re: Louisiana Tropical Fruit Gardening - Experiences and Updates

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Since I’ve never lived anywhere where any of this is possible, this has been one of the more entertaining/interesting threads I’ve read in a long time.

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Thanks man! After the snowmageddon that blanketed south Louisiana with a foot of powder, I found that my fairly amateur cold protection methods worked great and then realized that I was not making the best use of my zone 9 climate. We are basically a true subtropical climate for 9-10 months out of the year. If you can get through the 60 days of winter (which is really more like 3-6 hard freezes), you can really push what is possible.

Then you've got guys like wiltz who are lucky enough to live somewhere where it never freezes.

What climate zone are you in? You might be surprised at what you can get away with.

Good selections. Got your container and soil plan lined up?

So what they tell you is Blue Java is almost always Namwah. Blue Java is difficult to find outside of specialty nurseries. This is not a problem. Namwah is fantastic and many think it tastes better than blue java. There are 2 ways to tell namwah from blue java that I know of. First, blue java is lankier and more delicate than namwah. Second, the fruit bunch on blue java has this very defined and separated "knuckle" look between the fruit stems. Namwah is more uniform. See below. What you have there is a dead ringer for namwah.



You will need to wrap it in the winter to save the pseudostem in order to get fruit. Here's my potted namwah bunch as of today:



Namwah gets huge but there is a dwarf variety out there. I have a small plug of the dwarf just starting in my back yard. If you want a statement, tall namwah is the way to go. If you want fruit, much easier to protect and harvest from dwarf namwah.

Very welcome baw. This is why I made this thread. I could have saved so much time and money if there were some kind of resource for south Louisiana.

I highly recommend bananas and especially namwah for these reasons. If you can get it to fruit, great. They're amazing. But even the young pups I cut out of my big trees survived the 2024 winter apocalypse. Zero protection. They are all coming back. Once you have a single tree you can harvest pups and make a million of them. We are in a 5 year stretch of winters with brutal lows but that shite won't last forever. Even without fruit, it is zero maintenance tropical foliage. Your worst case scenario is a more tropical yard and your best case is eating non Cavendish bananas from your own trees.

my banana is coming back but it’s slow. Three winters now it’s died completely back. But I like it’s a pretty tree and the frogs love it

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Good selections. Got your container and soil plan lined up?

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I made a soil mix for my guava that I think is better than 90% of what’s out there …but for these as I hope keep long term, I think I’m going to order legit top pot mix from Amazon ..since they’re young(3g) should I go 15 gallon first then upsize down the road ?

I’m in the process of listening to the UFL mango video it’s long lol

Alright so here's my first attempt with passionfruit. This is Panama Red, allegedly a superb variety. Let me just start by saying, yes, I know there is a lot wrong with this setup. They don't do well in pots and they need a substantial trellis or fence to climb. But I don't have a fence or structure that gets enough sun during the day. These are not winter hardy here. And the spot where the pot sits is a wet clay soil basin. So this setup in a 15gal air pruning pot gets me a rich but fast draining soil in a full sun location. I'd give this a 20% chance of success but that's what we're here for. If it works I'll build a trellis over it.

why not just plant the native maypop?
the fruits are really good

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why not just plant the native maypop?
the fruits are really good

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Not a fan. Too tart. I'd say tartness is the hallmark trait of most passiflora that are not of the ligularis group and maypop is especially tart in my experience.