Growing loquats in the Pacific Northwest

I’m near the DFW area of Texas. Yeah they are popular here as a landscaping tree but rarely fruit. I was first introduced to loquat when I was working at a clients house and noticed the fruits ripe and falling to the ground. I asked if I could take a few and he said “I hate that tree. I have no idea what it is and it makes a terrific mess.”

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ramv, your tree looks impressive. Much like a Rhodo, the leaves don’t shed over winter? still tryig to find a decent source here in Ontario Canada.

They want $120 for a 2 foot stump from most online places. that’s crazy, I’M holding out for someone growing seedling. LOL

You should just order a bunch of seeds yourself! It looks like Sheffield’s requires a minimum order of $75 for international orders, so that would be about 400 loquat seeds. :joy::rofl:

I saw some loquat seedlings in 1 gallon pots at Portland Nursery (SE Division location). They were about a foot tall, 1/4" caliper, looked pretty sturdy, $29.99.

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They stay evergreen through the winter just like a rhodie. This winter was harsh on the flowers but I think I will still get some fruit.

Ive never seen the fruit for sale in the PNW-Seattle or Tacoma, WA area.
I’ve rarely seen the trees for sale. Most places I’ve asked locally dont have suppliers anymore.

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That’s also been my experience. Wanderlust Nursery has seedlings sometimes (they are in Seattle), but looks like currently out of stock:

@Bradybb kindly gave me some seedlings of the Seattle International District tree, and I have collected seeds from the sidewalk below that tree a few times myself. Those are the only loquats I’m growing! It should start dropping fruit in early summer, usually as long as you only care about seeds and don’t need pristine fruit, there are plenty of damaged fruit and loose seeds below it.

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I look forward to your selections from the seedlings.

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Well I’m only growing 4 of them, so I’m not sure if it counts as “selecting” :joy:. So far the main difference is one of the four seems to have a slight winter flush when the other 3 are more dormant. I need to mulch and fertilize them better this year to help them grow faster.

Fruits starting to form. Lots of flowers got destroyed as a result of my not being diligent with turning Christmas lights on when it got cold.

As a rule, I’ve realized that flower blossoms need to be protected below 32F. Not 27-28 as some have suggested.

SHAMBALA

TORI

KANKO

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Do you have the variety ‘Harvest’? That is supposed to be one of the most cold hardy varieties when it comes to cropping.

Yes. It lost all its flowers to frost.

The most reliable variety against frost in my experience is a variety called Bullock 1. This is a selection from the Bullock brothers permaculture orchard in Orcas Island (north of here— quite cold). It has near zero frosted flowers.

Another couple that did well are : Golden Orb — an Australian selection. And Portal — a seedling find of mine.

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I was at One Green World Nursery in Portland last month and here are some pictures of the large loquat tree at their driveway. They have grafts of Wolfe, Oliver and MPJ-4 on the tree. Additionally, there is a smaller Yehuda loquat inside near the customer service desk.










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If it’s from Adam, then his Viking is the most cold hardy per his description.

One year Adam told me that ‘Harvest’ was one of two pear varieties that produced pears, when none of the others did, it was an unusually cold year. He did not update his description after that.

It’s cool that their large loquat was flowering in March.

I’m in Big island Hawaii and loquats are already fruiting and ripe.

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@murky Did your loquats flower this year?

I don’t know how much area you have, but maybe you could put a micro sprinkler at each tree, and get a manifold that you can easily hook up to each sprinkler would work. A high volume microsprinkler does about a half gallon a minute, so you could maybe get 10 trees with your flow. Then just disconnect the tubes from the sprinkler and pack it up. 3-4 hours per tree per week would cover all the evapotranspiration, and you could valve off different trees when you wanted to deficit them.

I’m so jealous! We go there almost every year, but not this year :sob:. What part of the island are those at?

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