For anyone in the Atlanta area, there’s a fruit & nut tree giveaway today/this afternoon, one of the people organizing this asked for it to be shared:
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Hi all!
I’m too far north for the S Florida/Puerto Rico/Caribbean thread, but also a lot farther south than N Georgia. My lowest temp is similar but I get fewer chill hours (only about 400 on average). I’m right where the 8b/9a border line is drawn in north central Florida with usually a dozen or so freezing nights over a winter.
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Hey folks, we just joined the forum. What a treasure trove of info here!
Me and my partner are playing around with a variety of fruits outside of Athens, Georgia.
In the ground we have: blueberries (16), plums (3), apples (5), nectarine (1), pawpaws (2), maypops (too many), bananas (3 plus pups), figs (6), and strawberries (wild and domestic).
We also maintain a garden. I’ve begun a Muskmelon grex this year I’m pretty stoked about.
We have a lot more woodies in containers or air prune beds waiting to planted out.
Learning as we go, and very thankful there’s so many regional fruit growers on here to learn from and with.
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Welcome to the forum @gentledispositions. You are absolutely right, there is a treasure trove of information here. Thanks to the hard work of @scottfsmith and others it remains both free and add free.
I’m in extreme west Georgia with a nearly identical climate and soil as Athens. I’m very curious about which apples, figs, and plums you are growing. Apples have been a huge challenge for me, while figs and plums have been relatively easy up until this year’s hard late freeze. Also curious about your pawpaws.
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Our small orchard is just coming into year two, so not much to report I’m afraid. But growth has been solid. The usual issues popping up, most recently cedar rust. Some of the cultivars are doing fine with it so far though. We have Arkansas Black, Anna, Yates, Dorsett, Sundowner going now. All on m111 rootstock. The sundowner is getting creamed by rust, and I’ll prob take it out this fall tbh.
Our in-ground pawpaws come from two sources, and as best as I can tell are straight species not cultivars. We have them planted on east side of a young oak for afternoon shade. They are doing well I think, if a little slow. But we’re patient! We have a couple dozen one year olds in pots and (hopefully) 100 seeds waking up in an air prune bed.
I’m excited about trying more plums. We have Bruce and two of the AU types. I’d really like to get into some of the Chickasaws.
Oh, and for figs we have cuttings going from all sorts of trees…Chicago hardy and brown Turkey mostly. Many unknown! The ones in the ground got zapped this February from the false spring we had. Back to the ground…resprouting good though.
Is there anything in particular you’d like to know? Again, we’re only a few years into this, so I’m all ears if you have any insights!
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As far as apples go, if you are willing to use synthetic sprays, two myclobutanil fungicide sprays have knocked out cedar apple rust for me. However, various summer rots, insects, squirrels/possums, and birds have really hammered my apples. This thread Scott's Apple Experiences Through 2022 is probably the best source of info on growing apples in a hot and humid climate. Locally grown goldrush is my favorite apple I’ve ever had, but it gets glomerella leaf spot/bitter rot in it’s half shaded, humid location.
@coolmantoole probably knows more than anyone in the world about Chickasaw plum cultivars, and he’s in Georgia. You may want to check out the Plums and Other Stone Fruit for the Hot and Humid South (USA) facebook group he runs. Chickasaws have grown great and fruited well for me most years, but this year’s late freeze took almost all of them out. Plum curculio is a real problem but there are solutions. See Does anything stop plum curculio?. Brown rot can also become a problem, but again there are solutions.
My figs, including a 25-30 year old improved celeste, had all leafed out and were also hammered by the late freeze, and then ambrosia beetles, but are also resprouting. LSU gold had about half of its mature wood survive, compared to improved celeste (very little), chicago hardy (none), brown turkey(none), italian honey (none) and olympian (none). Over several years improved celeste has far outperformed everything else in production.
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Big thanks for these insights and resources. This is exactly why I joined this forum. I’ve heard and read about the many (ongoing) battles trying to grow stone crops and apples around here, but it’s good to know there are ways to maintain orchards that can tolerate the myriad of issues. (Bummer about your recent troubles though, but hope the trees rebound and the the squirrels move on!) I’ll be following up with your suggestions and leads, no doubt. Much appreciated!
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Eastern NC, zone 8.
Only bought my house last year so everything’s new and under evaluation. Roughly four dozen species and varieties of fruits either in the ground, in pots, in seed packets, on order, or on my to buy list, along with a handful of nuts.
I’ll be posting evaluations as I get fruit and/or the plants fail on me. Two, both annuals, I can already report on:
Success: pepino dulcé, which I grew last year. The plant does well here, is quite ornamental, and while it takes forever to start fruiting, once it does it produces well. Underripe, the fruit tastes like cucumber and melon rind. Ripe, they get soft, sweet, very juicy, and taste like melon. Very pleasant and a carefree plant. Recommend.
Mixed: queen of malanco yellow tomatillo. Extremely productive and quite early even for a tomatillo. The fruits, however, are very prone to spoilage. I estimate I lost about half to some kind of brown rot before they ripened (not that it really mattered, there was so much). The ripe fruit was subacid, surprisingly sweet for a tomatillo, and had a nice texture once the husk was removed and washed. The flavor was intense, fruity, and borderline weird. I couldn’t decide if I liked it or not. Roasted, however, they made for an absolutely heavenly, if overpowering, salsa amarilla. As a bonus, hummingbirds loved the flowers. Worth trying if you want something different.
Not really considered fruit but also tested out last year: aji dulcé, biquinho, and Trinidad perfume peppers. Aji dulcé was lackluster. Biquinho was amazingly productive, early, tough, and really unique tasting. Ripe it was sweet, not spicy, and flavorful with a fruity pepper taste that’s hard to describe but very particular, if a bit one note. Unripe they were a little spicy and oppressively flavorful. Pungent, floral, black peppery, maybe a little sour, and also that particular biquinho flavor. Super crunchy. Very good, and amazing pickled. Trinidad perfume was very mildly spicy and tasted like a decent habanero with a solid dose of lemony citrus. Aromatic. Very agreeable, balanced and nice. My new favorite pepper.
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Just joined the forum so figured I’d post in my regional group, I’m 8b outer banks of nc, all of my citrus and stone fruits thrive, most of them are in the ground 3 years now, but that’s the oldest of my plantings as we bought the house in jan 2019. I grow a lot of different fruiting plants in a very small space, while pushing my zone on quite a few things, so far with success. I have yet to find many fruit varieties I don’t want at least one cultivar of haha. Adding 2 pawpaws and a jujube which I plan to add multigrafts onto also as I am out of room for trees after those go in. But then again I have said that before and added stuff haha. My biggest issue is hydrophobic soil which I have slowly been remedying with mulch mulch and more mulch. Also hope we don’t get an early freeze this year like we got last Christmas which ruined about 50 nagami kumquats, at least I was able to eat a few before and after as some survived the cold snap. Also anyone else growing Chilean guava? Mine always sail through winter but summer is really hard for me to keep them alive, same with issai kiwi, not sure if I just need to water them more or shade them a bit, thanks
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I put in some Chilean guavas this year. Most of them died, two are just barely hanging on with a few green leaves left. Looked to me like the heat killed them, but I’m not sure.
And that’s with them in part shade, some in almost full shade. They seemed happy, flushed new growth even, but through July and August, one by one, they suddenly shriveled up and died.
Out on the outer banks, I’m guessing the winter lows get pretty moderated. I’m over by Greenville, not quite close enough to the ocean for that effect (but not far enough away to avoid hurricanes…).
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Yeah my two tiny flambeau varieties died and just this week noticed the Jim gerdeman was crispy so I assume it got dry but I watered it often. But one is thriving however it dropped all of its fruit before it was ripe I assume due to dehydration. I will continue to try with this plant tho haha just gotta find the right spot in the garden for it, trial and error
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Yeah, these Chilean things are tricky. I had a luma apiculata as well. Was growing well, even when I neglected it. Moved it to a bigger pot and used some soil I had on hand to fill the pot instead of potting soil. Not long afterwards, the plant died, right after a big rain. Best I can tell, the heavier dirt held too much water in the pot, especially for that small root system, and the roots drowned (Tony Avett, who grows a lot of these exotic plants, has mentioned that some of the Chilean plants have extremely high root respiration rates, and just a few hours of waterlogging can kill them). I don’t think it’s waterlogging killing the Chilean guavas, I blame the heat. But still, these Chilean plants are fussy little things.
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Yeah for sure they are fickle, did your luma ever fruit? I just can’t imagine that mine died of root rot since my soil holds almost no water haha to call it soil is a stretch it’s basically just sand but I’m working on that haha
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Nah, it was basically a seedling still. Not so much root rot, just asphyxiation. I am a bit worried about root rot in my citrus and passionflowers though, especially in winter, even my sandy soil gets a bit squishy.
I can’t imagine how sandy it must be out there. I grew up a bit further inland on a site that has incredibly well draining soil–it’s such a fight to keep water and nutrients in there… Scooped literally tons of compost and applied it to the ground. A year later, that sand was just as pure sand as ever, the compost just got digested away. I now use wood mulch predominantly, like it seems you do. At least the mulch takes a little longer to turn back into CO2.
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Yeah I go with about a foot deep of mulch throughout and add compost a couple times a year and granulated organic fertilizer. The citrus loves the sand tho actually as it stays dry, just makes them grow a bit slow. For my potted stuff in winter I generally bottom water, because the fungus gnats go crazy but they must have come from my homemade compost
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Dang, I thought I used a lot of mulch…
Yeah, I’m hoping to work out a good way of making charcoal at some point, or biochar if you prefer. It’d be a lot easier of a battle if the soil amendments actually stayed in the soil.
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You mean like Ellijay?
This is the Heart of Georgia Pecans down here. Huge orchards everywhere. Every little town has a nut house to sweep them into the wholesale chain. There are always pecan and blueberry growers when you sit down on a bench and talk farm stuff. It used to be corn was the only cereal crop. But with the Ukraine war; seeing a lot of wheat,triticale and rye growing around here. Feels weird.
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I love the native persimmons for our region. Just straight species. They’re healthy, sturdy plants that don’t typically need any care at all, and the fruit is something you can’t get at any supermarket. Plus, it ripens at a time when everything else is shutting down for the winter.
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I’d strongly recommend trying the hybrid variety “Rosseyanka.” They’ve got good fruit size, great production, a somewhat dwarf habit especially compared to the straight American species, and the flavor is really good, halfway between Asian and American. Generally seedless and self fertile too. They’re usually around $50-60 from reasonable places, which is a bit high, but some everything is these days.
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