I had the same experience with them growing super fast and stopping. Same with jackfruit and mamey sapote seeds. Shot up to 1ft and haven’t budged in months
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some relevant pics and info… Black/White Sapote and Canistel in SoCal - TROPICAL LOOKING PLANTS - Other Than Palms - PalmTalk
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Mine are definitely not growing rapidly, but I’m surprised they handled a mild frost a week ago (only 32.5°F, but frost formed on surfaces and damaged new fig leaves). Something has eaten a few of the sprouts (slugs? birds?), but here’s the largest one, which first sprouted about 5 weeks ago:
We had our first 75°F day of the year this week, though, and today could possibly be a second one, so maybe they’ll start growing more soon. The lows have still been in the low 40s or lower most days, though. The last couple weeks here:
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Maybe pillbugs? They are my main culprit of young tender growth
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I’ve never seen a pillbug eating a living plant here, maybe we have a different species? Earwigs nibble a bit, but slugs decimate things. I finally realized slugs were the culprit for all of my Morus nigra grafts from last year, which had 100% tender growth devoured this spring, and still haven’t managed any new growth on any of them. I’d been assuming a rat or something! I’m hoping they have enough stored energy to grow vigorously once it warms up more.
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I’ve only had a grasshopper eatting mine, but we don’t really have alot of slugs as far as I’m aware.
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Maybe, but it took me two years before I realized it was rolly-pollies which I loved as a kid and assumed would do no harm haha. They nibbled back one longevity spinach that was trying to regrow after winter dieback. Slugs also, but they are more obvious. Watch out for those unassuming pill bugs haha
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I mean it’s certainly a possibility, the leaf litter under my avocados in the greenhouse is crawling with them, but I’ve only seen them eating decaying stuff. I put my new seedling trays in the shade of the trees in there, and haven’t seen any sign of pillbugs eating anything yet. Any time something is eaten, I can usually spot the slime trail left by the slug.
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Did you do anything for the pillbugs? I think they are nibbling on my strawberries. I’ve done 2 applications of slugggo and that seems to be having a good effect on the slug population. But (obv) no effect on our good friends the rolly-pollies.
Good info thanks. I think I need to put more things into the ground, even if they are closer than I’d like. Even if that stunts things, it should be way better than a pot. I hope. Let me see what I can do.
I don’t unfortunately and they eat 97% of my strawberries also. If you find something non toxic that works please let me know
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Will do.
One thing I got as a rec from another member here is to remove all the heavier mulch and instead put in a finer ground mulch and then fill in the sides of the bed with sand as gaps appear. I have to still go do that work but it seemed like a good idea to remove hiding places in the mulch.
Edit: I’m also going to try putting a bunch of powdered diatomaceous earth in/around the beds. Supposedly it “dessicates” them.
I’m also putting up a whole bunch of pots with strawberries - let’s see how much that helps.
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Sorry to hear that!
Yes unfortunately I didn’t snag one of the Cherry of the Rio Grande plants.
I didn’t realize you can cross-graft Cherimoya and Atemoya though that does make sense. The Atemoya I got seems very robust and big and the cherimoya doesn’t. I’m wondering if I should just plant one of them in the ground and keep the other as graft material when the other gets bigger.
personally i’d say sow a bunch of cherimoya seeds and keep the seedling that is most vigorous in your conditions Sprouting cherimoya seeds.. free to pickup
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But then you’ve no idea and fruit quality, and you’d have to wait years to find out. Grafting a known variety onto something vigorous seems a lot less risky.
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Any experience with how long and what size these need to set fruit? I’ve two of them that I believe were cutting grown that have nice dense growth about two feet high and wide. I’m curious if I can expect some fruit soon.
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Mines pretty leggy but about 3’ tall also, I understand they produce pretty early and often. Same with Pitangas, I’ve been collecting so many Eugenia’s lately, from Etsy, and Bellamy trees predominantly. So many interesting varieties, a lot on clearance that are already germinated from Bellamy trees, quick shipping too. I really need to stop buying seeds/seedlings but it’s such a low investment that it’s so easy to grab so many.
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Haha, I know the feel. It doesn’t help that I have a soft spot for rare or unusual trees. It doesn’t take many gingko, cypress, and eucalyptus trees to fill up a yard. 
Ok, good to know. I’ll go ahead and switch up the fertilizer routine with them too. I fairly recently repotted them up into pretty big pots, and it looks like they’re settled into those pretty well as they’ve just flushed again. Time to load them up on superphosphate.
Related but not quite the same, my seedling Psidium cattleya var littorale are getting close to ripening their first fruits. They bloomed at almost exactly 13 months from seed, and those fruits are starting to swell up now, so hopefully I’ll get to taste them soon (as far as I know, they take a pretty long time to ripen from flowering, unlike say Barbados cherry).
I don’t know pitanga, but I do have a small pitangatuba. I had two, but one kept defoliating on me, it seemed to be really unhappy with my watering schedule no matter what I tried. It seriously died back twice over the winter and finally the last little sprout from the base died back too last month. The other one has never given me any trouble though so I think it was just that one that had an attitude problem. Somewhat slow growing, but not terribly so. Very tolerant of shade from the experimenting I’ve done.
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That’s very cool. Pl post some pics and all your taste impressions. So cool to hear you are getting fruit in about a year! Gives me hope for some of my random seedlings of other things. I’m going to channel that 1 year fruiting energy and show them your post haha.
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Maybe they are like Jaboticaba and miracle fruit and love acid? I switched to only watering those with rainwater and they seem happier with that.
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