You underestimate my experience, but of course I fully appreciate your desire to obtain your own ground truths.
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i’m not saying anything about your experience, i just think my growing conditions are not ideal, considering the cold winters here and storms (hurricanes, tornadoes) and other factors beyond my control, that are likely to damage trees and limit growth.
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it’s rough here in north Florida, i have sand for soil and termites are endemic to this area. everything wants to eat my trees, from the roots to the leaves in the warmer months, i feel like i am doing pest control most of the year. and i lost quite a few trees this winter already from freezes. that is why i am trying to grow everything and see which survives and actually gives me fruit. if they ever do get big, i will root prune or re-locate.
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I think I saw that you’re in Navarre? I’m surprised you hit upper 10s there every year on the coast. Destin’s lowest in the ASOS era (back to 96) is 20° and I don’t think PNS airport has hit teens every season, but they do have some upper 10s in the last couple of decades. Of course your long term climo includes some single digits if you go back to the 1980s so it could get dicey for you if one of those airmasses makes a return visit.
If I lived where you did I’d probably experiment with pummelos and macadamias. Young macadamias need sub freezing protection, but I’ve read of mature trees showing minimal damage with low 20s. I have a couple of potted ones that I bring in every fall. Maybe something like wampee would do well there with protection at times? I believe they’re evergreen too.
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i think it’s only warmer right by the water where it’s densely populated. i have lots of woods and fields near me so i am colder than what the weather stations report. i can’t rely on the weather reports for actual current temps, i go by what my thermometers say. i will check the forecasts regularly and anticipate my temps to be 5 degrees colder and look at the other weather stations near me to compare. it’s hit the upper teens here every year in Navarre and Fort Walton for the past 7 years. Pensacola and Destin are more densely populated so they may be warmer. i have never tried wampee, though i did read it is hardy to the low/mid 20s.
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yes, i have bananas, i’ve been protecting them most of the winter. i hope they will fruit for me, i planted several short cycle ones. thank you!
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We got delicious chunky bananas off our Musa Orinco tree at our old home in Waycross. We bought it at the livestock market in Pearson, GA from a Honduran grower. Put it next to the dryer vent and a/c unit. They called it “Burro” variety that grew at higher elevations.
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also when i see a reported low of 20, before i thought that was the lowest temperature recorded but it’s most likely the average low. so if various nearby weather stations report 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23 degrees for their lows, the average low would be 20.
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Well it depends who is doing the forecasting and who they’re forecasting for. But your point stands about microclimates. I guess I just expected you to keep more of a breeze there in a coastal town even a bit away from the shore, but I suppose with lighter flow it wouldn’t take much radiational cooling to drop you a few extra degrees from the wide open airports…especially with trees around you to help knock down the wind. I lived in Naples briefly near APF airport and there was noticeably more “dead air” a few miles inland versus the coast.
Anyway good luck and hopefully those 80s winters stay away from you.
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i am surprised too since i thought the woods here would give me some sort of microclimate and i’m not that far from the beach. i compare the weather channel, accuweather and weather underground lows (recent, within 24 hours) to my thermometer lows (also within the past 24 hours), and they’ve varied by anywhere from 1 degree to 7 degrees. 7 degrees makes a big difference to tropicals! not sure what you mean by ‘who they’re forecasting for’? i love Naples but it has gotten crowded the past several years.
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I am also surprised to see that big of difference in such a flat, generally low-lying coastal area, but microclimates can be surprising.
My own microclimate creates a similar problem. I’m less than a mile from the beach, but I’m in a bowl-shaped depression on a plateau about 300 ft above sea level. On overcast or windy nights, Google’s GPS-based temperature “guess” (i.e., what my Android phone says is the current temperature in my location based on nearby public weather stations) is spot-on. But on clear, calm nights (often the case during our worst freezes), my outdoor sensor reads about 5-7 °F colder than the weather app’s guess, because the cold air pools in my neighborhood.
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Yeah 7F is a big difference. We see large differences over short distances up here as well…usually under clear calm skies on the back side of a surface high pressure system. The valleys radiate and bottom out while the higher elevations stayed mixed and even start seeing warm air advection from the SW. it can be -30° in the valley bottom and 0° on the hill tops.
By “who they’re forecasting for” I just mean the meteorologist’s forecast and the site or region the forecast is for. Some of the TV guys will give the forecast numbers for the big city airport official station because those are the conditions and highs/lows they show on air. The NWS puts out many different forecasts. There’s graphical forecasts that have the contoured predicted temps that have differing levels of meteorologist and computer input to try to cover for elevation and marine influences. There’s ZFPs (zone forecast product), which were common to see during the old TWC local forecasts, that tend to have ranges for an entire forecast zone (ie lows in the mid to upper teens). The popular ones now are the point-click forecasts on their site using the zoomable google maps that give you a forecast grid around your neighborhood. And then they have specific point forecasts for the airport ASOS weather stations. When I did the national collegiate forecasting contest it’s for designated airport sites for 2 week intervals and that’s all we forecast for…high, low, precip, and peak wind gust. Least error wins. So if we had PNS on the schedule I’d only be forecasting for the airport and not necessarily worried about your strawberry guavas. 
But yeah, the important thing to know is how your microclimate works in comparison to the official airport sites and the various forecast outlets…and it seems you have a very good read on that. But if you’re hitting upper 10s every winter then you’re technically 8b and that’s becoming a decent zone push for z9 fruiting plants. I used to push here with multiple figs, but it becomes a lot of work. I’m not sure I’d want to design my food forest around zone pushing plants when one extreme night could ruin it all. Just my $0.02.
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If you want to grow fruit, not trees, get a high tunnel for winter protection. On a sq ft basis my greenhouse is 10x as productive as outside. That’s for stone fruit. Figs are 100x as productive. Citrus and mango are impossible outside. But easily feasible in a greenhouse.
In Northern FL you just need protection on a few nights. A high tunnel is perfect for that. Cover with a single layer of clear poly during the freeze season and provide an adequate heater. Have roll up sides to control heat on sunny days. Cover with bird netting in summer or leave it open. You’ll get more fruit on the borderline fruits and also be able to grow most things they can in south FL.
My stonefruit and mango are planted 7ftx3ft. I’ve had as close as 5x1.5 to 8x4ft all worked.
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One of our local nurseries just set up some thick skinned tunnels. With humidity and heat control. The plants inside are amazingly vigorous and healthy.
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If you want an evergreen canopy that bears fruit in 9a, consider loquats. Possibly also Feijoa.
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i have lots of feijoas and loquats, unfortunately if we go below upper 20s i won’t get any loquats, just below freezing kills the flowers and fruit.
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yes, i consider my backyard to be zone 8b though supposedly my town is 9a and 9b. i have mostly temperate fruit trees planted in the ground - apples, pears, plums, nectarines, apricots, figs, pomegranates, mulberry, blueberries, blackberries, persimmons, citruses, goumi, feijoas, loquats, yerba mate, cherry of the rio grandes, cattley guavas. i do have lots of bananas but those are easier to protect than other tropicals. hoping to plant cold hardy avocados once they’re mature. i have all my tropicals in pots, guess they’ll have to stay there.
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yes, i realize if i ever want to put tropicals in the ground i need a heated greenhouse. hopefully one day in the future once i have a better microclimate.
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Once the trees get big enough, they will likely still fruit fine under the outer canopy. The big trees growing around Seattle all seem to successfully bear fruit every year, even when we went into the teens after flowering. I’ll go check the one in the International District soon, but I suspect it’s still holding fruit from the flowering in Dec., even though it got down to about 15°F last month.
See, e.g., last year, after a winter low of 17°F or thereabouts:
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