Wanted to share my experience and pics with tropical fruits in NY

12 years ago

Wanted to share some of my experiences and pics of growing tropical plants here in Queens NY. I just got started in March 2011 with a sweetheart lychee and nam doc mai from PI, but both sadly died. I got new ones from Top after that though the sweetheart died in a freak hail storm but the 3 gal nam doc mai turned out pretty good. I topped off the mango to branch and it looks like I'm going to get some flowering. I also ordered some 3 gal citrus: keiffer lime, persian lime, satsuma orange (which i got 4 nice oranges - and it's flowering again) and nagami kumquat. Citrus was mostly experimentiation, but it turned out surprisingly ok.

I expanded the tropical trees further a couple of months later to include 3 gal brewster (flowering), 7 gal sweetheart (now forming flowering buds), 3 gal biew kiew longan (slowly starting to flush out), 7 gal sri champoo longan (just got it last month), 7 gal maha chanook that I topped off in nov, 1 gal barabados cherry (free).

I moved all the plants inside the basement during Oct. I got a 6.5x6.5x6.5 grow tent, inline fan, and 3 500 watt led grow lights. I had to put a support beam in the middle because the lights were just too heavy. Temperature inside when the lights are on is between 72-75, when lights are off at night it hovers between 62-68 (depending how cold it is outside as I don't turn the heat in the basement). I think this is allowing the proper cooling temps needed for flowering of the lychees and mango. Everything is running on timer of 16 hours, no sunlight, all grow lights.

I'm hand pollinating right now with a brush for the lychee (though I have these annoying little flies inside) - not sure if it's going to work but I guess we'll have to see.

Since I had so much room in the grow tent, I got some free plants and some started from seed - Wax Jumbo (seed - pinkish variety), Giant Vietnamese guava (seed), alpine strawberries, cherry tomatoes, several types of basil, arugala, asian vegatables like bok choy, cilantro, thai chili peppers and lettuce. These were more just to see if they would be able to grow or not (and for fun). So far the results have been pretty good considering that its like 5 feet below the grow lights.

I'll probably get rid of the lime, too common, and expand next year when the weather gets better to include Okrung Tong, and maybe try my hand at some ultra tropicals like rambutan and mangosteen (if I can find grafted varieties).

I've been using a modified version of the gritty mix: gravel, turface, I used the reptile pine bark since it was cleaner. But more gravel and turface than pine bark. I added some vermiculite and after I potted the plant I put a good layer of cedar mulch on top to give it that "organic" mulch layer. I feed with osmocote every couple of months, foliar spray every week or so and some fish emulsion every 3 weeks or so. Watering is about every 3 days or so, or when it looks dry. Foliar spray is only done on non-flowering plants. Misting every once and a while to keep the humidity up.

I plan to repot eventually all of them to 7 gal, but that's pretty much tops, I don't have that much room to keep them any bigger (plus grow light height). So they will be all pruned to stay within the container confines.

So far, I'm able to keep the plants thriving and I'm looking forward to flowering and eventually fruiting (I hope!) this year.

Grow Tent