I haven’t tasted many unusual tropical fruits because you can’t find them here and now that I’ve got a greenhouse I’m wondering what I should consider growing.
It was brought to my attention that Loquats & Pineapple Guava are hardy to about 15 degrees, which got me thinking what could I overwinter in the greenhouse that’ll fruit for me here in Zone 7. I heard lychee might be a good option. Does anyone have any greenhouse winners that I can keep in a 10 gallon pot that also taste wonderful?
the most deserving imo, taking into account the size of your greenhouse. A slow-grower, and a heavy producer (per unit volume of space, probably the most densely bearing, with berries at almost every node), and considering that it has very short internodes when getting plenty sun and water-deprived. Also hardy to mid teens for short periods, so will save on power costs.
the only problem is that it can be very slow growing, which may be a good thing since it will give you extra room to experiment with other subtropicals.
lychees might work too, but not sure where you could get a grafted one(it may not bear fruit for you in your lifetime if from seed, and the tree will be enormous!) Sugar apples(Annona squamosa) might also work if you could raise the temp higher for winter. I recommend it because it bears at a relatively young age from seed(which you could buy from ebay or amazon.com), and seed generally bears true to parent(if at all it diverges), and may be fruitful at 3-4 feet tall. Fruits are absolutely delicious, and certainly the ‘piece de resistance’ of an exotica if you could get it to fruit.
below are nigra mulbs
I asked a very similar question a week ago. Some good responses in the replies that have me thinking I’m going to go with a lime and a lemon tree and maybe a few varieties of figs.
I got a Sugar Apple last year to try. I found some evidence that they might do well in a pot, because they fruit young, flower in the spring, and ripen fruit in the fall. Also, while they will be killed if temps drop below 32F, they technically go “dormant” and lose their leaves in the winter, meaning I don’t have to worry about keeping it in an area with bright light, like citrus. I overwintered it in my garage and it did well… I brought it outside a few weeks ago and it’s just now starting to leaf out. So far, it seems like it can be treated just like potted fig trees. Now we just have to see if it will flower and fruit!
What about growing starfruit? I’m just not sure what temperature you’ll keep it at during the colder months so that might be an issue in keeping it productive.
Logee’s might have some ideas.I bought a Silas Woods Sapodilla,Lemon Guava and Australian or Cedar Bay Beach Cherry from them.
I keep them indoors for safe keeping right now and not in the greenhouse,until they get older.
I also have a White Sapote,that was grown from seed,that stays in the greenhouse all Winter,with a small space heater with thermostat and a fan that continuously circulates the air.
Chilean Guava do fine there too.Brady
It’ll get to 32-35 in there with the heater on! Starfruit didn’t taste all that great to me store bought. Not bad, but not amazing. I wonder if they’re way better home grown.
Gotta keep Sugar Apples above 32? And I’m assuming a grafted Lychee won’t need to be huge, Raf? I’m not even sure if there are mail order tropical fruit tree nurseries.
Hmm. I was considering growing caprifigs to pollinate all my figs with the fig wasp, but you gotta keep temps above 40F. I think 35F is more of a feasible temp and is pretty much where things were during lows.
What made me think of it was a post by amadioranch. I like starfruit a fair bit, but he made it seem like homegrown would be much better - sort of like tomatoes.
They also seem quite productive on a smaller tree. Anyway, no personal experience, but I’ve mentally put them on my short list if I ever had a greenhouse.
it will ultimately get big, but will also fruit as a 4-footer if grafted stock was from a mature tree(though not sure where to find a nursery which ships from within north america.)
a lychee seedling will definitely not fruit at 4 feet tall(especially when grown in northerly latitudes…), and may not even fruit at 40 feet tall at 40 years of age!
have heard of this legendary(anecdotal) lychee tree in the tropics which stood supremely healthy and well- known to many villagers, being a landmark, but did not fruit until 50+ years old.
a little above 32 is advisable, especially for younger specimens(at least from what *.edu sites say-- i have grown sugar apples only in the tropics, so i don’t have first-hand accounts of growing them in temperate regions). Actually glad to hear that @npolaske has first-hand experience and has a relatively older specimen we could refer to.
At one point I had a bunch of tropicals in my greenhouse. I had too many projects and didn’t pay enough attention to them, but I did learn a bit about what was more feasible to do.
Sugar apple is a good one, it was a pretty reliable plant and was getting near to fruiting when I pulled the plug on the planting.
Citrus are pretty easy in a greenhouse. Well, not completely easy, I decided to get a lime recently but it died this last winter. I think there was something wrong in the soil.
Lychee I would not recommend at all, they are very picky plants in terms of soil, temps, and humidity. I really wanted to grow lychees and spent a lot of money on several rounds of lychee plants, but they were not happy.
Sapodilla is another easy one, it was doing well for me.
Mango also did pretty well.
I got my trees from Pine Island Nursery, they were all really good specimens, highly recommended.
Make sure to keep on top of watering/fertilizing/repotting and watch out for scale! I was not paying enough attention to scale in particular and it really got out of hand. I had an auto-watering setup which I would almost say is required if you ever go away for longer periods.
Ross it’s not just about how low temp can the trees survive. It’s also about the quality of fruit you can produce. Which will produce high quality fruit with 6 months of night time temperatures way below what’s found in the native climates? Citrus will produce good fruit with a long winter of 30s and 40s at night. I don’t know about the others being discussed.
I did citrus in mine. As mentioned scale esp on a big tree is very difficult to control. The fruit was good but no better than I could buy. I took mine out in favor of better tasting fruit and because I got tired of the scale.
You can heat in winter to 60+F but it gets very expensive. Even if you do that you may have an issue with inadequate light for fruit quality and production.
