re: Louisiana Tropical Fruit Gardening - Experiences and Updates

Just picked up a Joey avocado in Lacombe.

Lowe’s in Hammond had several very nice “pink guava” for 15 bucks today if anyone is looking

Continuing to rebuild the mango grove a bit today. Picked up one as a replacement and another as a new addition.

Grabbed up a solid 25 gallon Orange Sherbet and a 15 gallon Coconut Cream mango from Long View Family Farm in Balm, FL. About 10 miles from my place and I’ve been dreading coming by for the last few weeks. I knew they were just a bit further inland than I was and it wasn’t going to be good.

The second pic shows the damage. Estimates of 500+ mango trees lost; most of which are 6-8 years old.

On a related note; mango tree pricing is escalating in a hurry and some species are effectively nonexistent in sizes above 7-15 gallons as people are trying to replace trees. I was at a nursery in Valrico yesterday and saw a modest 25 gallon Pickering that was probably potted up from 15 gallons very recently. They were asking $320 for it. That was a $150-200 tree all day every day before the freeze.

Pretty sure this is it's 4th Spring.

Nice. Looks like you are short on late season mangos. Maybe honey kiss or Venus? Can never go wrong with a straight up insurance mango either like Duncan.

I totally agree on eschewing Maha and Nam Doc Mai. I don't even find them particularly great and they are ubiquitous as you said.

Lemon meringue/PPK is a great choice. Great mango without the same problems as lemon zest. Also nice to have a tiny mango sometimes instead of a huge fruit.

I'll keep you updated about cecilove. I'm planting one in the ground and one in a pot so I can perfectly control parameters. It was doing great for me in the ground last year. That's a variety that us northern growers can't afford to ignore. If it works as advertised it will have a realistic argument for being the best dwarf/container mango that can be protected from frost.

I also ordered Zill 40-26 graft from TA. That won't be ready for almost a year, but it is as dwarf as its parent Julie (the only real 100% true dwarf mango). I have a feeling it's going to require a lot of spraying to work here but in my experience, growing in pots on a tile patio away from the ground/yard/trees really reduces the fungal pressure.

Only late season container mango I am aware of is Honey Kiss. Dwarf tree.

OK, my mango project is back in action. Last month I got this cecilove mango in the mail all beat to hell.

Finally got it to green up and start pushing in my grow room under the lights.

Repotted to 7g today and will top it in a week or two to start branching once I know it's settled in. This one is staying in a container as insurance.

Now that the cool weather is over, I went ahead and planted my other cecilove mango in the ground. Extremely sandy mound of soil here.

Will be cool to see how the same variety performs long term in the ground versus in containers in south Louisiana.

Also got a few great looking San Pablo custard apples from Serendib Farms today. Can't wait to try once they soften up.


We've also got just about every guava variety flowering.

Ruby supreme

Lemon cattley

Dwarf nana

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Any youtube video or tips on trellis for a passion fruit that will be moved in and out of a greenhouse? I am thinking about building a trellis and leaving it in place where I install the popup greenhouse so it does not have to be moved every year

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I bent some welded wire mesh into a circle for mine and had it buried in the pot. It was pretty top heavy, though. It'd flip over every time the wind would pick up. Using the heavy garys soil recipe would probably fix that, though.

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Any youtube video or tips on trellis for a passion fruit that will be moved in and out of a greenhouse? I am thinking about building a trellis and leaving it in place where I install the popup greenhouse so it does not have to be moved every year.

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OK I've thought a lot about this and tried a bunch of different things. In fact I have a new Chinese passionfruit variety coming next week that I need to create a setup for. Here's my take.

There two issues with tropical passionfruit that dictate how you care for them. 1) they freeze in our winters and 2) they don't live long. Tropical passionfruit will survive here in the ground if you mulch it heavily, but it will have to totally restart every year and you may not get any fruit. They will fruit well in large pots (at least 20g) and I find that the stress of a pot might actually improve fruiting. If you have the ability to grow them in the ground and protect them, do that for best long term results.

If it has to be a container plant then we have to figure out the trellis. I have done everything you can think of here. In-pot trellis, using trees as a trellis, permanent in ground trellis over the pot, large movable trellis that you can pull up from the ground, building a fence trellis out of t-stakes and wire, etc. The more and more I evaluate these methods, I think I have settled on what I like the best. I like using the largest possible pot (25g and even 45g for one of them) with the biggest in-pot trellis you can buy. Ideally this will be a circular trellis that is almost as wide as the bottom of the pot and about 8 feet tall. You want this thing to be metal segments that you stack on top of each other. Do not worry if you don't have an 8ft greenhouse. You just chop off the top of the vine and remove the upper trellis segments until it fits.

But will the in pot trellis be enough? In my experience not really. These vines want to be 30-40 feet long. So what I do is place my big pot with trellis next to a secondary structure that the vine can climb when it runs out of trellis room. You harvest as much fruit as you can and when the freezes arrive, cut it all back to the trellis and move it to the greenhouse to wait for next season. This way you aren't starting from nothing in the spring. The one potted vine that I overwintered in the grow room this past winter already has fruit set. The ones I did not take in and just covered/mulched are nowhere close.

Final note, don't get too hung up on a "permanent" setup. These vines only live about 4-5 years and will decline with age. You will need to propagate it from cuttings and start a new plant every few years. So just pick your pot and trellis, set it next to a fence or tree with full sun exposure, grow it out as much as you can, and be ready to chuck it in the garbage in a few years and transplant a clone into your pot. Unfortunately, I find that passionfruit grows best in my Gary's mix which makes a 20g+ pot extremely heavy. I have tried lighter mixes like Fox Farms Happy Frog, etc. and they retain too much water. On the bright side, you will never have to worry about the wind tipping your trellis/pot over.

Best video on the topic I've seen linked below. I endorse every single thing on his entire channel. He's another mineral soil truther.

Growing Passionfruit in Containers