Can’t have a visit to South Florida without buying tropical fruits! Managed to get a pretty good variety of them; spring Mamey, a cacao pod, Red Guava, Thai Guava, star apple, a huge cherimoya, honey mangos, a large yellow dragonfruit and a dosakai (an Indian pseudo-cucumber).
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Gonna try to describe the taste of these fruit since I’ve eaten them all now.
Star Apple: Arguably the best out of the bunch. Has a grapish taste the way a longan or rambutan does, but is creamy. Was way better cold then tepid. Leaves your gums sticky afterwards, but not too bad. Really enjoyed them, definitely sowing the seeds and going to really try to get its Florida native cousin Satinleaf.
Cacao Fruit: The other candidate for the best. Unfortunately I left it too long and the shell started to mold, which got some on parts of the fruit. Was only able to eat the flesh around like 6 or 7 seeds. Man is it good though. Like a Sweet Tart but with the texture of cotton candy. I wish I ate it sooner, definitely going to freeze a few cacao seedlings this year.
Honey Mangoes: The only type of mango I like, these ones were bigger than the ones from the grocery store, but not by much. Tasted about the same though, with fiber really only around the seeds. Probably an Altaulfo, not gonna go the seeds because these are 69 cents at Publix.
Yellow Dragonfruit: Tasted like white dragonfruit but slightly better. Used them to make smoothies. Saved the seeds that didn’t get scooped out, but not gonna hold a parade for them.
Thai Guava: White fleshed. I can only assume that it tasted liked guava, which I apperently don’t like. Skin was edible but I didn’t try it and seeds were hard but bearable. I mixed it into my smoothie and have had an aftertaste all day. Reminds me of a fruity cheese. Have some seeds because they didn’t grind down in the smoothie.
Red Guava: Pink fleshed. Large seeds like rocks. Watermelony flavor with a little bit of guavaness. Would have been better if it didn’t have boulders for seeds.
Cherimoya: Tutti frutti funk. Great for smoothies, probably great with yogurt or ice cream (didn’t have any). I always forget how fruity they are, but they are good. The best way to describe the flavor would be like “Zebra Stripe bubblegum but is a flan”. I saved seeds, but I already have alot of cherimoya seedlings.
Mamey Sapote: Smaller one than the ones in fall, also not as creamy. Pretty fiberous and solid. Good, they have a sweet potatoish taste but with other stuff mixed in as well. Seed was desicated in the fruit because the shell got cracked.
Didn’t eat the Dosakai yet, but it wasn’t for me since I don’t like cucumbers anyways.
Probably going to start planting out the seeds tomorrow. Today I planted some Surinam cherry seeds, Vasconcellea weberbaurii (papaya cousin) seeds, and a seedling loquat in the ground. I am also hardening off my cocona to get it in the ground or a growbag soon. One of my peanut butter fruit trees is getting ready to bloom pretty heavily, I would be ecstatic to get some fruit from it this year. My black sapote is also putting on some flower buds, but it has some sort of issue right now, so not sure if they will stick around.
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I’ve never before seen the kind of leaf alignment I’m getting on this particular plant, at least on citrus. It’s a clementine x Thomasville that looks mostly normal from the side
But then from above
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Planted out some pigeon peas and they all made the transplant happily. Don’t expect them to survive the winter but fix a bit of nitrogen and fill in the „empty spots”
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I’m experimenting with using sunn hemp for similar ends. I grew some last year and it did extremely well. It’s supposedly more allopathic than most stuff, which combined with it being a massive freaking plant makes it pretty good for weed control. Humming birds like the flowers which is a nice bonus.
I want to have some easy summer cover crop that I can rotate through my beds. Most of the vegetables I grow are solanums, some years almost all of them are, so I really need something I can rotate through every few years during the summer. Most cover crops have small seed and need to be direct sowed, which means raking off the mulch and exposing all the soil, which I don’t like. Sunn hemp is a big seed and has pretty wide spacing, so that helps. I’ve also considered tithonia since it flowers a lot and the birds like the seed heads. It’s also a big plant and is really dense so it smoothers stuff well. Tithonia I usually transplant after starting plugs indoors, but the spacing is even wider so I don’t mind the bit of extra work. I’ve considered sorghum-sundangrass but never tested it. It is supposed to be a pretty good nematode suppressor, and it is a great biomass producer which might reduce my mulch needs and at the very least makes it good at smothering. I will be testing castor beans this year as well.
I’ve started cutting my big annual growers like sunn hemp and tithonia once they’re a foot or so tall to encourage branching, it seems to help a lot in reducing lodging and it makes them a bit bushier which I prefer.
I may end up settling on a mix of things. With the growing season as long as it is, it’s honestly a bit tricky to find something that checks all the boxes I want that I only have to plant once in spring and it’ll still be controlling weeds in the fall…
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There is apparently a day neutral one out there. Not that I think the peas are worth fretting over that much, but its an option. They grow like weeds once they get settled and have water. I cut off 3ish feet off of mine after my last harvest in April, and just cut another foot or 2 off them earlier this week that they had already regrown.
Gave my lemon-lime cocktail tree a trim this week too, finally got some flower buds on it. Hopefully the rain doesn’t knock them off. Also got my Roselle in the ground, I got seeds for a white calyxed one plus the normal ones. Pretty excited about that. I planted some more plants in groung as well, 3 cherimoyas, 2 sugar apples, an African Sherbert Tree (tamarind relative, not phalsa), a carob and a second loquat. I am glad I got the carob in, this is a good test of humidity/rain tolerence this weekend.
Got a bunch of new seeds, but nothing has sprouted yet, so I’ll keep quiet until they do. Probably gonna pull my radishes and start cowpeas in my garden rows.
No tropical fruit yet, but I have passionfruit and calamansi ripening and peanut butter fruit about to bloom. My barbados cherry has a couple flowers, but it hasn’t been pollinated once yet, so not holding my breath. I need to clear a path to the sea lemon in the woods so I can check on its fruit easier.
This is what they use for cover crop in the strawberry fields. Supposed to help with the sting nemotodes that was giving them trouble a decade or 2 ago.
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I got a cactus borer 
Its not the orange caterpillar thats apperently invasive, but a mostly clear one that bores through the plant. I removed the infected paddles (and killed the caterpillars) on my prickly pears, but I had them on my columnar cacti too. Hopefully I got them all, I didn’t see any others but can’t see inside the cacti.
I think the varigiated opuntia I got was infested. Its where it started and one of the two plants basically exploded. I didn’t know what it was at first (thought it was a bacteria) but thats what the borers leave behind. I’m not too bent outta shape if my opuntia die, but I would be really sad if my consolea or harrisias do.
My large acerola died, but this was because when I went to move it last year I had to cut the roots (major roots) which had grounded themselves really well in that spot. It looked pitiful in the greenhouse but kept scratch testing it green. Now it was just dead so ripped it out of that pot and stuck a mulberry in there. Also my mutingia calabura died in a similar fashion. Not sad to see either of them go tbh. Both are so cold sensitive and the fruits are good, but now that I’ve had them, I don’t miss them. I do however have a rooted acerola cutting from that tree but it will be a couple years until it fruits now. Any of my tropicals which die now, won’t be replaced. Keeping the hardy ones which give me less issues. My Silas woods sapodilla has loads of fruit and now pushing blooms again, fantastic tree.
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I sold off my acerolas for similar issues, they’re just too cold sensitive for me to bother with and the fruit, while good, isn’t mind-blowing.
Pitangatuba is coming back from the roots after dying to the ground. I had it under protection but it still lost everything above ground. Under the protection temperatures bottomed out in the low twenties.
I’ve planted out most of my subtropicals in ground now. They’ll get a bit of protection in winter but most of them I’m going to let sink or swim. They’re all between one and three feet now, so if they’ve any cold hardiness in them it should show. I planted multiple Guibiju’s in different microclimates, planted out a few Psidium littorale plants, a P robustum, and a P longipetiolatum. I’m keeping one backup plant of each of those in pots that will get better protection over winter except the lemon guava which I’m keeping several in pots as they are fruiting and I want to have plenty of guavas next year.
This fall/early winter I’m considering starting some dwarf solo papayas indoors. I’ve read they can fruit in under a year in ideal conditions. I’d like to test that.
I have had the Waimanalo dwarf solo papayas for about a year and a half from seed. No flowers yet. When small, they hate full sun, most of mine died trying to get them in the yard too early. The two I habe left were in the greenhouse all of last year through winter. Ones in a pot still, ones in ground as of last week. I didn’t start fertilizing them until this year though, I’m sure if you juice them up while young, they’d grow alot faster.
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I had actually tried this exact variety last year but none of the seed germinated.
I’m hoping my indoor set up is good enough that by late spring they’ll already be almost ready to flower when I move them outside.
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I didn’t have great germination, probably around 50%. I only have 2 trees from the 25 or so seeds I had. Seeds were like 2.50 a pack though, so I’d say thats worth it.
I got Vasconcellea weberbaurii seeds from Raindance. Supposed to be a type of papaya with edible skin, but probably not terribly frost hardy. None have sprouted yet though.
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My coworker brought me some Nepali Hog Plum (Spodias purpurea) to try. Very tasty, a little bit of muscadine skin flavor in the skin (and maybe a hint of cashew flavor but not sure because I can’t cashews) mixed with red apple for the flesh, but soft with no mealyness. Very good, would eat them often if I had a prolific tree. Did have a small amount of dry mouth, but only after eatting all 3 of them.
Fruit are like the size of 2 cocoplums (idk like 2.5 inches, I can’t measure with my eyes) but have a big seed in the middle. I’m gonna be planting the seeds, they have a weird crook in them that makes them lool like a cashew coming out of its apple. Seeds pictured below.
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Very cool, never heard of them. Planted my “cross berry” Grewia occidentalis today as I don’t intend to baby it. Grew from seed last summer. It has grown well, standing about a foot tall. Time to sink or swim for it and test it’s zone 8b claims.
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That plant has a beautiful flower from the pictures I’ve seen. Its related to phalsa, it could be that hardy. Good luck!
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It looks very similar, my phalsa has gorgeous flowers. Also my Eugenia uniflora and repanda are making a comeback, without any protection and they were both teeny tiny fresh seedlings. I think stuff can live, maybe I’ll never get fruit but my inga is on year three in ground and it dies back every year but comes back stronger each time.
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I heard from a guy who grows them here that the only way to get them to fruit consistly is to give them massive trims every year, otherwise they just keep growing. Maybe extreme dieback will do the same and you’ll get flowers one day.
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That would be amazing, I really enjoy the handful of fruit I’ve had. Underrated imo
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Been away from home for 3 weeks and the rainy season kicked in while I was gone. Needless to say, the plants and the weeds have really taken off. Tropicals really love there rain.
I’ve already done some heavy pruning and weeding. I will do some after pictures before I leave at the end of the weekend.
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Got alot done in a day and a half. Mostly mowing and cutting. A little pruning, spicifically the pigeon peas, the fig-leaf gourd and some tomatoes. Apperently fig-leaf gourd is day-light/heat sensative and does not flower in the summer, so I cut about 10 feet off. Front yard is farther along then the back yard. Still got a fair bit of pruning left to do, some beans and tomato harvests, and some fertilizing.
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