Went back home last weekend. Worked my butt off weeding and reseting this little partial shaded inground area. In the process, I accidently riped up my Passiflora maliformis (wasn’t paying attention), so I had to plant my spare. Its mostly nightshades, about 8 different peppers, 3 coconas and a tree tomato. It was beans everywhere, but it was harvest time. My Giant Granadilla passionfruit is just off camera, and the low growing stuff is my Kresting’s Groundnuts I am using as a groundcover. I am adding another tree tomato to this area, and I am going to be planting something in fall in between all the peppers.
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That third picture with all the containers and green house and gorgeous old arcing trees is just beautiful. I love how lush and chaotic everything is yet also clearly organized. That’s a lot to keep track of!
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Thank you! It was actually still a mess in that picture, I tidied up alot the last time I went up. I finally get to go home (and stay home) tomorrow, so I’ll take pictures then. I have gotten some new plants I am very excited about while in SFL (mainly galangal, achira and green cardamom). I’ll do a full rundown of what I got plus anything that might have sprouted probably next weekend after I take inventory and seperate community pots. Its still all gotta survive a 4 hour car ride too, hopefully its not too sunny.
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I neglected to take pictures of the initial batch to ripen up, but the strawberry lemon guava season has been going strong for a few weeks now. I’ve had about two dozen fruit, and it looks like I’ll have dozens and dozens more through the rest of summer.
Some of these plants are insane, I counted 110 fruits on this last one in the 15 gal pot! I don’t know if all of them will size up well, but at least flavor wise I haven’t noticed any difference between small ones and big ones.
I appreciate the fact that when these are ready, they’ll come off the bush easily, but are still fairly hard and taste insipid–making them much less likely to spoil or get stolen. It’s only a few days later that they begin to sweeten up and develop flavor. Once fully ripe, they are sweet with some tartness for balance, have a juicy pulp that’s got a lovely tropical flavor, and the skin retains the minty, slightly astringent kick that I love in myrtacious fruit.
The seeds are somewhat hard but are not nearly as large or hard as in tropical guavas. They are also fewer in number.
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Mine dropped all but one fruit due to drought stress. My plants have been suffering since July, so dry and hot. I haven’t stayed on top of them like I have in the past this year. There is always next year haha
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Yeah, while they seem to be able to survive long droughts, but they’re also some of my thirstiest plants. For actually growing and fruiting, they like to drink a lot.
Next year then!
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Some early morning pictures of my gardens. First photo is the front yard garden. Cranberry hibisicus have gotten giant and my papaya and banana are making good progress. The papaya has started getting flowers. The pigeon peas, sweet potatoes and passion vine have gotten a huge haircut and the blackberry got tipped. Probably going to give the key lime/meyers lemon bush a trim again. The peanut butter fruit is almost ripe too, which is exciting.
Second photo is a little plot I made in the back. Coconas are big and flowering, peppers are growing good. Just off camera, I bunched up some potted lemongrass in front of a tamarillo so it could have some additional shade, and my Giant Granadilla and Sweet Calabash passiflora species are on a fence. The basket grass keeps creeping in, so I have to pull it some more. This is the closest garden to the woods, I planted firebush and some other native landscape plants to kinda keep the woods back a little.
Third photo is my built raised beds (and the butterfly plants enclosed so they don’t get munched on). Eggplants have produced all summer, couple new peppers in there. My jalepenos are heading into their third year. The big plants are white Roselle, which is flowering now, about 2 months earlier than the red will. There is also Amazon peanuts as the south end that need to be harvested the next dry day we have.
Last picture are my nursery plants. I take them to local street fairs and sell them. Mostly passionfruit, longevity spinach, cherimoyas and native plants. I had to give alot of plants haircuts here. Summer makes things explode before it burns them to death.
I seperated out some community pots of blackberry jam seedlings, soursops, white ice cream beans, Mysores and “Samba” papaya seedlings. The blackberry jams, Ice Cream Beans and soursops got torched a little but a majority are still okay. Also brought back from SFL a couple pond apples, some star apple seedlings, a jackfruit seedling, quite a few abiu seedlings, some achacha seeds that hopefully will sprout, 2 Green Cardamoms, 2 Jewels of Opar, a red yardlong bean, a winged bean, a pomegranate and 2 community pots of lychees, along with some other stuff mentioned before.
Pretty happy with everything overall. My greenhouse is a mess (its falling apart) so I have to get a new one for winter. I also have to get all my fall/winter seeds started soon. Lots of plants to uppot and fertilize still. Not a ton of fruiting trees yet, but they are making progress. 1 step at a time.
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I got some germination on my Theophrasta jussieui seeds. The seeds look little corn nuggets and feel like there is a coat of sugar on it, so I thought for sure they wouldn’t germinate without some sort of treatment. Glad I was proving wrong though. I had them sprouting in a container of vermiculite, so I have to plant them out today.
Have you tried these? I’ve been looking for information about them but haven’t found much.
Not successfully. I got seeds from raindance, but no germination. I didn’t have any luck on any seeds from him, but they’ve been avalible on his store for awhile, so probably old seeds.
They are another psuedotropical raspberry. I don’t know too much about them. I knew a little more before, but have forgotten that knowledge. If some eventually sprout, I’ll do more research and report back.
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Psidium robustum setting flower buds. This plant is about two and a half years old I think. Way, way too late in the year for fruit, but nice to see it’s precocious.
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My “festival” graft pushing buds on the same schedule as my others so it seems to not be the late bloomer I hoped it to be
Ponkan
Sunburst
Owari coloring up some, I have eaten 3 which split and they were edible but still a bit sour
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My regular jaboticaba got fried, not sure if it was from drought stress or my well water contained something which caused the leaves to fall off. But it’s making a comeback
I had quite a lot of trouble this year keeping everything watered. Didn’t get a drop of rain from July- the second week of September. Quite a few small casualties I think, but it was all duplicates which failed
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Does anyone have advice for growing tropicals indoors over the winter? I am trying to keep ginger, Surinam cherry, and gin berry alive at least until I can put them back outside after the last frost. I set up a few 2nd hand grow lights today. I measured the lux with my phone with a random app and got around 40k lux.
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I’ve had good luck using cheap Harbor Freight LED shop lights. They’re incredibly bright, almost full sun equivalent. They color mixture isn’t good but so far I’ve not had issues with plants doing poorly. Quantity had a quality all of its own. Even had guavas and Barbados cherry bloom and set fruit indoors with those lights.
Spider mites can be a real headache. If it turns out some got in, be ruthless in getting rid of them.
Keeping the humidity up helps a lot with overwintering plants. I use a large wick type humidifier to keep the RH above 50% all winter. Helps me stay healthy too. I will often mist indoor plants with water as well, both to give them a little time of very high humidity and to wash some dust off their leaves.
Sometimes it’s good to give the pots a real soaking. I’ve found that often times the bottom of the pots with indoor plants are permanently bone dry. Especially pots on wire racks or shelves where there’s no place for excess water to pool and form a water table at the bottom of the pot. Over watering is of course also bad, but so far I’ve had more issues with things being too dry than too wet, at least up to about quart or pint sized sized pots. Gallon and bigger are more of a mixed bag.
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All the starfruit where I work are also loaded with flowers and young fruit. I think they are Arkin.
How’d the storm treat you? I saw some videos of some nasty surf and some surge. Wasn’t sure if that was in your area.
Plenty of surf but that’s pretty typical of the autumn here. They always over sell it’s impact on the area however. But yeah the ocean was angry, this storm felt like a Nor’easter to me, just constant blowing for a few days.
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My haul from the USF plant sale. Unfortunately I work today (and yesterday), so I only had one and a half hours to shop this morning since we open late on Sundays.
They had alot of pawpaws! I got 3 A. triloba, 3 A. pygmaea and 2 A. obovata. They had parviflora, but I have two healthy ones growing already. Pygmaea was on my shortlist, so I am very excited I could get them at $5 a piece instead of $35.
Other natives I got were Maypop, Darrow’s Blueberry and a Black Cherry. I have alot of black cherries on the property but they are all in the woods, I wanted one to grow out and pontentially graft some mature wood onto once established.
On to the tropicals. I got a Tropical Apricot, a Ceylon Gooseberry, a Cinnamon, sugarcane sticks, World’s Best Mulberry, “Campbell” White Sapote and a Wampee. Pretty excited, saved me from mail ordering a Tropical Apricot and Ceylon Gooseberry cuttings, which I was planning on doing. I almost bought some cacao, but the pawpaws distracted me.
Pretty happy with everything, haven’t gotten home yet to plant but I’m am very excited to get these all situated. The only thing on my wish list they didn’t have was wild blueberry species other than Darrow’s and cane fruit for Central Florida. I can live without those for now though.
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You can grow cinnamon trees there?! Is the plan to harvest from them?
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