re: Louisiana Tropical Fruit Gardening - Experiences and Updates

will do it was doing fine when I left town, I’ll be home Wednesday

Might just be me but your pics aren't showing

Wta: it was just me. Thats awesome!

Nice! Yeah hard decision to make but probably the right one. Gotta build these things right from the start to hold fruit and not drag it on the ground. DickTater came to the same conclusion and also hat racked. I have a theory that sellers like to ship their poorly pruned trees because they don't get returned and buyers outside of south Florida don't know any better.

Make sure you keep it in the shade and dry. The delicate new growth will burn up in the sun and get fungus in the rain. Warm, shady, and dry is the key. Also give it a dose of fish emulsion. This is the perfect time for a good nitrogen dose.

They grow fast, you'll be rolling by next summer. At least 60 days of recovery time left on the calendar and probably more like 90 before we get cold.

Just pay very close attention to branch selection going forward. You want all resources used on the right things. First priority is 2-4 upward growing scaffolding branches that will be relatively short and strong. Ideally they will all point away from each other.

A perfectly ripe guava is probably my favorite fruit even over mango. It's the whole reason I started all this. Ruby supreme was my first tropical unless you count key lime.

I also like them creamy but for the first time I'm growing the Asian varieties that are super sweet and usually eaten crunchy. Will be fun to report.

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I’m very impressed with the vigor of the lemon guava seedling tigerlaff gave me. It has almost gone 5x in size since I planted it.

I have some sunny spots that can handle a naturalized stand of trees if I like the fruit I think I’m going to stick a few more in the ground

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The same qualities that make them an environmental cancer in Hawaii make them great for us. They grow fast, tolerate any soil, return easily from the roots, and are incredibly easy to germinate from seed. They also exhibit allelopathy: they excrete metabolites that inhibit the growth of other plants in their root zone, like weeds. It's also just a pretty tree with nice glossy dark evergreen leaves that pests don't bother with. I'm going to protect mine this winter and maybe next winter but after that it should be well-established enough to return from any freeze we will ever see.

Here’s mine
A week in and nothing yet, but figure it’ll take 3-4 weeks maybe longer to push from below that bark!

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Reed avocado under a shade tent, our sun is brutal, avocados love some afternoon shade …
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And a truly tiny starting its journey

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Picked the first sugar apple today. Needs a few days on the counter to soften up. You can tell when annonas like sugar apple and atemoya are ready when those scales start to spread out and you see a color change. Then you let it soften indoors.



Began thinning the Makok sapodillas to one fruit per panicle. Extremely sticky work.

Your images aren’t showing up for me

How about now?

First sugar apple ripened today faster than expected. Man, this was way better than I anticipated. In terms of annonas, my normal list of favorites is:

1) cherimoya
2) atemoya
3) soursop
4) sugar apple
5) custard apple

Never had pond apple, cherilata, ilama, or rollinia and I'm not counting pawpaws.

This sugar apple is up there at the very top with cherimoya and atemoya in terms of taste and most surprisingly, texture. This is the Vietnamese Na Dai variety which is selected for excellent flavor, low seed count, and a more chewy texture. I wasn't sure I would like the texture as I was imagining something rubbery. The chew was actually perfect and I like it a lot more than the custard-like common sugar apples.

This was a small fruit from a tree in an undersized pot. Once I get it going in the new 25g I think it will really produce great fruit next season. The flavor can only be described as very sweet with a blend of tropical fruits like pineapple and banana with some vanilla.

One of the best things about sugar apples is that they are extremely true to seed and seeds are the main method of propagation even for selected varieties. They are also naturally small trees that do fantastic in containers (better than any other annona). If anyone would like a couple of seeds let me know. Will have more as the other fruits ripen.