I’m wondering if anyone thought it might be a good idea to do fruit exchanges. I bet my friends here in more tropical zones would appreciate sampling my unusual apples, pears and other fruits that grow in the north. Here, any tropical fruit we get in the store is usually terrible. I had a dragon fruit last night that tasted like old cardboard.
I would love to be able to have properly ripened unusual tropical fruit from time to time.
I’ve thought about building a heated greenhouse just for this but It would be a lot cheaper to figure out how to exchange fruit.
I think the problem would be similar to why they are bad in the grocery stores. Many don’t ship well at all, so they would either be harvested early, or arrive mostly mush. I buy rare fruits occasionally on Etsy with mixed results.
If it was pink skinned and white fleshed dragonfruit, fresh it tastes like cardboard with a faint amount of sugar that was sprinkled on it 3 days ago, so you aren’t missing much. But as @Gkight said, alot of fruits don’t ship well ripe. Even big thick skinned fruits like mamey sapote get too mushy in transit when ripe.
I’d love a fruit exchange. It’s true that some fruits don’t ship well, but it’s also true it’s harder to find grocery fruits that tell you the specific variety that’s being grown if you’d like to grow it yourself
Good point, I think this is a better option for easily shipped fruits, such as apples, citrus, avocados etc to determine if you’d like to grow said variety.
id be game to try it but alot of my bigger fruit hasnt gone into full production yet and shipping smaller fruit isnt a option. unless made into a jam and such. our tropical fruits are horrible up here with a few exceptions like pomegranate, that keep well if not bruised. even pears and apples are subpar.