re: Louisiana Tropical Fruit Gardening - Experiences and Updates

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how did you protect it out in the yard?
i'll need to do the same once i get everybody planted this week or next

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I wrapped C-9 Christmas lights all around it and especially at the crown where the leaves emerged. Then I doubled wrapped the stem in tall frost cloth secured with bungie cables. I left the lights and cloth on all winter without issue and plugged it in on cold nights. The cloth dries out very quickly. Also a good thick layer of mulch to protect the corm. Our low temp this winter was 18F. I'll post a photo and a link to the cloth below.



10ft Frost Cloth - Currently Unavailable

I think it's done setting fruit. The new flowers are just dropping off.


I'm going to make Polynesian pulled pork this weekend. I plan on wrapping it with some banana leaves when it stalls instead of butcher paper. Will do a soy/pineapple marinade/glaze as well. I need to trim off some of the lower leaves, anyhow. The mini grove is causing enough shade to make my Bermuda leggy around it.

it was good to meet you. next time on the coneflowers i'd love to add them. the flower plant i gave you is rudbekia maxima ( LINK). put it in a spot with room to grow that gets full sun, or a big pot.

cant wait to see some banana action

operation banana is underway

pulled the tarps and dug out any obvious vines still in there. Four months under the tarp and this went from tangled mess to bare dirt



adding raised bed soil (sand, bark, manure, clay & compost. This is really just to raise the crown of the bed a little so I have positive drainage and to add the organics. The dirt is pretty black to start with so I’m hoping this will make a happy banana bed





I’m going to let this get rained on a few times to settle then mulch and plant. I’ve got a beautiful healthy namwah from loup and a healthy thick rajapuri pup that hasn’t leafed back out yet but should be fine. The other three plants I got are crap but they are in pots so we will see if they get going. I’ve got a dwarf Orinoco coming hopefully it’s usuable.

Yall have some huge properties! Maybe I should move to the north shore.

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pups are the only way to go (as you said before and as i have found out the hard way)...everyone is selling tissue cultures of the good bananas and they all suck. sickly and sad. plus they are all greenhouse grown and cant take the sun

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More frequently it's not even the right variety to begin with. Buying online from a retailer is probably an 80% chance of being either dwarf Cavendish, grand nain, or namwah.

My 8 inch long veinte cohol pup that I got a week ago and put into a one gallon pot has already grown taller than my year old tissue culture "veinte cohols" in the ground.

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or the wrong mango

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It definitely happens but wayyyy more reliable than the banana market. Have you decided what you're going to do with yours? Mangos are one of the easiest trees out there to graft so it would not be out of the question to just completely change the variety. You could buy a couple of M4 scions and top work it with a simple cleft graft.

I think there's a decent chance (25%) that it's NDM #4, which is a dwarf tree and good for long term container growing. But it could very well be any of the many other sigmoid shaped Thai/East Asian mangos and have a bad growth habit for you. Hell, maybe it works out and you have a great tree. I would say it's probably one of the following:

NDM
NDM #4
Mahachanok
Pim Sen Mun
Keo Savoy
Okrung
Chok Anan

I think it's pretty unlikely it would be something outside of this list. I fed them into Claude to make a chart for you comparing growth habit, taste, and disease resistance but the info it spat out was obviously wrong.

Sarasota can’t do fruit trees?

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My neighborhood cant.

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I’ll simply say that I too may or may not live in a HOA/CDD community with bylaws against fruit trees and edible plants. I’ll also say that I may or may not have been told that as long as the yard is well maintained and they aren’t in plain view from the curb that a blind eye will almost always be turned to it. Problems typically arise in neighbor disputes. 99% of people have no idea what a banana, avocado or mango tree looks like. My neighborhood will have 6,000 homes once finished. I can show you dozens of fruit trees within walking distance of my home. I spotted a 15 foot guava tree earlier today when dropping off my daughter to a friends place. YMMV…