Tropical fruits on the east coast

Funny enough I just cut it before reading this post, looks ripe enough. All the leaves had fell off so figured it wasn’t getting anything from being on the plant

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Looks pretty good to me. Mostly yellow, the rest it will color out on the counter.

Ours are blooming again, the cranberry hibiscus all stopped last week. Some of the roselles lost leaves in the cold. I imagine this cold burst will kill them off. Supposed to have “feels like” around freezing Sunday/Monday.

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My vanilla x tahitensis pushed out its first root since getting the cuttings. Good sign, especially since it was thrown in for free since it looked sickly.

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Made my (probably) final batch of roselle jam yesterday, since the plants seem to have gotten powdery mildew from the cold. 10 pint jars from 4ish plants. I pulled a couple plants early to make space in the garden. Won’t do that again next, this jam is the best!

No serious cold damage on anything. Peanut Butter fruit dropped a few older leaves, so did the orange. Miracle fruit has some burnt edge leaves but is still holding flowers and trying to fruit. Its supposed to warm back into the 80s next week, it might sneak out some winter fruit. Wax apple, Ice Cream Beans, Sapodilla and Barbados cherry no discernable issues. Pigeon peas are fruiting right now. Probably over 200 flowers between all my plants. My biggest one probably has close to 100 on its own. Good thing too, because something at all my bean plants at the stalk, so I have no beans to eat. Pretty mad about that.
Greenhouse plants are all doing fine except my black pepper, which had a water/sun issue. Its inside with my fig cuttings now until I see some leaf growth. Soursops still have their leaves, so I know its staying warm.

The Psidium collection has expanded.

Longipetiolatum

Robustum

I’ll graft sections of both of these to my fruiting P. cattleyanum var. littorale or whatever you want to call them. Hopefully, those scions will then fruit themselves, as otherwise I’m between three and five years away from getting fruit from these.

I’ll also attempt to root some cuttings and if that succeeds I’ll plant some in ground to test winter hardiness.

If I’m really really really lucky, I’ll be able to get some hybrids as well.

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I have a ton of robustum seedlings, a few longipetiolatum also. I also have a giant bag of robustum seeds that someone sent me for free with an order. Not sure if I can plant them out, if anyone wants some robustum seeds let me know.

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I will happily take some if no one else ends up asking. Germinating a few more seedlings would save me from having to root cuttings.

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Finally got a dragonfruit trelis up. Pink Townsend (Hylocereus sp) on the west side, yellow pitaya (Selenicereus megalanthus) on the south side and Queen of the Night (Selenicereus grandifloras) on the east and north side. Queen of the Night is usually an ornamental, but I had the fruit this year and it was better then my dragonfruit, so i decided to put some cuttings where I can reach them. Pink Townsend is a pink-fleshed dragonfruit, hopefully better than my white fleshed one.

I still need to put the top on it. I was thinking of maybe doing a middle brace too since its pretty tall. QoN and the yellow don’t necessarily need the downward growth to flower like the standard dragonfruit, so I am not too concerned about it. I am expanding my cactus garden. Next I want to get some barrel cacti, and probably a second dragonfruit trelis with some more QoN and the white fleshed fruit I have.

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Psidium littorale/lemon guava after a night unprotected at 19 F on the south side of my house.



Looks unhappy but not terrible. It’ll be warmer the next few days so any cold damage will probably become visible then.

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