Favorite team:LSU 
Location:FIGHTING out of the Carencro Sonic
Biography:Things got weird...
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Registered on:1/22/2010
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Is your plan to grow things this season, harvest, then start over next year? Or is the plan to have the plants live permanently. Makes a big difference in what soil you should choose.

re: LSU 2 @ Texas 6 Final

Posted by Tigerlaff on 3/23/25 at 3:48 pm
Unbelievable
No one would make a decent and available German style lager in a can.

re: LSU 7 @ Texas 11 Final

Posted by Tigerlaff on 3/22/25 at 8:45 pm
MILAM MILAM MILAM

re: LSU 7 @ Texas 11 Final

Posted by Tigerlaff on 3/22/25 at 8:22 pm
Milam is gunning them down holy shite.

re: LSU 7 @ Texas 11 Final

Posted by Tigerlaff on 3/22/25 at 8:14 pm
SIT THE frick DOWN PUSSY
Yes, you can overwinter the DC in the greenhouse. It's just usually difficult to get decent fruit from a potted banana. They are easy to protect in ground, though.

Get a thorny key lime. I've done both and the thorned ones are more vigorous and less disease prone.

The Florida's Best book is awesome. That's how you figure out that something like barbados cherry or atemoya is totally possible and that something like durian or mangosteen probably isn't. I love that book.
If shopping for key limes, avoid the thornless variety. They don't grow as well.

Dwarf Cavendish is fine if all you want is summer foliage. Not satisfactorily cold tolerant. Mine survived winter with protection so I should get fruit this year. Will update on the quality when/if it happens.
quote:

Brown turkey and the LSU varieties are larger, but the Celeste is sweater.

Celeste is the parent of all LSU figs, so there are definitely better LSU cultivars. For example, "improved celeste" and "black celeste" came from the LSU breeding program and are significantly better than regular Celeste.
Try ordering canned and freeze dried versions of these fruits online. The only thing I ever grew for which I hadn't tasted the actual fruit was guava, and it was a massive success.

Lychee is an unreal flavor. Sweet, subacid, roselike aromaticity.
Very nice. For 14 bucks you can take a flyer on a guava. It might be fantastic. If not, replace with with something better. Just get it well staked and prune that thing so the branches are going where you want them. They grow like weeds and are tough as nails for everything but cold.

Nagami is also tough as nails and can take a bunch of sun. But I have yet to find the citrus that likes full Louisiana July/August sun. Even my key lime, the most tropical citrus on earth, starts to struggle in that intense heat. The ideal situation is to plant in full sun and cover with shade cloth for July and August but that's a pain in the arse. I'd rather just plant somewhere with 4-5hrs of sun.
New emperor lychee from Lara Farms arrived today. The one I got from Everglades Farms was not satisfactory and very undersized. I'll continue to raise it and will probably sell once it is stronger.
quote:

Why?

If you really want the answer to this, it's because we American citizens cannot settle on what it even means to be an American. Issues with our culture need to be settled before we import more foreigners, thereby exacerbating the problem.

The people of Louisiana and Vermont are living in different realities and we need to come to some sort of consensus before we can take in more. It's the proverbial canary in the coal mine signaling that the culture is not stable.
Don't get a brown turkey fig. Get a couple of the LSU varieties for reliability and get a Smith fig for best in class taste. There are a million other options but these are the ones you are likely to find.

Champagne loquat isn't my favorite but it's better than gold nugget and big Jim. Highly recommend Oliver. Yehuda also very good.

Most overlooked citrus is the meiwa kumquat. People eat the oblong sour kumquats (Nagami) and associate it with the sweet kind (Meiwa). Very cold hardy and great flavor.
Updated the OP with recommended reading. All books available on Amazon.
I'll link them hold on.

Plant Caddy - make sure to get right size

55gal drum caddy

Highly recommend the greenhouse on the patio. So easy to move everything around to better sun/shade over the season.
I only use injection molded black nursery pots with additional drainage holes drilled in the bottom and painted on the inside with microkote. I want them tough and rigid for when I'm lifting or dragging them. The blow molded ones break too easily and are ugly. The cloth ones dry out too fast. If your soil is right it will drain adequately on its own.
Others will tell you smaller but in my experience EVERY fruit tree does better the bigger your pot is. The biggest reason for this is root health. The larger and healthier the root system, the better the tree performs. Large pots also resist temperature fluctuations much better than small ones. A tree in a 7gal pot on a 94F day is having its roots literally cooked.

For juvenile trees I'll use 7gal. For nearly grown trees 15gal. For final container size at least 20gal and usually 25gal. Amazon has great plant caddies with casters to hold these large pots, but I've switched my biggest pots to stainless steel 55gal drum caddies. Cheaper and far stronger than the plant caddies.
quote:

You’ve definitely sent me down a rabbit hole of looking into more tropicals now. Almost as if my 50 or so other edible trees/bushes aren’t enough.

The only reason people aren't doing it here is because they haven't seen someone else do it. Honestly this should have clicked with me 5 years ago when I started having such success with potted key lime. That was basically a crash course and proof of concept that you can pretty easily grow tropical fruit trees in large pots as long as you can keep them relatively warm and well lighted over the winter.