The Tropical Fruit Forum

So, I seem to be growing, for the second year, a REALLY healthy, LARGE (like, pounds...) crop of non-poisonous but bad tasting mushrooms in my greenhouse.  The spores rode in last year on a load of bark.  Aargh!  I have the name of what they are written down somewhere, the local mushroom club came out last fall to ID them for me because I was worried about my birds.

I have tried Physan, which is the only thing labeled to kill mushrooms, and it hasn't made a dent.  I pick them daily and throw them away. 
I can't keep the floor dry because we flood irrigate, and it just comes in with no stopping.

I don't think I can physically dig up the floor without killing myself trying - it is about 6 inches deep with packed, composted bark, and some of the pots I would have to move are huge.  Then there is the expense of replacing the bark...

I am trying REALLY hard to not resorting to permanently sterilizing the floor with vinegar because I don't know if it will work on mushrooms, I have a fair number of feral yams and other vines that I don't want to kill, plus, I am thinking that if mushrooms like my greenhouse so much, I should try my hand at morels!

My latest technique is pouring boiling water on the areas where I know there are spores.
Any other ideas?
Thanks!
Carolyn

Hi,
I have sprouted a whole bunch of Jackfruit seeds.  I have gotten them from two different fruits.  The ones from one fruit all have normal, ovate shaped leaves.  The ones from the other fruit have some seedlings that are normal, and others that have oddly lobed leaves.
Any idea what is going on here?  Normal variation?  Some sort of disease or nutrient problem? Am I providing improper care in the "nursery" setup?
Thanks!
Carolyn

Hi All,
I am heading to Cape Town South Africa in about a month.  Although Cape Town not what I would consider tropical, I am figuring that they probably have access to a lot of tropical fruit from farther north.
Does anyone know of any fruit markets?  I have been checking the web with no luck.  Just a lot of apples and peaches and such.  I can always use the "wander around the waterfront" method, but any other ideas would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Carolyn

Hi,
I was wondering if anyone is using AzaMax (organic insecticide/anit-feedant/IGR made by General Hydroponics) as pest control.  Some of my greenhouse plants get mealy bugs very easily (especially my coffee and citrus) and I usually use Neem/Py.  It works, but you have to keep on top of it ALL the time.
I bought some AzaMax this summer to try.  It came in little vials that you mix into a 1 pint "trigger style" spray bottle.  Of course, my hand cramped and my enthusiasm wore out long before the little bottle was emptied.  The results I saw were about the same as for the Neem/Py, but I don't feel like I gave it a fair shot. The organic nursery here in town uses it by the gallon, including as a soil drench, and swears by it.

I am tempted to buy the larger bottle of AzaMax, but it is outrageously expensive.
Does anybody have any experience with this product? 

Thanks!
Carolyn

Hi!
I wanted to share my greenhouse, since I love it so much.
We named it Daintree, after our favorite tropical area in Australia.

We built the 15x20 ft tropical portion of the greenhouse from a kit in 2009.  It is twin-wall 8 mil polycarbonate, and came with an exhaust fan, intake vent, and 15,000 btu gas heater.  It is oriented with the front door to the east, and the long walls face north and south.
Immediately, it became too small!

We built a 10x10 foot addition, for those things that prefer chill hours.  It was stick-built, with corrugated polycarbonate on both the inside and outside of the 2x4 frame.  In the winter, I can shut the door between the two houses and keep the temps in the temperate house above freezing using a 16x16 inch window between the two houses.  I get night-time lows of 50F in the tropical house.

There are weeks in the winter when the daytime temps never get above freezing, and nighttime temps are in the single digits or below 0 F.  But we get about 250 clear sunny days per year, so the heat gain during the day, even in the winter, means the furnace rarely kicks on until late afternoon.  The furnace make a LOT of water vapor, so there are some winter days when it actually gets foggy in there!

We get very hot in the summer (weeks over 100 F), so I put up a 30% shade canopy around the end of May.  There is a HUGE benefit (additional 10-20 F of cooling!) to having the canopy elevated above the roof, instead of laying on it. 

We located Daintree so that it gets some shade from our maple tree in the summer, increasing the total shade to about 50%.  There is a powerful exhaust fan that turns on at 90 F.  I take the shade down in September but leave the frame up all year.

In the winter, I use full-spectrum flood-lights at various heights that come on in the morning and evening.  The plants all get adequate light to bloom and fruit, except for my dragonfruit (aargh!).

I built a 150 gallon pond that I fill using filtered city water.  I drop a sump pump and fertilizer into it and water everything with a hose.  I also give frequent “rain showers” to prevent spider mites (although I am still arguing with the mealy bugs about who is boss, sometimes!).

There is a BIG slug problem, especially in summer, because we flood irrigate, and get 2 inches of water on the floor every week.  A favorite night-time activity is slug-picking!

I raise Bourkes grasskeets, and they fly free in the greenhouse year-round (there are nets under the perches, which eliminates “poop-fall”).  They help prune the monstera, epiphylums and dragonfruit!  Anything they are not allowed to touch has a net over it…

So far, it has held up to marble-sized hail, sustained winds of 65 mph, and a couple of HUGE branches breaking off the maple tree.