re: Louisiana Tropical Fruit Gardening - Experiences and Updates

I can give you 5+ better citrus varieties to grow right now.

Also, if you must grow a lemon, grow a better tasting true lemon like Lisbon or Eureka in a big pot on wheels. Sure it's cold sensitive but the Meyer isn't wildly better in that regard. How many lemons do you actually use between November - January when they ripen? If it's fewer than 15-20 why grow hundreds on an in ground tree? The best thing about my Meyer is that I get to say I have a lemon tree while my neighbors all snack on their delicious pest free cold hardy oranges.

Would you say a key lime is easier/less messy?

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Christmas palms are awesome.

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I have two Christmas Palms in pots now and three in my yard. I love them. Easy to care for as well. I have a triple in my yard that I planted as a 25 gallon and I have a double in my front that I grew in a pot then transplanted to the ground about 5 months ago. I still have two in pots that I am going to transplant to the back yard next spring.

We love the Hawaiian Tie plant as well but I am having issues with a couple of them in my front yard. I think they may be getting too much direct sunlight up there.


Thanks for all your help. Id love for this Meyer to work out but Im leaning towards tossing it next spring. LOL

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Thanks for all your help. Id love for this Meyer to work out but Im leaning towards tossing it next spring. LOL

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Welcome my man. My advice on the Meyer is list that thing on FB marketplace. Someone will buy it off you within hours. Take photos of it with fruit/flowers. Then replace it with something actually useful and easy that will thrive in a pot like a meiwa kumquat.

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We love the Hawaiian Tie plant as well but I am having issues with a couple of them in my front yard. I think they may be getting too much direct sunlight up there.

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Love Ti plant (cordyline). Everyone thinks you can't grow it year round in south LA but they're wrong. They do fine in mostly shade so you plant them under dense tree canopies. Mine took no damage in the 28F freeze a couple of weeks ago. Even if there is a hard freeze, if you mulch them they come back every year. They are also the easiest plant on earth to clone. When they get too tall, clip them at the height you want at a 45 degree angle to give the cutting a spear shape and then jam that thing straight into the dirt wherever you want a new Ti plant. They root with zero help or fuss. And yes hot direct sun burns them if exposed for too long.

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I have the Mamey. I've noticed some browning on the edge of some leaves but it seems to be doing fine for the most part.

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You gotta post pictures man. You're probably the only person in the state with a mamey. If it doesn't work out, look into green sapote. Smaller tree and tolerates some cold.

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I'm out of town this week and have no choice but to leave all my tropicals outside in the rain all week. I didn't want to put the in the portable greenhouse the whole time i was away. Hope they make out ok.
It's been near freezing temps in BR twice so far, and i was out of town for both of them. I was able to set up my greenhouse the first time as it was a short trip, but i couldn't do that this week.

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Yeah this is very, very difficult to do if you travel a lot. I try to automate as much as I possibly can. You can automate heat, lights, and even drip irrigation in a portable greenhouse, but you can't automate windows (which is extremely important on sunny warm days).

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and i did use the liquid Imidacloprid on my guava's and kikos crump hibiscus and it didn't take long at all to get all the mealybugs gone. The hibiscus had zero leaves for a good 2 months b/c of the infestation and now it's sprouting tons of them again.

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Right on. Don't dick around with neem and the home remedy garbage you see online ("mix 1oz lemon juice with dish soap and water"), etc. Do what commercial growers do if you want to actually kill bugs and fungi.

So last weekend I went to the Gulf South Pawpaw Symposium down in Violet, LA. All attendees were given fruit to sample and two free trees. It was an awesome event and if you have never had pawpaw, you need to. It's the best tasting native fruit you can grow in the US and I would put the good ones up there with mangos. It tastes like a straight up tropical fruit.

Today I got three seedlings in the ground in my backyard. Two were found in wild populations in Hattiesburg and Avery Island. The third is a seedling of Collins Select, a very good cultivar. I planted them in the understory along the bayou bank, just like they grow in the wild. If they do well and the fruit is good I will cut down the shade trees around them once they can handle the sun to make them bear heavier crops. If the fruits are not good I'll hack the tops off and graft good cultivars onto them.





I've also got grafted cultivars "mango" and "Susquehanna" in pots and will put them in more featured places in the yard when they are large enough. My "sunflower" cultivar was planted months ago and is now dormant.

Yeah the timing is definitely not ideal. I think I'm gonna try gibberellic acid next year to see if I can inhibit blooms in November-January.

They look fantastic though! Cac is amazing.

My greenhouse potted Pickering is doing its thing.

Yeah get all that stuff corrected now before the real cold hits next month. You need a remote sensor in there to make sure you can read it in real time.

Nice. Hopefully the rack makes it. My basjoo is also flowering but not a variety anyone wants to eat.