Greenhouse fruit update

dear friend, can you help me. your tree in the greenhouse how overcome chilling requirement?
If our want to be Its fruit ripening at Christmas, when should we heat the greenhouse?

I am done with chilling. That ran from early Dec until mid Jan and totaled about 800 Utah chill hrs. I’m not heating now to warm the greenhouse just to keep it from freezing. So temperatures now run low 30s at night and near 90F for a high. This should suit the peaches fine but sweet cherries and apricots need a longer winter. They won’t do well.

There is no way in my greenhouse and climate to get chilling and have much ripe at Christmas. Only citrus ripens then. So I’m not sure where you are but only the southern hemisphere is going to have ripe fruit by Christmas. I have ripe fruit by late April.

These pictures are great, you have given me an idea on how to warm up my greenhouse in the spring. We use hot water with a radiator that has a fan to circulate the heat. I have, up till now, only put a low row cover in front of it to keep my smaller plants warm starting in March, but my final aim is to grow fruit in there. I need to rig up a tent like yours. Now my brain is ticking on how to adapt this plan for my needs.

Four years after my last update on this thread and I’m planting again in my greenhouse. The first planting was 2005. Those trees lasted 8-9 years. They were planted 4x8ft.

This update was about the second planting in 2014 on K1 rootstock at 1.5x5ft. I did get some good fruit off the second planting. The trees ended up being thinned to 3x5ft. They came out 2017-2020 to make way for a fig nursery business.

Now I’m planting again at 3x7ft on mostly Nemaguard and other standard stone fruit rootstocks.

Varieties include:
Ilona, Orange Knockout, Summer delight, Tasty Rich, and Leah Cot apricot types.
Honey Halo, Freckle Face, Candy Sprinkles, Rapunzel, Honey Diva, and Honey Lite nectarines
Geo Pride, Flavor King, and Flavor Supreme pluots
Valley Sweet peach
Sweet Tart, Lemon Zest, Dot, Sugarloaf, Pineapple Pleasure and about 8 other mangos that I can’t remember right now
And last but not least a female Medjool date tree. This is a stretch that may be just ornamental but I think I have enough season. The GH has been 95 by day and 50-60 at night since February 1, warmer than Coachella CA where these dates are grown.

I’ve put in 800 ft of 1 gph emitters spaced one ft apart.

Black and white ground cover just went down. I’m not totally pleased with that since the 6ft fabric didn’t fit my 7ft rows but I’ll get used to it.

The south end isn’t done yet. It will be more mango, the Medjool date, and maybe a citrus or lychee, or??

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Great varieties. I’ll say it again - you’re missing Moorpark apricot :slight_smile:

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Not if you send me a scion…!! Maybe next year. Nothing is ready to graft right now.

Will Moorpark take the kind of heat I’ve got going on? My impression is that it does better in mild areas near the CA coast. I’m I off base there?

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What else I’d point out is that the stone fruit is on the wet wall end. That’s the cooler end and the easiest to get chilling. The Mango and Medjool are on the hotter end near the exhaust fans.

The plan is 45 days for chilling, Dec and the first half of January. Then 90-100F by day and 50-70 at night the other 10.5 months. I think that will mature Medjool date fruit but it remains to be seen.

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The Medjool plan could work, although I’d recommend the nighttime temperatures from mid-June to the end of August hover in the low 80’s and remain above 75.

Since you are leaning in to some tropicals, I think the lychee would be a nice addition (I’ve got a small one started as well). Maybe cherimoya or atemoya?

Really looking forward to updates and seeing how this progresses! I don’t see your trellis system. Will you still use trellising or have you decided against it?

yes, I can send you scions next year. @Stan has great results with Moorpark in Tracy, so I am sure it should work in your greenhouse.

New soil? Love it! Cannot wait to see your dates. Will you need a pollinator?

I can’t go that warm at night. I keep one exhaust fan running 24/7 in summer. There’s several reasons for that. Our summers are 65-70 at night. So the plan is to get the earliest start possible in order to overcome the loss in heat units at night in summer.

I’ve eaten cherimoya, good ones according to a believer, and found them lacking. Too much like pawpaw.

No trellising this time around. I didn’t use it at 4x8ft the first go around. I do tie off to the overhead frame of the GH. So that might come in handy to support the weight of the mango fruits or to position branches of stone fruit.

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I don’t know whether longan or lychee would be more likely to succeed, but if you could do either then I’d suggest longan. They are better than lychee imo. Here’s the UF cultivation guide:

You can buy date pollen all year around. So I can get it when needed at any time.

Thank you for that input. My local fruit buddy that’s tried both suggests lychee. Which would be a smaller tree and more likely to bear at a young age?

I don’t know, to be honest, I’ve only seen them both as huge mature trees in Miami. The UF guide that I linked to in my edit above says this about production:

PRODUCTION (CROP YIELDS)
Seedling trees may take up to 6 years to bear fruit, whereas air layered trees may bear fruit 2 to 3 years after planting. In general, longan trees bear erratically (i.e., not every year) and in some years little to no fruit is produced. Yields from individual mature trees may range from 50 to over 500 lbs (23–227 kg).

And this about climate and environmental stresses:


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Aha! UF also has a guide for lychee:

It sounds like they are pretty similar in most respects, though lychee may take a few more years to start bearing:



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Very cool! Did you keep any figs around?

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Yes about 25 in ground figs. That’s the bigger plants on each side. I also have about 30 25 gal pots of figs. And various potted fruits. I’m getting back my favorite grapes: Summer Muscat, Summer Royal, and several new ones.

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