The Tropical Fruit Forum

I tried arctic beauty. I’ll admit it was many years ago when I had no idea what I was doing (not sure if much has changed). It grew really vigorously, looked cool with the pink leaves. I had a tough time managing it (it was hard to not have it a tangled mess) and the fruit were small and would go from completely underripe to rotting within 2-3 days.

I did this for a couple of years using double stacked 1 gallon pots inside of 15-35 gallon ones. I would grow green manures (clover alfalfa,) flowers for beneficial insects, greens for eating, peppers and even alpine strawberries. It worked great until I had a mealeybug infestation (I never had one before) that was out of control and I there were too many places for the bastards to hide. The best part was the small pots acted like a mulch and a drip irrigation system combined, plus when the small plants started to wilt it would let me know that the main plants needed watering.

I was hoping people could confirm if this was a mealybug destroyer larvae. I live in Canada in the prairies and took my plants out of my greenhouse cause they were infested with mealy bugs. About 6 weeks later I see a couple of these moving very quickly along a plant. I am curious how it would have gotten here, could it be something else?

Funny I just saw this as I was asking what to do with my container loquats that are just about to flower for the first time mid July. I had them in my gh which runs at “tropical temps” (60-85) during the winter, but then took them out to deal with mealey bugs. We had a told snap <55F for about 10 days and now they are flowering.


How does it work with stone fruits will they flower right after chill hours are met?

So I recently had to move all my plants out of my greenhouse cause I was away on a holiday and fighting a mealey bug infestation. My greenhouse was running form 70-86 deg at the time. We had a recent cold spell down to mid 50’s and my 3 loquats all bloomed for the first time. Do I keep these? The same thing happened with my mangos last year (Pickering) and the fruit was really good (from what I can tell living in Canada).

Yeah I’ve had it outside for a month, I was hoping that would do the trick. It’s not dropping below 45 anymore at night.do you know if peach trees leaf late if they haven’t had enough chill, or do they just not flower?

Not sure which ones, I’m  still trying to figure it out. They need pollinators and sometimes their flowering barely overlaps. I had nikita but it was so early it would only be able to set a couple of fruit cause its flowering period was over before others started. The New Zealand ones sound like they may be best tasting. Mutligrafted varieties look cool, one of the members (perhaps platynum sp?) had an awesome looking tree. I’m trying unique and Coolidge this year as they apparently self pollinating, but unsure of fruit quality. Check for other posts on this topic.

What are peoples opinion on ambarella? Precocious and little but to me tastes like a bad cheesy mango. I am wondering if I just haven’t had good ones.

Congrats on even finding seedsI realize that the chance of me ever being able to get this to fruit is next to impossible, but I’ve been looking for seeds for about 4 years. All the online sellers seem to be sold out. Would u be willing to tell us where did u get the seeds?

How many seedlings are you planning on growing? Are you looking for male and female
Plants?

Thanks everyone for your insight. Yeah, I had actually taken a cutting a while back and it’s already ina 2 gallon pot ready to go. I was actually thinking about getting rid of the old vine anyway this year but it was flowering like crazy and setting fruit this early spring….I guess it knew it’s time was up.

I was wondering if anyone could identify the source of damage of my rambutan leaves? I’ve never seen any bugs on the plant but they are completely full of holes.

I find it pretty funny that I someone in Florida wants to try to grow fruit from northern Canada, while I spent years designing a greenhouse to grow what you can do in your backward with ease.

Let me know how it goes. I’ll give updates this year if I get a good crop.