The Tropical Fruit Forum

It's supposed to be in the upper 40's tonight in St Pete. Anybody know the cold tolerance of mango blooms and fruit? My Maha is loaded with flowers right now and I'd like to see them pull through.

Upper 40s should be no problem.

There are 2 fruiting coconut palms that I know of in Sebring, FL. They were transplanted when they were about the size of the palm in the picture and have survived mostly unscathed in a warm spot for about 10 years now. In contrast, we had a dwarf coconut palm that got burnt back by frost every year until it finally died in a particularly hard freeze.

Thank you!  I'm going to research that now! Sounds like you made a good investment on that.

Indeed! And that was 18 years ago. I have no idea if the new ones will last that long, but mine has.

I'll most likely just leave it to its own since nobody in my family really like them. But good to know all that info about them. There one loaded with larger fruit out back i just let the animals chew em up lol. At least until I get a dehydrator. Can anyone confirm that dehydrating will actually remove the garbage can flavor? The dehydrated ones in store bought trail mix were always good and this co.ing year I'll need a good way to preserve the harvests.

You will not end up with anything like the store bought Papaya chunks if you simply slice and dry in a home dehydrator. There is a lot of sugar and dye in those things. Actually, I have never been able to produce anything at all like the store bought stuff. What I made (with no added sugar) would be best descrribed as papaya hard tack, and I started with a good papaya! If anyone has had success with this you are welcome to comment. Pineapple is exactly the opposite--the home dried blows the commercial product away with rich full candy flavor and no added sugar.

Physalis peruviana was the first one that came to mind ("Golden Berries"). They fruit fast and are nematode resistant as a bonus. Physalis won't fruit much over the summer in my experience. Mulberries and Mysore raspberries are good options, too. Mysore is a good berry. Its main problem is that it does not have the typical raspberry taste. I think it suffers greatly from being compared to its relatives. The other problem is the huge thorns.

Actually, just about any fruit can be cubed into cereal. Bananas, dragonfruit, and mango are great. Frozen mango cubes defrosted in a bowl of cereal are a real treat and can be pulled out of the freezer year round.

This is probably not what you wanted to hear, but have you thought about planting something other than a mango there? A mango gets pretty hard to pick/prune over 12'. Pineapples would grow great in that spot and taste just as good as mangoes when they are home grown.

I sort of doubt that tHD uses much or any fertilizer because the plants that they sell they are
just brokering, so that amounts to plants in and out, asap!

Form what I've seen at times it seems that they aren't even watering their plant stock regularly.

Just my 2¢ worth . . .

Paul M.
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You are correct. The plants only get watered when the employees of the nursery that sells to HD come by and water them. Costa Farms does the ornamentals I believe. I don't know if they also handle the fruiting plants.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Is that part of the yard always in that much shade?

Other than the thrip damage, the tree looks great with no visible HLB at this time.

I have a sweetheart that has been in ground in east Orange county(FL) since 2012. Its one of my original trees I planted after Bob from Green Jungle(RIP) gave me some fruit from his trees. I was hooked. My tree is about 15 feet high and about 10 wide. Never had any cold or frost issues while nearby longons, which are supposedly more cold hardy, froze. I have also never even had a flowering. Really flipping annoying for one of my most otherwise successful trees. My Texas plum at least blooms.

Sorry to hear your Sweet Heart is not reliable. What plum do you have from Texas that blooms in 9b? Maybe it just needs a pollinator?

John, lots of lychee trees here in central Florida are still doing fine. We were the center of commercial lychee production for 30-40 years before the major freezes of the 50s, 70s, and 80s. Many of those old Brewster trees had excellent crops this past year. So far, most of the really old trees have escaped major mite damage.

I see normal roots for a mango that size--no root rot. Root rot cases have almost none of the little feeder roots that show up in your picture and often have obvious fungal growth.