Greenhouse Northern VA with guava, lime, and sweetsop

My sweetsop taste amazing this year. I am in Northern VA. My greenhouse is 7x10 and has been running for 4 years. This year I am testing my Sweetsop in it. I Hope it will survive this winter. I found that Lime can survive thermostat set to 32 F. Guava has to be set to 40F. I am setting it to 50F for my Sweetsop this year. Electricity was very cheap. About $30/mo for Jan and Feb. And $10 for December and March.
Hope all have a great winter.

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strong work! Your sweetsop trees are probably the only ones within a 900 mile radius. Miami being the nearest where sugar apples may grow.

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Love your green house, I wondered if it was attached to your house. I have the same limes and lemons in my dining room during the winter, great eh?

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Nice sugar apples. How long have you had them and how large is the pot? I just started some from seed a few weeks back. I’m also growing a few different guavas in my greenhouse. The last of them ripened two weeks ago.

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Yes, it is attached on 2 sides.

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They are 6 years old. They start to flower at the end of their second summer. 1st fruit was on year three. The pot is a 50 gal cut in half. I put them on 2x4x8 and easily push them around.

I like guava more. I planted about 16 guava trees 3 years ago. I found a pink one that was very good and early ripening. I threw one away because it was too tart. Now I have 2 good quavas. One is the crunchy white type from a breeding experiment 6 years ago. And a new is a pink type. Hopefully I will get more good ones out of the rest. Some of them are not very cold hardy. They are the next to go. I like breeding plants. It is fun.

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Good luck on the guava breeding. I’m growing crunchy Thai (year 3 now and first time with 4 fruit). Also have Peruvian white and a ruby supreme but they are only 1-2 years old.

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This is very cool to see. I’m planning on something similar for my new house in 7b Georgia.

How do you know the cost of electric for the specific heater or are you guessing?
Is the glazing two layers?

Thanks
Kevin

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I have a device that counts the used watts. Yes they are double layer.

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What is the heater model? I’ve been thinking when I do my set up if it would be better to heat water and then let the water radiate heat through the night rather than heating air. Using something like this:

https://www.amazon.com/Precision-Premier-Line-742G-Submersible/dp/B000BDB4UG/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1513125585&sr=8-3&keywords=portable+water+heater

Also, check this guy out in VA growing all kinds of tropicals in greenhouse, not sure how far you are from him.

http://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=21809.0

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Just a regular space heater for me. But I am going as cheap as I can. If they die I can just start over. This is more like a proof of concept for me. If I was going to do it foreal. I would get a better system.

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Utility-Milkhouse-Style-Electric-Heater-DQ1702/642591645

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Do they have enough light in winter or you supplement it? I am much more to the north, never tried to grow tropical, but was thinking about overwintering some vegetables, but we have so much less light hours in winter that it is not possible without providing additional lights.

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which makes your project more amazing. While you say you like guavas more than sugar apples(and i, too, sometimes do— depending on my mood), but guavas are usually available at typical hispanic/asian grocery stores, or even walmart or whole foods, whereas sugar apples are practically unheard of north of mexico, and come to think of it, relatively unknown(or hardly-grown) even in mexico.

that is the good thing about guavas and sugar apples. They are fairly easy to start from seed, and relatively precocious, sometimes bearing fruits at two years of age and at less than 6 ft tall.

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The guavahas plenty of light. I was eating guava into January last year. This is the first year for the sweetsop.

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In the past, I have always bring the sweetsop in. They would ripe but they were tasteless. Probably because they didn’t get enough light. After 5 yrs, I pretty much give up. So this year I put them in my green house. They were amazing. If they die, I will start over again. Partly because I didn’t like they way they were trained. It was due to my lack of knowledge about them.
A few lessons I learned so far. You have to vigorously pinched them back to create a bush like tree. That is if you want a bush. To stimulate flowers you have to cut all the leaves off. If you manually polinate it, you will get 3x to 5x more fruits. They seem to be self-fertile. I gave my brother a single tree and it fruited just fine. If you want ripe fruit you need 6-8 months of warm and sunny weather. My trees flowered in late June and ripe in December. Good luck.

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I see in your video a fan mounted. How hot did it get on warm sunny days in the winter? Did you have to vent? Which direction does the greenhouse face?

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they are self-fertile, and quite precocious. Your project even proved amazing precocity considering the shorter growing seasons and growth-hindering cold weather.

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It’s about 70F-90F. Last year on the coldest day (~10F). It was 75F inside around noon. The fan is there to keep the air volume even in temperature. So that the thermostat can run with better accurately. The second year that I had the greenhouse with out the fan. My favorite guava trunk got cold injuries. I was glad I had some growing back from the root. It was my favorite guava tree. It was the only 1 I kept out of the many I grew 6 years ago. It was also the year I tested the cold hardiness of guava. I set my thermostat to 35F. I think it would have been ok if I had the fan. The top was fine and live for another 2 years. I have also found that the green guava are more cold hardy than the pink guava.

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Very nice. Reminds me of my greenhouse here in middle TN. I also keep mine warm with just a space heater. I’ve had mine going for about five years now, and never lost a plant.

tngreen

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That is awesome! Have you consider the more exotic fruits that you can’t buy in groceries? I heard Jambu ripen in 2 months. Guava ripen in 5-6 months. Sweetsop in 6-7 months. I have friends whom grown dragon fruits here successfully. Starfruit is also fun. Sapote is also very easy. The hard ones are rambutan, longan, lychee, jackfruit, durian and mangosteen.

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