re: Louisiana Tropical Fruit Gardening - Experiences and Updates

The flower buds and leaf buds look very similar. The way to tell is that you can see the red color from the stamens on the flower buds. See below:



If there is no red it is a leaf bud.

Hopping in this thread. I'm here in the Tampa area and we have a ton of fruit trees planted. So will be asking some questions. We have avocados, star fruit, coconuts, bunch of mango trees, guava, two types of banana, peach hybrid, and lemon/orange hybrid. Going to pick up some passion fruit soon

How often do yall fertilize and what's your go to fertilizer?

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UF SunLime

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First time I've heard of this one and I'm someone who regularly browses the Madison Citrus Nursury website for the latest limequat and citrange hybrids. Good looking tree. Can't wait to see what those fruits look like.

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Limequat

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My neighbors have a tree that they call a lemonquat. It’s alot like a Meyer lemon to me, but apparently has the cold tolerance of a kumquat. Their tree fruits profusely. They apparently brought it over from Mississippi years ago. I haven’t found anywhere that will ship one to Louisiana. I’m considering trying to graft a cutting from their tree if it recovers well from the freeze. I have a rootstock from a grapefruit that didn’t make it.

Any idea where to source pumice around here..been looking locally and can’t find anything?

Mail order ?

Or do you think I could do a modified Gary’s mix with more locally sourced materials that are easily obtained?
What would
Be good substitutions


Gary Perfect Soil Mix
- [ ] Perlite -20
- [ ] Pumice -30
- [ ] Sand -10
- [ ] Peat Moss - 35
- [ ] Biochar-5

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First time I've heard of this one and I'm someone who regularly browses the Madison Citrus Nursury website for the latest limequat and citrange hybrids. Good looking tree. Can't wait to see what those fruits look like.

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These sort of started showing up in limited nurseries back in 23’. I was fortunate to grab two last year. Data is still a bit scant; but, I’m doing a little experiment of my own. One is planted in the ground and other in a pot. They do seem to really be nitrogen junkies. They’ve fared far better since I’ve got after them with high doses of nitrogen on a monthly basis. There’s definitely some variances from their Australian brethren. On the Aussie varieties the fruit drops when it’s ripe. Making it easy to pick them up. On these the fruit tends to hang even when fully ripened making you pick them. Unfortunately; the trees have huge spines which have a toxin in them. So gloves must be worn. There’s also some uncertainty about their cold tolerance and depending on what rootstock was used the trees growth can vary significantly.

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lost nearly every leaf in the snowmageddon. and yes I did fertilize

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It's recovering. You should not expect a big crop this year. It's focusing on foliage to be able to feed itself again.

Sun Lime is HLB tolerant too? Badass.

Last greenhouse night of the year, baws. Or at least it better be.

OK, everyone in this thread needs to watch this video. This woman is in Beaumont, TX zone 9a. I am literally floored and what she is growing both in ground and in containers. This is possibly the most informative real-world empirical look at tropical fruit growing in temperate climates that I have ever seen.

LINK

Some big takeaways:

1) Lemon and strawberry guava are root hardy in 9.

2) Tropical guava are mostly root hardy in 9 and they are MORE root hardy than citrus. All of her satsumas died and the guavas all returned from the ground.

3) Suriname cherry is apparently just straight up hardy in 9.

4) You can do remarkable, even unimaginable, things in small pots if you know what you are doing. Notice the fruiting citrus in 1-2gal, sapote in 5gal, the TEN FOOT TALL PRODUCING MANGOS IN 15gal. Her soil mix is nothing but bark fines and sand that is watered daily.

This is just inspiring to me and captures the spirit of this thread. She did not take "no" for an answer and tried literally everything. The result? More than half of the crazy, brazen attempts to grow tropical fruits in a freezing climate without major greenhouse space both in ground and in tiny containers WORKED. This lady had sustained single digit temperatures in 2021 and has been significantly colder than most of South Louisiana for the last few years. This winter she hit 11F with snow. Listen to what she is saying; countless things she tried died but she just kept going. This is the biggest message I wanted to convey with this thread: no one has really tried this stuff so the conventional wisdom is WORTHLESS.

ETA: I'm adding this video to the OP. This is too important to get lost in the sauce.