Tigerlaff

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Lychee looks great. I’m impressed. Mine hasn’t done anything in nearly two years except sit there.

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Thanks man. Lychee is a Goldilocks container tree and only the dwarf emperor variety is really feasible in a pot. It needs a good bit of cold to flower, but not anything below 32F. It needs nearly daily water while flowering and fruiting, but effectively zero water from October - January. Did I mention that water needs to be perfectly pure with a pH of 7 or lower? Rain water is ideal but charcoal filtered tap is what you usually have to settle for. Also needs a soil pH of around 5.5 and very little to zero fertilizer and definitely no urea nitrogen fertilizer. And that soil better have impeccable drainage. Oh, and if the tree comes from Florida it already has possibly the most ineradicable eukaryotic pest on earth, the lychee erinose mite. I was able to defeat them permanently but only because there isn't another lychee within 400 miles of me.

So now that I have satisfied every single one of these conditions, I get to see if it will produce the right kind of flower to actually set fruit. :lol:

Lara Farms ships all kinds of 3 gal avocados. Do your research first and make sure it's a Mexican race cultivar.

LINK

I would do the same. Pumice is lighter than the granite. Didn't know you were planning on DG.

I can help with lychee. I've turned out to be pretty good with it so far. Lmk if you decide to try again.

Mamey is essentially impossible here in a container. Too big. Too cold sensitive. Fruit takes too long to ripen. If you get below 50F during the winter I don't think the effort is worth it. There are some smaller cultivars but not small enough to make a difference. If you are dead set on something like mamey I would look at Whitman green sapote. Smaller fruit, smaller tree, marginally better cold tolerance.

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No true lime or avocado

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Key lime is a true lime. Persian like is slightly easier but I'd put it in the same tier with lemons and key lime.

Avocado is trickier and I would put all 3 races in the hard tier with Guatemalan and West Indian races harder than Mexican races.

I cannot recommend loquat for the super easy container list in zone 9. I have several. They flower and fruit over the winter and both the blooms and fruit are damaged at about 27F. They also require a brief dry period in the summer to flower well and excess nitrogen during the growing season will prevent flowering. My 15g Oliver tree completely failed to bloom this year due to excess water and nitrogen. Finally, they are prone to fireblight and should be sprayed for it after rain if there is any fireblight in the local area.

Seedling trees from local populations have fewer of these problems, but they also take much longer to fruit and are not as good as the premium named cultivars. One of the very best, Vista White, is apparently not self fertile and requires another nearby tree for pollination.

If you have even the slightest bit of experience and can read Google, then I agree with you that they are very easy. But my list above is what I would give to people as a gift that can't keep clover alive in their yard. :lol: Actually, this gives me a great idea to create a tier list. Maybe a breakdown of super easy, easy, moderate, hard, and extremely hard.

This winter has sucked arse for sure. Back in mid January I was quietly starting to believe we were going to get through without a single hard freeze. Instead we've had more nights below freezing than I can remeber in a very long time.

My back is killing me after dragging out all the cold protection stuff again today. Bringing pots in, organizing and stuffing greenhouses, wrapping trees, stringing lights, mounding mulch. I'm over it boys. :lol: This is always the toughest part of winter for me. Just gotta remember that the 9-10 months of fun times are truly imminent and may even start late this week.

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Super Hass today. Also known as Oh La La and it is credited to a Louisiana yard grower from a Hass seedling.

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The story is actually way better than that.

Super Hass was a supermarket avocado seedling that someone planted next to the sheltered brick wall of a dorm room at ULL. After a few winters, someone noticed that this thing was very productive and cold hardy and they tried to turn it into a Louisiana commercial crop. They grafted tons of them and several nurseries had super Hass clones growing in pots. But the cold was too much. That protected brick wall at ULL was a unique microclimste and the nursery stock died too easily from the winter cold in Louisiana.

But a few of the clones made their way to central and south Florida and that is when it took off. This avocado was cold hardy, productive, disease resistant, tough enough to ship, and had decent eating quality. The super Hass AKA "Ooh La La" AKA "ULL" became the premier commercial avocado of Florida and now in other parts of the world too. All from a chance seedling in Lafayette.

Nice! I suck at pineapples for some reason. Can never tell if I'm giving them too much or not enough light and water. Also found out the hard way that fertilizer will injure them if it touches the inside cup. Any tips on how to keep them happy?

Yep, a nice late Feb. freeze just in time for my jaboticaba that is about to bloom.