risk, because surprising weather can happen.  But I'm pretty sure I can get the plastic cover to stay intact for four or five years by keeping it indoors for summer, so I do.  And it would definitely be dead within one year if I didn't.  So it's well worth it.

I'd LOVE to have one of those greenhouses with thick plastic panels that are super UV resistant and super stable, so they never get battered around by the wind and never tear and don't need to be taken down for summer.  But those cost several thousand dollars, and I don't have that.  $160 for a sturdy metal frame and flimsy plastic cover (which I will have to replace eventually, I'm sure), I could afford!

You might try getting a bunch of those large Rubbermaid containers (you can find them cheap at thrift stores) and stack them three high, filling each one with water.  That could form a wall against the north wall of your greenhouse and allow you to store quite a bit of water.  Rain barrels are round and can't be stacked, so they take up an unappealing amount of space.  Rubbermaid containers might be better.

An IBC tote would be even better.  Those are quite space efficient for the amount of water they store, and then you can use the top as a flat surface to store potted plants on.  Plus there's a faucet at the bottom you can hook a hose up to, and use it through summer to water your garden.

My climate is winter wet and summer dry, so I figure using water as thermal mass in my greenhouse is the ideal setup for me.  As the weather gets colder, I start getting water to haul over to the rain tank and pour in, so the amount of thermal mass keeps pace with the temperature drop.  By the time it's the end of November and the outside temperature is sometimes as low as 25 degrees, the rain tank and rain barrels in the greenhouse are full, and I'm starting to fill up the ones on the outer north side.

By the end of January, when we start getting nighttime temperatures down to around 9 degrees, those three rain tanks on the north side are also full.  So I have maximum thermal mass against and inside the greenhouse long before late February, when we occasionally dip down as low as 7 degrees.

I have still needed to use a small amount of electricity to keep things above 32 (it would otherwise probably have hit 28), but I am very interested in seeing if compost can make up that difference instead.  It will be very, very cool if I can get away without using electricity at all.

I noticed a surprising difference when I added open buckets of water into the greenhouse.  I expected those to just be a few extra gallons of thermal mass, nothing more, but because they were open, the water evaporated during the day and formed humidity.  (Our air usually is dry.)  That humidity seemed to keep the greenhouse at least an extra 3-5 degrees warmer at night.  I was very surprised.  That may be an excellent small thing to try that could make a large difference.

I do have to manually open my greenhouse every morning and close it every late afternoon, otherwise the temperatures in there get above 140, and for some reason, the plants protest that.  An automatic setup would be more convenient, but it's not a hardship for me to have to go out to my greenhouse and check on my plants twice a day.  Especially since I'm usually outside doing yard work most days of the winter, anyway.

See, we get the vast majority of our water in the winter, and our winter daytime temperatures are usually around 50-70 degrees, so winter gardening is actually easier than summer gardening.  No bindweed, nothing needs to be watered, I don't have to wear sunscreen, the soil's easier to dig because it's moist and fluffy instead of dry and compacted, and the kale tastes delicious.  Sadly winter crops grow very slowly, but otherwise, winter is an awesome time to grow food in my climate.

So yeah, having a greenhouse that requires manual opening and closing every day isn't really a hardship for me.  It probably would be for someone who wants to take a break from gardening during the winter, but I want to be actively growing food all year round, so checking on the greenhouse regularly is fine to add as part of the routine.


I do like the idea of adding a blanket on the south side that I can roll down on the very coldest nights, and otherwise leave up to let the light in.

Good luck!   

Figs are definitely delicious, and significantly more drought tolerant than peaches.  Less drought tolerant than apples, though.  And figs seem to be more sensitive to overwatering than either apples or peaches.  I'm pleasantly surprised by just how tough apples can be.  It's possible they're just ideally suited to my climate, and figs or peaches are better in others.

I've discovered that golden currants seem to be extremely drought tolerant, which is very exciting.  They are often used for xeriscaped landscaping here, and they even fruit successfully.  On top of that, I sorta kinda forgot to water my brand new Crandall clove currant for three months in intense heat and no rainfall, and it survived just fine.  Full sun, too.  So, I think those plants are very impressive survivors.

It just occurred to me that no one's mentioned perennial root vegetables in this thread.  (The kind where you can harvest some of the tubers / roots / corms, ignore the rest, and have them sprout back the next year.)  Are you interested in a list of those?

I'd love advice from anyone who's grown monkfruit.  It seems like it would be a fun plant to grow in my greenhouse.

I've read somewhere that it wants 80% humidity in full shade, the fruits take 120-150 days to mature after being set, and the plant needs 68-85°F for that entire period.  That's some pretty extreme finickiness.

Is this accurate, or can the plant handle less optimal growing conditions?  I live in a semi-desert with 0% humidity for most of the summer.  I have a greenhouse I could grow the plants in, so it should be possible to keep them above freezing year-round, but the temperatures in my greenhouse would otherwise vary between 32 to 100 degrees.

I would particularly like advice on whether the plants can be sprouted from dried seeds, or whether their seeds need to be very, very fresh and stay moist (which is true of many tropical plants).  If they can sprout from dried seeds, what is the best way to tell if a particular seller has seeds that are viable, and thus worth trying?

I've been told Turkish rocket resembles a perennial broccoli.

And lovage resembles a perennial celery.