The Tropical Fruit Forum

Awesome yard! Glad you found found us!

Carolyn

I have a cinnamon zeylanicum. I don't use the bark but i like to chew on the twigs when I prune, I make tea out of the leaves, and I love to eat the berries.

Carolyn

I'm so sorry to hear about your service animal. That can feel like losing part of your own body.
A couple of thoughts -
1. I would go with something pretty, bushy, and easy to manage, such as gin berry (glycosmis pentaphylla). Unusual, beautiful, takes well to pruning, does great in a pot and grows well from seed. I have them coming up all over my greenhouse just from eating the berries and spitting the seeds out on the floor.
2. Remember, even if a plant fails, her ashes are still in the potting soil, ready to give nutrtion to whatever else you plant in there.

If you want some gin berry seeds to start, I have tons! Just let me know and I can mail you some when I get home on the 26th.

Cheers,
Carolyn

If you can find a reasonably priced 8-10mm polycarbonate panel they are quite sturdy and won't rot.   

I am curious why you want to switch from containers to raised beds.  I find containers really convenient to be able to inspect plant roots and change soil.

I just thought it would look prettier, plus as I get older, it is harder to repot the bigger trees when they need it.

I have grown these for years in my greenhouse, and even sold some seeds here on the forum a few years ago.  I forget where I got the original seeds - I should keep better records!
I love them, and you are right, they fruit quite young.  I have several seedlings goong right now in addition to my mother plant.

Cheers, Carolyn

A double whammy of cyfluthrin spray and systemic imidicloprid is the most effective treatment. I have not had good luck with the Bayer imidicloprid product, so I use LADA drench. Super concentrated. For the cyfluthrin, I use Bayer Tempo.
Good luck!

Carolyn

I just use white plastic "T stake" plant markers and write on them with a paint pen. On one side I print the common name, on the other I put the botanical name. 

Each plant also has an aluminum tag with a code that includes year, plant #, material type (seed, plant, cutting etc), source (collected in the wild, fruit stand, nursery etc), and its assigned acession number. Abbreviations, of course, and those soft tags you engrave with a ballpoint pen.

I have about 150 trees.

Carolyn

His website looks like it is down right now. I'd try again tomorrow.
Because my trees are in pots, I use strictly synthetic, to feed the trees directly. I do have a fairly high organic content to my potting soil, but if a tree needs some nutrients, I don't want to wait months or years after adding organic fertilizers, since they must be broken down first by soil microbes.

Carolyn

As a side question, ive red that sintetic fertilizers do not promote biodiversity in soil,  do they only not promote or also inhibit soil biome?

There is a great website by Robert Pavlis called Garden Myths where he studies and clarifies/debunks a lot of gardening lore. In one, he addresses synthetic fertilizers, and it turns out that the soil microbes are just as non-picky as plants - they will eat anything, organic or synthetic. Soil with lots of organic matter had the highest microbial and fungal diversity, followed by soil receiving synthetic fertilizer, followed last by soil with no amendments.

Carolyn

Thats tough.

Your greenhouse is fairly small, so upgrading the poly would not be super expensive. However, the thicker stuff is not as flexible as the thinner, and I would worry tht 10 mm would not be able to make the bend from side to side. It will put a lot of pressure at the top. So I would research the minimum bend radius and make sure you can do it.
If you can, I would do it. The difference in light transmission would not make a noticeable impact.

Another thing that would help retention are fans, up high, gently blowing the warm down onto the plants. I have four ceiling fans down the top of my greenhouse, about every ten feet. Even one fan would help a lot.

Or, if the winter covering works,,but is just a pain to install, maybe you could put it on some sort of roller.

Good luck!
Carolyn

What a great adventure!
I never travel for such a long period of time - have a big greenhouse to take care of.
But what I have found is that a great place to find interesting fruits are street vendors. I have tasted some awesome fruits! Many of them are only known to vendors by local names, so I like to get them to write down the names so I can look them up later. Then I take photos of the fruits and take notes on the flavor, texture etc.
Also check out specialized "fruit tours".

Carolyn

Mine too, if we ever make it back to the area. Wish I had known about it when we were at Cape Trib 20-some years ago.

First of all, nifty and resourceful contraption!
As far as quantities, I would hope that whatever product you are using, be it fertilizer, insect control, etc gives you some sort of guidelines.

Carolyn