Pacific Northwest Fruit & Nut Growers

It might be challenging for people to get passion fruit vines established from cuttings this late in the season, but I think dragonfruit cuttings would root and establish easily any time of year (as long as they get brought indoors or put in a heated greenhouse for winter). Personally, I’d be super excited to get a cutting of ‘Sugar Dragon’ from you, and I’ll bet there would be other attendees who would also be excited to get various cuttings if you bring some.

It fruited :grin: i remember seeing a fat banana link in the garage and upstairs a bit after i took this photo.

I would think one would start it indoors?

The dragon fruit will root in room temperature water. I haven’t had a failure for dragon fruit ever. Even when I don’t want them. I can accidentally knock some parts off, water it and have the soil cover the knocked piece off a little bit and it’ll root. I have a love/ hate relationship with dragonfruit.

I’ll bring some cuttings :heart:

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The photo says it was taken in June 25th at 7pm and some change. Meaning, it didn’t die that winter.

Which is correct because at this time, i was living in Colorado and i don’t visit Washington in the fall or winter :sweat_smile: but i live here now so i visit more often than twice a summer these days. I’ll keep you updated on the next time it fruits

Thanks for the insight. The biggest downside of the Stella fruit for me is the eye splitting when it rains. Which isn’t too much of a problem since July 1st to October 15th averages only 10 days with measurable precipitation, Though at least once each September a bunch of good ones get wrecked by the rain.

This microclimate is very toasty. I’d even go so far as to call it legitimately hot. Certainly hot enough to chase me to the coast with my fishing pole as often as possible. From mid July until early September a high below 85 is uncommon. Plus the nights remain up around 60. Then they drop
off a cliff. We’ve had a low of 42 twice since last weekend. The only figs still ripening for me in earnest are neverella. They are just an okay fig in August and early September. By this time of year while they still get soft, they remain insipid. I’ve found a good use for them is to combine with thyme and thomcord grapes to make jam. It’s a most excellent way to use all this neverellas

Something others might find interesting is a recipe I found for preserving unripe figs. Evidently it’s a common thing to do in some places where main crop don’t ripen well. I’m going to try it this fall.

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Are you growing the purple possum outdoors in Washington?

I have one growing in a 15 gallon pot in the corner of a greenhouse. I got fruit last year, and it had good passionfruit flavor, but wasn’t very sweet.

I have many more fruit this year, and they are a little larger. Hopefully they’ll sweeten up this time.

I feel like that’s what my fall obsession is now, watching and waiting and hoping the passionfruit and pomegranates sweeten enough before cold weather settles sets in.

Still consistently around 80, and today upper 80’s, but the night time lows have really dropped off. From around 60 up until last weekend, and now suddenly we are dropping into the mid 40’s. The pomegranates are a Russian cultivar called Favorite, so I’m hoping they can get sweet enough even with the relatively short season. They sure look pretty on the tree.

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Outdoors for now, plan on bringing it into a greenhouse for the fall and winter.

Last years i grew then in the lowes pots that were about 19 inches deep and 21 inches wide. They got super sweet but i had to give them about a gallon of water a day since they drank so much. I think letting them wilt slightly before giving them water might make them concentrate the flavors a little more.

My purple possum of 2022 is why i have a bunch of different varieties now

It’s definitely a water hog. But it looks so beautiful I feel it justifies the water usage just for the aesthetic quality. I’d feel the same even if I never got a fruit. That’s how I think about the outdoor maypop too. They make lots of fruit, but according to most people they aren’t very good. We shall see soon because I have hundreds of fruit set on 4 vines. Though they feel hollow when I squeeze them. The purple possum feel hard as a rock.

So your purple possum fruit ripened outside? You didn’t need to bring it inside the greenhouse for it to finish ripening?

I’m going to upsize the plant into a 30 gallon pot for next growing season. I think that will help it produce much more fruit.

It really is quite hardy. I use 50 gallon water barrels and a concrete floor to keep the low in the greenhouse at between 37 and 42 degrees without any electric. And the passionfruit is happy all winter, never stressed from the cold. I only have to fire up the electric heater if the outside low drops below 25, so only a handful of nights each winter.

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No, they only ripened on the vine and outside for me. I’ve not been able to ripen them off the vine ever

What month did they ripen?

In Colorado Springs, began in September until late September/when frost hit us at the time.

But! Big but :sweat_smile: i also created a microclimate in my own backyard where it was a few degrees hotter and more humid than anywhere else I’ve found in Colorado. Did it with my plants and make sure everyone was healthy enough to sweat, especially my grass

I’ve had people tell me they’ve never seen untreated grass this green before and people accuse me of not living in Colorado after seeing this photo of my backyard. I don’t allow weed sprays or anything and I have a Great Pyrenees and a Swiss Shepherd. My grass was healthy enough to stand their play and pee. It also helped with keeping the ground cool but the air warm due to the humidity it would cause when it got hot.

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Since several of you were so helpful identifying as Stellas the figs I had thought were from a desert king tree, I’m going to ask for any ideas to identify this new mystery fig.

I started the tree from a cutting someone sent me in 2020. They told me the cutting was from either a Verns Turkey or an Improved Turkey.

Well I just this week started getting ripe figs from this tree for the first time. They are so good, and surprisingly sweet for main crop figs ripening while nights are in the mid to low 40’s. The Neverellas and black zadars ripening right now aren’t nearly as sweet as these.

They are yellow with an apricot color blush near the neck. Inside is about the same color, and besides being very sweet, they also have a faint though quite distinct flavor of peach.

I am so glad I let this tree live. Last fall I almost yanked it since it hasn’t produced a single fruit in 3 years and I already have a Turkey fig that produces.

So, here are the pics. Any ideas?


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Thanks for sharing. I am curious about the location. It’s pretty far from the PNW. Is there not a forum for Colorado? Or are you just tying to learn more about the PNW?

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They are currently located in the Seattle area and were just posting about a previous microclimate they had used somewhere else. I don’t think we need to police the discussion too much as far as tangents go, there have been plenty of those in this thread already.

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First of all, I wasn’t policing. Second of all, I was genuinely curious.

Actually, it feels like what you are doing is exactly what you are accusing me of.

If this person thought I was ‘policing’ they are free
to ask me, and I would gladly clarify that I was not.

I’m sure tone can be misconstrued, but your post seemed to be saying “why would you post this in the PNW thread, there must be a more appropriate place to post it,” and since @Melon has posted a lot recently about moving from Colorado to SeaTac, I knew the circumstances and wanted to make sure they didn’t feel unwelcome here or anything.

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Unfortunately tone is lost with written text. I think if you knew @swincher you could have heard his voice in your head and realized he meant it with a gentle tone and you likely would not have been offended. I think all is good here and no hard feelings were meant.

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Yeah i moved from Colorado to Olympia in July so a lot of my previous 4 years of gardening before here has been in Colorado but I’m usually hanging around SeaTac and Olympia these days :heart:

My mom has a 10 acre farm in Chehalis that I’m on the fence about taking over but there’s a house there that’s being rented as well. She farms there but some of my plants are there too.

I’ve been experimenting in Colorado throughout the years since people keep saying it’s a difficulty level 10 there in regards to gardening compared to Washington and a lot of other places.

I grew up all around Washington State cause that’s where the u.s. government decided to drop us off at. My family came here on a deal with made with the United States government at the time of the Vietnam War. Took them 20 years to do the paperwork and some Christian missionaries helped out during those times. In 1992, my family’s part of the agreement came through and my family of great grandma, great grandpa, grandma + grandpa, 1 uncle, and 5 aunts along with my mom and my younger sister got dropped off here in south Seattle with 3 months of rent in a 2 bedroom apartment. 0 money, and we couldn’t speak English except simple yes and no’s. From there, everyone that was allowed to buy age, worked on farms in the town of Fall city and it changed every few years.
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Here are some of the last photos of our refugee camp before we left. I left Washington in 2008 cause i decided to join the army but came back in 2011 cause i broke my back and a few other places. Found my husband in 2017 and found out he was in the army too after a few days but i decided to roll with it. Left for Colorado in 2020 and came back just a few months ago :grin: i would consider myself a northwest native… anyways, my family and i have been gardening here since September 1992. We couldn’t afford much so we grew a lot of our food. Also reason why I’ve live everywhere from Issaquah to Olympia. You wouldn’t know it since we now own multiple properties, businesses, and some are even in corporate America and we even have a few politicians now, but most of us couldn’t speak English when we got here, including myself. I retired at 28 years old and most of my free time is spent on my plants or video games and doom scrolling on TikTok.
But yeah, you’re gonna hear me refer to the past 4 years of my gardening in Colorado in terms of tropicals and stuff because that’s where i started them.

Anyways, thanks for listening to my TedTalk. I believe anyone can make it with enough ambition and a good attitude.

I also once owned a coffee stand in black diamond so i might even known some of you without even knowing it. Have also worked in multiple coffee stands in Kent, Renton, and maple valley throughout the years for funsies and was even a bikini barista in Kent for a year :rofl: . I’ve acted, modeled, had my 5 seconds of fame in YouTube, if you’ve watched discovery i.d shows, you’ve probably seen me… I’ve done a lot of the most random things. You may not know me very well but you’ve probably met me or seen me in the last 15 years.

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I apologize if anyone took offense.I felt misunderstood by your accusation, knowing that none of my previous comments were summoned from a desire to alienate Melon. I should add, a person’s location doesn’t matter to me at all. My only intention when asking is to gather as much information that might be helpful in providing a more accurate response.

I feel like my comment, inquiring about their location and reason for visiting a PNW forum, was sufficiently open ended, so as to facilitate the furthering of a productive conversation. I am intrigued by the fact they have been able to get such early ripening purple possum passionfruit. I’ve had no such good fortune. Even growing them in a greenhouse here in an Oregon, they won’t ripen until much later.

I really want to make it clear that I have never intended to alienate, debase or degrade anyone I’ve encountered on this site. Regardless of a person’s motivation for visiting this forum, I want them to have as rewarding and emotionally an uplifting experience as I aspire to have. I should imagine most other members feel the same. And if someone is annoyed with me, I can assure you, that it is not because I am consciously malicious.

I approach the hobby of gardening as far more than an enterprise for making a bucolic escape from modernity’s concrete jungle. Indeed, I also view it as an outward manifestation of my inner desire to create unity amongst my fellow humans, By exchanging knowledge with other gardening enthusiasts we create a bond with each other, predicated on our common love for this creative enterprise, holistic stewardship of land and community. My fundamental motivation is to establish and strengthen friendships through the profound love we all share for plants.

So, anyway, I hope everyone feels okay with my explanation. Outside of gardening, my life is filled with countless stressors and sometimes profound sadness. There have been great losses in recent years that I am still trying to heal. When I visit this site, the last thing I aspire to do is foster antipathy with anyone. Instead, I’m trying to lift myself out of despondency by elevating others with kindness. Perhaps I don’t do such a good job at times, fall short like we all sometimes do. Regardless, it my expectation.

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I have a hybrid that i made from one of my early ripened Passionfruit that you can have cuttings of if you’re going to go to the fig tasting on Saturday.

All good, i just saw this a few moments ago. Slept until 5pm today.

I managed to keep a Mexican pink Guava tree alive for 3 years in Colorado and it even survived at -15 degrees (protected though).

Ancient Chinese secret tells me to tell you: if you want early ripening fruit, let the first fruit of the plant ripen fully and harvest for seed. Grow the seed. Do that a few times and you’ll have the earlier and earlier ripening fruits. Doing this, you’re helping the result ripening genes succeed. Also this is what’s been passed down by my elders and what we do to push for early ripening.

I’m trying to create Passionfruit that ripen in less than 3 months :rofl::joy: these things take waaay too long. It’s going to take years though but I’m committed.

Also on the fence of whether or not I’ll be trying to start a tropical fruit farm here in Washington. I have a potential investor and I can probably write out a contract for my mom’s land but I wanted to start on my own land and be there to monitor everything instead of having to travel every day to watch it. Plus i don’t know the people she’s renting the house out to or their contract.

I know eventually it’ll have to be away from me but to start, i kind of want the first generation of everyone to be in my backyard.

The premise of my tropical farm will be as u-pick farm and not by weight, but by cart/box size.

I feel you on the depression thing cause i have it as well. I guess that’s why i joined the forums too, to try to find a support group of my ventures. My family is the “you need to work for someone else” type so they’re not really supportive in my constant business ventures :sweat_smile: I’ve only tried to start up random business to find one that sticks. My adhd says that if i can’t find a good outlook on something, I’ll throw it away quickly and it becomes hard for me to put effort or focus on it. I’ve been doing this gardening thing for years though and it hasn’t gotten boring to me so i figured why not try to make a business out of it? I’m decent at it overall and I’m good with tropical plants now :thinking: plus i have family members growing tropicals that have acclimated throughout the years to the pnw. I can grab some of their efforts in their plants as well and use it to my advantage.

But alas, we’re renting right now while our Colorado house is on sale. With what i want and what we’ve prequalified for, 5k in a monthly mortgage doesn’t feel nice and we’re doing that right now with paying for this house and that one until it sells. However, 5-6k is what I’m looking at right now if we were to buy now instead of later. :sweat: :weary: even then, i don’t know if i wanna live in Thurston or peirce county although Pierce has more potential customers but it’s more expensive. King County is out of the picture.

Anyways, yeah, I’m trying to make tropicals possible here in the long run.

I’m not one to get offended easily, you’re fine :heart: . I’ve been kidnapped, held captive, almost got myself into a sx trafficking ring when i was 12-14 a few times and i was homeless from 12-14 as well so my skin is fairly thick when it comes to these things. Sh… the first time my mom kicked me out was when i was 7 years old cause i had allergies, also that’s why i can’t trust her without a full blown contract :joy: only reason why I’m playing nice with my family is so my daughter can have grandparents and/or i can take over their land or it would be no contact between me and most of my family. I’ve been apart of a lot of bad stuff so it takes a bit to hurt my feelings :grin::nerd_face:

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Currently, my Passionfruit are from…

Logees:
McCain
Panama Red
Purple Possum

SaintOngeGrowers on Etsy:
Red rover

My purple possum/possibly red rover hybrid is from seed of my first Passionfruit effort.

I’m looking to add the giant yellow flavicarpa ones to my list as soon as i can find a legitimate seller for them or when sowexotic or just fruits and exotic restock them.

I’m chopping up some of my plants to share with everyone this Saturday.

Also i liked my critter fencing, self made trellis better than the circular ones that i bought from amazon for my Passionfruit. I need to repot them again as well. I got the base down for my greenhouse here but haven’t been able to do much since my husband has been getting home at 6pm every day since my last post on my greenhouse :melting_face: planning on working more on it Saturday and Sunday. I absolutely love Passionfruit but 3 months to ripen for such a small fruit is blasphemous and i hope to change that one day. Also I’ve found that they LOVE getting fed. I use water soluble fertilzers for them every few waterings and they don’t get salt burn or drown very easily. I remember when I was first trying to get them to ripen, i had to prune them twice a week and feed heavily with high phosphorus based fertilzers. I used sta-green potting soil for my first batch as well and they loved it. My current is on fox farm ocean forest and happy Frog. Maybe severe stress, heavy feeding, and pruning will help them ripen faster :thinking:

We got down to 35 degrees here last night in Olympia where I’m at and all of tropicals and Citrus are fine. Some aren’t as happy but everyone is alive still.