re: Louisiana Tropical Fruit Gardening - Experiences and Updates

Sweet. I am running out of places in my small yard for any more palms. GIves me the sadz.


My lot is like .000000001 acres and I have

7 triple pygmys
3 foxtails
5 Christmas palms
1 queen palm
2 bottle palms





That doesnt include what I have in containers around my pool. Sometimes I look at my back deck and think, you moron. You have too much shite out here. Plus all the projects I have going on in small containers. LOL.

I just dont have any space. If I did, I would be at the nursury getting a royal palm today.

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Loup

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your beautyberry is rocking.



Let me know when you want to trade. I’m in Hammond if you ever find yourself this way or I can meet you somewhere

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Let me know when you want to trade. I’m in Hammond if you ever find yourself this way or I can meet you somewhere

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We will have to figure something out, I rarely get out that way but I work in BR.

I planted a small grapefruit tree a couple of months ago. I’m in South Louisiana. I was wondering if there is any recommended spraying or other recommendations for preventative care? Thanks.

Alright time for some cool updates.

First of the Bounty passionfruit are turning color and falling off the vine. I wish that these had hung on a little longer, but they will continue to ripen as long as the color has broken from green to purple. Will let them get wrinkled before eating.



Speaking of passionfruit, the Qinmi #9 is really starting to take off with the heat. Yellow passionfruit (Passiflora edulis flavicarpa) is more tropical than purple passionfruit (Passiflora edulis) and needs more hot weather. Really hope this lives up to the hype.



And in the coolest news of all, I have identified and located a new landscape palm hardy to zone 8 that is pinnate, trunking, and tolerates both full sun and full shade. This is Chamaedorea radicalis, a palm endemic to elevated oak forests in Tamaulipas, Mexico. These grow at altitude and tolerate much colder temperatures than similar looking palms of the region.





If you are familiar with palms in 9a you know that the only reliably hardy pinnate trunking palms are pretty much the pindo palm, mule palm, and maybe the Canary Island and Sylvester date palms depending on location. And even those (except the mule) have the arid "desert" palm look instead of a tropical look. Everything else is on borrowed time or has palmate fronds that don't look as tropical. Here's a photo of a more mature healthy one:



Radicalis is hardy to the teens and will not start taking damage until 20F. These particular ones came from a Pensacola grower. They experienced 18F a couple of years ago and suffered no damage even in pots. He had 13 inches of snow this past winter, also without effect.

You can put this palm anywhere. It takes more sun than any other palm in the Chamaedorea genus and also thrives in full shade. It even does great in containers. These things are bulletproof in zones 8-9 and I cannot for the life of me understand why they are not everywhere along the gulf coast. It's a huge miss by the southern nursery industry. The UK has known about them for years and makes great use of them.

I'll be putting 4 in the ground in shady spots and keeping one in a pot that I won't have to protect. The rest are going to family and friends.

ETA: potted one up. This looks damn good for something that will survive the teens.

I planted this blue Java banana plant spring 2025 and I am hoping to have fruit later this year.

The main stalk is now about 7 feet tall. Two pups are 4-5 and two more are about 2 feet tall.

How many pups, if any, should I retain if my goal is to get a few bananas?

Thanks

this area is starting to look coonass-tropical and pretty cool I think. This is a wet bed behind my shower deck that catches the runoff. Everything in there I dug up out of a ditch.









This is shampoo ginger I’ve been trying to get this going in an other adjacent bed but it’s not been easy. Growing super slow and it gets a late start, just now sprouting. It’s supposed to be beautiful so I’m not giving up

thanks brah

Here’s the other wet area I’m going to go jungle with, I only cleared it out a couple weeks ago. I’m hoping that palmetto takes off



I ordered some pretty native wet spot plants from a place up in MN that I’m going to try and reverse zone (bottle gentian) and some prairie rose starts that I know will do fine there. That’s a drain swale and it stays pretty wet

you think that would be a good banana spot? I didn’t think about that. The soil is black and it can hold water sometimes (just a day or usually)

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Thai Giant colocasia

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holy shite



that one I’d have think about

I keep planting rose mallow seeds and they don’t do shite. I’ll have to try and find some starts