re: Louisiana Tropical Fruit Gardening - Experiences and Updates

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Where do all those plants live in the spring/summe/fall? My GF would kill me if I left them placed all over a patio like that.

Also what brand pots are those?

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Time to get a new GF. I could be spending 10X this on offshore fishing or golf or elk hunting. This is what I spend my time on and they all love to eat the fruit. When the other greenhouse gets taken down it opens more space and it's not so crowded.

Pots are not any particular brand. Most came from Amazon. The important thing is that they are injection molded and not blow molded. I also paint the insides with microkote and drill extra holes with a large drill bit.

Yep, looks great. Will give you permanent structure and drainage.

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Got a burner email? Happy to give you a lemon guava seedling

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Chris at grandconstructionla dot com

Thx, I’m in Hammond so not far away

What is that? Avocado?

That tip burn usually means it doesn't like the water/fertilizer you're giving it. Have you tested your soil and water pH? Are you using a hose filter to clean your water? If that's avocado then you've gotta dial it in perfectly. That's why I don't grow them lol.

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My Celeste fig is budding.

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Same. Got all the figs waking up. Stone fruit are on a hair trigger with buds ready to break. Won't see pawpaws waking up for a little while more.

If you're filtering water then at least we know it isn't metals/etc. in your tap water. Test the pH of your water and soil. Filter is not going to fix the pH. If you can't test your water and soil pH then I'm afraid avocados are going to be a big challenge. Most soil pH meters are terrible and wildly inaccurate. You get what you pay for on these. If you want a recommendation it would be Hanna Instruments, but they are not cheap like what you will see on Amazon. Water pH is much easier to test. You can start with pool test strips but a liquid reagent pool test kit would be much more accurate.

My tap water in Mandeville is an 8.8 pH. No bueno. If you've got one third peat in the mix then you should be in the right neighborhood. May need a little soil sulfur if it's too high. Soil pH is more important than water pH but alkaline water will eventually neutralize the acidic peat in the mix. It takes a long time.

Also if you just potted it you should expect some shock. Avocados man. Just keep tinkering. Gary Matsuoka has an entire YouTube video on container avocados that he released about a month ago. I would watch that and do literally whatever he tells you.

Blood meal is basically just nitrogen. Osmocote has plenty of nitrogen. If you want to use an organic with the osmocote, use compost or worm castings or something. I wouldn't use blood meal unless I had some kind of nitrogen deficiency.

give it a month you’ll never know it was pruned. You do want strong mains to set the fruit. It’ll be fine. It should look like dreadlocks on top of a skinny dude

Idk why I was so hesitant about pruning this one. I just got done hacking about 20% of my peach and plum trees and am sitting here trying to figure out what else I can cut.

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Guessing normal stress response?
Keep it in shade ?

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Yes. No worries citrus roots are tough. It will recover. Shade is just what it needs for a couple of weeks.

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Thinking forward to new avocados, not sure how Everglades pots, if it’s bark based, will be doing the same with it, but maybe don’t go full bare root before planting in mineral? I don’t want to stress it so much it dies ?

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Everglades uses bark soil. Almost everyone does, too expensive to do it right and even if they did 95% of their customers would be angry that their tree shipped in a bunch of sand and rocks. I'm not giving you any legit advice about how to do an avocado. I don't grow them. But if I decided to, I would plant it just like I do everything else in mineral soil with no bark. If it was small, I would not spend an hour blasting the roots perfectly clean. I would get off as much as I could while being very gentle with the roots until maybe only 10% of the bark remained. I would also wait at least 1 week to repot after arrival (I only do this with the most sensitive of plants, like avocado).

Nice guava. Already has some lignification on it. Let me see if I can find mine on the day I planted it for size comparison.

ETA here it is on 03/07/2025 when I planted it. Really not much bigger than yours if at all.



It will be at least 6 feet tall by next spring and you may even get a fruit or two this year. If you plant in full sun it will be faster but more exposed to freezes. Planted mine under protective tree canopies and gets about half day sun.

The one in my 20g pot is enormous and has to be pruned like 6 times per year to control.

Yeah the yellow dragon fruits are a different species and significantly sweeter IMO. If I was going to do one it would be a yellow.