The Tropical Fruit Forum

I like Titusville. I live about 20 minutes west just past Christmas and before Bithlo. Our best friends live there so we are there all the time. Theres a few really good restaurants. Robs Burgers is really good, theres an Irish pub near the big town"center" complex. Theres a decent BBQ place down 1A. You will find along the main highway the towns kind of all blend together, and since I dont live there I cant tell you the difference. Its like Orlando and the little numerous micro towns like Sanford and Longwood that comprise it, they are all Orlando to most people just with a different city names on the address block.

Fishing and outdoor activities are great with access to the Indian River and Mosquito lagoons. It does have a kind of run down appearance due to the fact most of it was built in the 60s. I grow mangos where I am and it is colder here than it is in Titusville. We only very rarely reach freezing, I think its happened once in my area in the last 12 years. Frost is the only real threat and even that is light.   

It would appear that I have something called Fig Wax Scale - Ceroplastes rusci. Primaryily goes after figs but as I said, it appears that it likes a few other odds and ends as well and doesnt just sit on leaves. Looks like from what I have read, they are only in Florida in the US.

My Sweetheart did nothing this year after having tons of blooms and a total of three fruit last year. Its about 11 years old. Looks fine, I dont see any issues apart from the lack of doing anything. My potted(until yesterday) Emperor has a few fruit on it. If they mature great, I am not holding my breath. Weirdly, my longon (which I am including here since its so closely related) had massive numbers of flowers and then suddenly lost all of its leaves and flowers in the space of the weekend.

9 pound lemons are real. But they actually look like overly large lemons with a washed out yellow color. Those limes are very weird looking. A bit on the pricy side. Interesting that citrus like this is shipping from Canada. There are some large red flags in my opinion that and I would be very hesitant unless you really enjoy gambling.

My in the forest experiment seems to be working ok. I have Sweet tangerine, Naval, Persian Lime and something else in an oak woods clearing. Went completely underwater for two days during one of the hurricanes last year. They didnt care. Something else interesting, since the deer eat the leaves so often, I dont get leaf miners Out in my yard I still have some of my older citrus up and kicking. My pommalo and Yuzu lemon are chugging along just fine. About 12 years old. My 9 pound lemon looks like heck but still produces heavily and I have to prune it every two years so I can mow under it. On the other side of the house I have another naval orange and pink lemon who while they arent growing, they both put out tons of blooms each year and leaf miners aside, look fairly healthy. In a pot under my eaves on the east side of my house I have a Centennial Kumquat and that thing produces like a beast. Been there about 3 years, big and bushy, even the leaf miners leave it alone.

On the bad side, my oldest tree which was there when I moved in 13 years ago  and I was never able to ID, it is pretty much finished. I just havent gotten around to removing it.

which of those fruit trees can handle cold weather best? I mean daily cold temps at night, rarely below freezing, nice warm temp. during the day, no hard frosts, maybe 27F as the lowest temp.

thanks

Mango and Lychee would be my choice. Sweetheart from the lychee group, others seem more susceptible to the cold, sweetheart doesnt seem to care at least to the temps you describe. Mangos will get their leaves burnt from frost especially if you go for the open style instead of the big bushy style.

In Central Florida in 10a, but what Nick from Nick's Edibles calls the arctic of 10a and having had most of these at one point or another:
 Sugar apple: Low- wont survive in the ground through any but the mildest of winters
Atemoya: Low- wont survive in the ground
Mango: Moderate- Protect when young, when bigger doesnt really care about short frosts aside from leaves burning off
Mamey Sapote: Havent had this one
Sapodilla: Low
Jackfruit: Very Low
Lychee: High- one of my more successful trees
Rollinia: Havent had this one.

Note that these are for in ground plantings. Potted you can keep almost anything alive with effort.

I believe, dont quote me, but I believe there are varieties that will grow in FL so SC should be fine. Again, depends on where. In North Ga they grow massive rhododendrons and the best we can grow in Central Fl is their Azalea relatives that dont mind the sun as much, theres like two of those. There really is a massive difference between FL and the coast coast of GA/SC/NC and Ga/SC/NC literally a couple miles or more inland.   Use the alligator method, if there are alligators, you can "probably" grow sub tropicals, the less gators naturally occur, the harder time you are going to have.

Really depends on where in SC. Its a very variable area. I am from Coastal Ga and grew up on an island not far from the SC border, in winter I used to duck hunt on the Savannah river, which is the border. If you are talking on the coast, as in, you are living in the barrier island areas, not just living near I-95 then you can expect to grow some sub tropicals and have pretty good luck with citrus. The island I grew up on is about 20 minutes by boat from the Atlantic and I am always jealous of how healthy and lush their citrus trees are there compared to what I can grow here in FL. Plus the added bonus of pecans growing insanely well, talking huge 75' tall trees that drop tons of nuts in the fall. Loquats grow very well and I know the island my parents still live on has them everywhere growing wild.

The negative is winters are very unrpedictable. You will get freezes, some winters will drop into the teens for a day or two. We even had snow sit on the ground 3 days in 89 with some of the shaded areas lasting longer. It doesnt get that cold with the weather cycles changing very often but the potential is there. I would still expect to see upper 20s and 30s every year for at least a couple days.

Inland away from the Ocean water gets colder quickly. Remember Snowmageddon? Chic-Fil-A coming in during a blizzard and its employee volunteering to walk down the highways handing out warm sandwiches to people trapped in traffic jams in the snow for several days? That was in GA. While that was a bad one, they get lesser forms of it every other year or so. I dont hear much out of SC but I can only imagine they would get it too being the next state up. The farther west you go the higher elevation and the colder it would probably get. So you could probably get away with more stone fruit but less subtropicals.

So in short, if you are right on the coast your options for sub tropicals are much higher than if you live in the western end of the state. Note there is also a shift in soil content as well once you hit a certain point going west. But with prep and protection your options are always there. Theres a dude in Evansville Indiana with palm trees in his front yard, blew my mind when I saw them in winter, so it can be done.

Again, I cant get to the roots without chopping through a hedgerow of saw palm which I would prefer not to do. I guess a bird dropped a seed smack dab in the center of a5ish foot wide row of palm that acts as my front fence for the yard. Saw palmetto grows an inch a year so cutting it isnt really an option since it will be a few decades for it to grow back to a somewhat decent fill for the hole.

The camphor is the pest. I was wandering around a corner area I am turning into a butterfly garden with a few fruit trees and native grasses mixed in, mostly so I have less lawn to mow. Along the front of the yard I have a hedgerow of saw palmetto which is 5-7 feet tall and about as wide running along my side of a ditch. Right in the middle of it I noticed a camphor tree popping up above the saw palmetto. I would rather not chop my way into the saw palmetto seeing as it takes a very long time to grow. Would brush remover spray targetted just on the camphor kill it? I know they are notoriously hard to get rid of. I also know if I dont get rid of it, it will get large enough to shade out everything else in that corner of the yard in a fairly quick order.

Right there with you dude. I have had one that is about 7 or 8 feet tall now. Hasnt had a freeze do damage in several years at this point. No fruit still. I have noticed my smaller potted ones have these weird spontaneous die offs where they lose all their leaves. Big ones dont seem to have these issues. I need to plant them this weekend

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I would also add 6- unavailable at a grocery store
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Conversely, available at the grocery store, but you can show people how much better home grown taste. My dad mentioned this to me about mangos this past weekend. "Your mangos tasted so much better than these little ones we get at Publix."