The Tropical Fruit Forum

Get some good banana variety like raja puri which tastes better than store bananas and is fairly cold hardy. Plants contain a large percentage of water so when you have large trees or a body of water nearby it helps modulate temperature fluctuations. This is why you have wild temperature shifts in the desert or even in grasslands where there isn't a lot of water filled vegetation or bodies of water to modulate temperature shifts between night and day. I don't think the frost makes much difference, seems to be more about temperature. If its frosting on one side of the yard and not the other its probably a temperature difference though.

I have stuff that will do well in Florida though some occasional spray will be needed in some more tropical areas. The goal is no spray. Shuttleworthii is a good tasting native grape that grows well in south Florida. Shuttleworthii and muscadine hybrids have a lot of potential. Aestavalis grows wild here too but somewhat less tough and often tiny berries.

Something like razzmatazz which is half muscadine will do well. Taris burgundy does well with a little spray (half shuttleworthii) though I have taris burgundy crosses that are tougher than taris but still not at the no spray level. At least not in Florida probably elsewhere it could. Dunstans dream is supposed to do well in Florida it's 3% muscadine and mixed with everything else.

Dunstan and zehnder both dead now spent a lifetime breeding southern grapes and did amazing work. So I'm starting with their best stuff. Otherwise it would take 50 years to make this much progress breeding grapes.

Letting it get bone dry will not hurt it. I would dry mine out so it would be light enough to move. Indoors in winter it doesn't need much water. In a pot outside in summer I water all the time. I normally don't let it get bone dry but if it does occasionally it's not a problem. Over watering or poor drainage is a more likely issue with citrus.

Many seedlings are small and not vigorous. This is often due to hybrids their genes mix poorly or they are not well adapted to the area. Many grapes are not vigorous in Florida heat. Others get disease. But my better ones are a huge plant after one year. Due to lack of winter some don't go dormat.

I tried all kinds of varieties and seeds. Most got disease or didn't do well until I got these zehnder seeds. Kyoho comes from Missouri native aestavalis (some Asian grapes have this) lubrisca, vinifers. Not really adapted to the south. I grow a huge amount of seeds (20-30 at a time) only a small number make it. With native grapes not hybrids of course all of them will be adapted though some seeds might not come up or plants get eaten by an animal etc.

There's virtually no winter here in south Florida. I have to refrigerate seeds to get enough cold on them to germinate. I think my cab zehn seeds didn't get enough cold most or all haven't come up I'm not sure. I guess I've been selectively breeding stuff that germinated with minimal winters as grape seeds need 3 months of cold before germinating.

The stuff that came up now if it freezes I'll have to protect it but it might not even freeze. And they are so tough they will keep growing through 33 degree temps generally. This is true of basically all native American grapes. European vinifers gets leaf damage in the 40s. Hybrids are in between but closer to the American side. My stuff seems to resist cold pretty well.

You have cold sensitive stuff like shuttleworthii it's mainly due to early blooming and can get damaged by a late freeze but the leaves themselves generally not damaged until it hits freezing.

Our lows are in the 50s or 60s now.

Some tropical ones or vinifera will go dormant with practically no winter. It figures out it's winter without a freeze. But the seedlings germinating now won't do that . They will only go dormant or die if it freezes.

I just germinated new grape seeds to add to my breeding project. The goal is something hardy like a native spray free but better fruit than wild.

(Z86 x d370) x (male aestavalis x shuttleworthii) should be about the same as a wild grape but better berries. 2/3 will be male unfortunately.

I think a bunch of cab zehn (z89) seeds sprouted unless I mixed that pot up with the above. I got can zehn open pollinated seeds this year hopefully I'll get some to sprout and survive.

Z86 x bd (stover x Daytona) I sprouted 25 or so last year got one outstanding survivor that's highly vigorous and disease resistant. Sold one on here that was mediocre. Trying to root it. But I used about 20 more seeds left over from last year and they came up. Besides being disease resistant and good fruit quality bd passes on pierce tolerance well (about 2/3 when crossed with a totally non resistant variety) so it's good to have in the mix.

Z86 and z89 are 6% muscadine with a mix of other natives and vinifers but super rare to cross that species barrier by bob zehnder and Dunstan. Also top level combination of disease resistance and berry quality. Cab zehn wine is almost identical to cab Sauvignon without any native flavors. Z86 has only a faint trace of native flavors also similar to cab Sauvignon.

Z86 is half cab Sauvignon and z89/cab zehn is half ruby Cabernet. Been trying to get cab zehn seeds for a while.

Aestavalis berries are not bad though around here tiny. A bit acidic. Shuttleworthii berries are larger and really good tasting though sometimes acidic sometimes not but aestavalis contributes to late ripening and cold hardiness. Shuttleworthii ripens so early it doesn't grow outside of Florida. Though the cross was a coincidence. My female plant had no pollinator and this one bloomed the same time as it. Aestavalis here blooms really late and ripens late it's more native to the south like Georgia or something this is the southern limit of it's range. Shuttleworthii is more tropical and at home in the swamps but they overlap here.

I'll see what I have later in the year to put up here. I have Suwannee too which has good disease resistance and good berries though slightly less tough than zehnder pretty similar though Suwannee has big berries.

My dwarf meyer lemon was a thick bush and maxes out at six feet tall. I put it outside for summer and brought it in when temps go below freezing. It did really well and got lemons. It might be too big of a tree in a small pot which will cause it to grow weird the dwarf meyer is the smallest and best suited for containers.

They can go in shock switching from natural light to artificial and vice versa. I tried to keep mine near a window even though I used artificial light. Every thing did better outside in the summer than inside in winter but I kept them healthy enough in winter so that they were healthy. Seems to be a lot more spider mites or bug problems indoors too.

The plant looks fairly healthy in the photos. Usually long skinny growth means not enough light but you said it was out doors.

I use a full spectrum florescent bulb and you can put them a few inches from the plant and not burn it. Then mix it up with a sunlight florescent made for reptiles. That one needs to get a smaller dose further away but seems to help mixing different bulbs with slightly different spectrum. Led I don't know if it will burn them. I don't give them too many hours of light in the winter it seems to stress the outdoor plants. I guess they expect shorter days in winter I don't know but I do 12 hours max or sometimes they stress. It's really finicky with artificial light. That's why I try to rely on a window and just use artificial light to supplement it.

Of course if you never put the plant outside it will eventually get used to the artificial light. But just taking it in for the winter there's natural rythems and cycles does best without a lot of artificial light. 8-12 hours up high not super close. One leaf might get a lot more light than another and confuse it so have to cover the whole plant in about the same light hence moving the light source up. Though mirrors and aluminum foil can be put around it to reflect more of the light on the plant.

And I don't fertilize when indoors for the winter. I just try to keep it healthy then in spring when it goes outside fertilize and it takes off.

I did have tiny almost invisible slugs sucking sap without me knowing and the plant was sad looking at one time. I sprayed the whole plant with neem oil and the dirt a few different times and got rid of them but I took it outside so rain and hose can wash the oil off don't want it sitting on the plant too long. Takes several rains to wash off as it is. So could be insects.

Could be stress. A weak seedling that will eventually turn normal. Some hybrids are weak or come out weird too because of distantly related species. Odd enough both inbreeding and crossbreeding (if they are distantly related) can have similar effects. So could be a hybrid or could be a weird seedling.

It looks like a trifoliate x grapefruit (or pommelo) crossed with a grapefruit again. Swingle fruit look like large oranges. Flavor is like orange crossed with grapefruit not too bitter but has a bit too much of that nasty trifoliate taste to be worth eating but almost edible. They aren't quite that large and are orange but a swingle crossed with a pomelo or grapefruit would look like that. Not sayings it's swingle could be a similar cross. I would imagine swingle x grapefruit wouldn't be too bad but depends how much trifoliate flavor.

Could be a sour orange cross which would explain the bitterness. Trifoliate while not sweet isn't that bitter. Just has that bitter off flavor attached to it. But the rind where it's sliced in half looks trifoliate.

It doesn't look like a pure pommelo or pure grapefruit. That would be my theory like 3/4 with 1/4 trifoliate judging by appearances which could also explain the flavor.it does look very similar to swingle just slightly larger and slightly less orange. Swingle has few seeds due to being a hybrid it has low fertility but seeds are possible.

I use cat litter. Though if I had clay soil I'd just use 5% of that. Only because summer time it's so hot I have to massively water every day and it's bone dry the next day for any plant that fills the container. But I can't go overboard because in cold weather or rainy season it might get water logged. This small amount of clay in the potting soil seems to work well.

You are better off with a sour orange which you can use like a lemon but is much more cold hardy

Citrus doesn't like soggy roots. Trifoliate I don't know it's from a different climate.

I never prune citrus. Once it reaches its max height ha fly grows at all. Pretty easy to grow. Make sure it doesn't get too dry like any other plant. Make sure there's no bugs eating it. It's all common sense.