I had multiple trees but they were left outside and died last year.
One grew from a 6 inch twig with a trunk – big to outgrowing a 15 gallon pot in less than a year…
Never had the fruit but I made tea from the leaves which always made me feel weak for whatever reason. However it did regulate my blood sugar levels and helped to decrease my appetite though.
Anyone else growing it? I was thinking of getting another 6 incher from Etsy to try again.
We sell them at work. We have a red and yellow variety. They taste like Capn Crunch, but the yellow ones have a bitter skin. Pretty good, small fruit, grow really fast, everbearing during warm months. They are not very cold hardy though and grow super tall, making them a little difficult to protect. They do grow really fast from cuttings though, if you can get them to root.
I had two trees that died this last winter in our freeze. It was sad because it was our favorite climbing and snacking tree. They grow incredibly fast. My original tree was about 4 ft tall when planted. In a year and a half it went from 4 ft to 15 ft tall…and it was only 15 ft tall because I heavily pruned it 2 or 3 times. I have no doubt it would have been 20-30 ft tall if I had done nothing. My second tree I started from a cutting of the original tree and it was 10 ft tall after several prunings in less than a year.
Once they get some size they start fruiting like crazy. I’m talking 100s of berries in various stages at all times for about 9 months of the year here. Fruiting slowed down considerably for the coolest 3 months of the year Dec-Feb. It is a great yard nibble and the kids and I love grabbing a handful pretty much every time we go outside if it’s fruiting. We usually eat them skin and all. When eating 1 or 2 at a time the flavor is good and the skin is no problem. If you try to eat a mouthful at once there is too much skin to chew after you’ve swallowed most of the pulp and the skin flavor on it’s own is not very good. So it’s best to just pop a couple in your mouth at a time.
They will fruit in a pot but I don’t think you’ll get very many fruits that way before it gets unhappy about being contained.
Here is a photo I took from 12+ feet up in the tree last winter. You can see where I hacked off a pretty good sized branch to keep the height under control.
Here’s some examples of the sheer density of flowers and berries once it gets going. Just bonkers.
For a while I was picking containers of berries like this almost every day on top of all of us snacking on them whenever we were out in the yard.
I started some from seed as well and now one of these little seedlings is in the ground and a few feet tall and the other is still in a pot and about the same height so far. If we have a more normal winter and it doesn’t die I expect the one in the ground to be big enough to climb before the end of next summer.
How do you root them? I’ve failed every time
I have had success by taking a cutting about pencil thick that isn’t too green and tender, stripping all but the top few leaves, sticking it in some potting soil and keeping it watered for a few weeks in a mostly shady spot. I haven’t used any humidity domes or anything and this has worked for me several times. I have only attempted to root cuttings in the warm humid months though so that may be a factor. If you had lower humidity a dome might be worth a try.
