re: Louisiana Tropical Fruit Gardening - Experiences and Updates

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man you've got to watch those portable greenhouses.
Mine worked great last night with my little heater and thermostat. stayed above 44F all night.
went outside at 10:30 am this morning to go open the greenhouse up and get some ventilation in it and it was 87F inside it. No wonder Frosty melted so quickly.

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Yes. I've posted about this a few times in here. The sunny day after the freeze is just as dangerous as the cold under the right circumstances. This only matters on sunny days. If the high is under 50F, you can leave it closed and the heater running with your thermostat. If the high is above 50F, you need to leave the door/windows open before leaving for work. It's better for them to sit in the mid 30's for an hour or two until the sun hits them and warms them up than it is to cook them all day.

The worst possible thing you can do is leave it closed with the heater on without a thermostat on a sunny day above 50F. It can very easily pass 120F and cook all your plants. There is no scenario where you should ever have a heat source in a plastic greenhouse without a thermostat controller. Anyone doing that is doomed from the start and you see people do it every year.

For example, it's going to be sunny with a high of 60F tomorrow, but it will be 30F when I leave for work. So before I leave I will open half the windows and leave the doors closed. The heater may run for an hour or two trying to overcome the outside air, but as soon as the sun hits it will automatically cut off and the windows will provide enough ventilation to avoid temps in the 90s.

And honestly temps in the 80s are good for the things we're growing. It warms up the roots and helps the plants metabolize and fight off infection.

Laff, after the last two cold nights we had in BR, my blue Java banana plant started to brown. I planted it around March.

I read that I should cut it back to about a foot tall to protect it from colder winter days. I did that today.

I also read that banana leaves make excellent fertilizer and mulch so I chopped them up and mounded them around the banana base and around my clementine mandarin and two naval orange trees which were planted in early fall.

Would you let me know if I should modify anything I’ve done so far? Thanks

Looks like my loquat flowers survived. Just have to get through Jan/Feb now.

How much of the banana trunk do i need to survive to end up with fruit?

Actually, not confused! Lemons and limes are year-round bloomers in their proper climates where there is almost constant warm weather without freezes. My key lime is flowering now in my greenhouse. A week or 2 of warm weather like this often causes flowering in the dead of winter.

Now if you see an orange or satsuma blooming strongly in the winter, something is getting truly weird and you need to send me the budwood immediately so I can file the patent before LSU Ag gets their hands on it.

My satsuma didn’t bloom last spring but decided to bloom and set fruit about 6 weeks ago …loaded with marble size fruit lol.
Guess I just let it be? Or will this affect the next bloom?

Also my dwarf Hawaiian tried to push panicles and flower then stopped. The Pickering is still hanging out unbothered.

Don’t want either to set fruit this year anyways.

Funny; my Dwarf Hawaiian hasn’t put on flowers yet. It’s always the first historically.

Meanwhile; Nam Doc Mai has fruit set and the panicles are drying out.

Pickering, Angie, Mahachanok, CAC and Lemon Zest have flowers. Orange Sherbet and CeciLove will push soon along with Glenn.

No signs of life from Dwarf Hawaiian, Bolt, Kesar, Dusari, P-22 or Kathy/K3.

I was talking to someone in Broward who said they are thinking about moving the Florida Mango Fest up by a month or more because the flowers emerged so early that many of the trees will be done producing if they keep the usual date.

Well, I got tired of the meyer. I cut that bitch down and chopped it up. Glad to be done with that headache. The combo of trying to grow it inside of my pool cage along with my inexperience with it and the fact that they are a tough starter citrus was too much for me.


It was in a huge pot. I am going to dig up the roots and get that pot ready for a Flame Thrower Palm. I have had much better luck with them and I like them better in the long run. The biggest issue I had with the meyer was the bugs. They were coming in my cage and I just dont care for that. Its pretty clean in side that pool cage and those bugs sucked.

Thanks for the recommendation on the flame thrower. I will post pictures when I find one. I have a feeling I will need to order one from somewhere.

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Should have sold it. People love those things for some inexplicable reason.

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That thing had aids. Nobody wanted it