I've gotten citrus, pomegranate, papaya, mango, lychee, pepino, tamarillo, and dragonfruit seeds from store bought fruit to sprout. It seems to me that, if you see a neat fruit in the store, your best bet is to just get it and give it a shot.

Couldnt agree with gliese more.

Ladylotus, I got started the same way you have. ate a mango down to the pit and stuck it in the ground. before knew it, it sprouted and I had a plant. Been sticking seeds in pots ever since.
couple things...
1, pick anything at the store with fresh seeds and give it a try (I have been successful with dried fruit too, but this is VERY hard. planted about 100 Goji berry seeds from a bag f dried fruit and had one seedling come up.)researching the seeds ahead of time is helpful.
2. in general: fruiting trees are less likely to be true from seed and will take a LONG time to fruit. for me it's worth it but it's a lot of work and you may not get decent fruit.
3. if your looking for an easy start with some good growing plants, try papaya, pomegranite, and kiwi. they all germinate easily and grow quickly. (however the papaya gets very big, very fast (in Jax Florida, mine get from seedling to 8ft in one summer, but I have a hard time keeping them alive through the winter.)

good luck.
brian

There are some smaller tropicals you can try while you wait for the trees to mature. I grow Guava, Feijoa, Pepino and Tamarillo from grocery store seed. I haven't gotten them to fruit yet but they are now big enough so maybe this summer.

Thank you for the information. I plan to hit the grocery stores today.

One other question. I had been reading through some past posts where OhioJay had a link to his photoshop pictures when he first began. Quite a few of the descriptions state the plants were grown from seed. I saw a grapefruit, key lime, Tamarind (I love the looks of this plant), and several Sugar Apples. Is there a nursery where one can purchase viable seeds or were these all from grocery store finds?

I'll let everyone know what I find. Perhaps not much way out here in North Dakota.

Tj

I found a couple sites where you can purchase seeds. Has anyone ordered from here?

http://www.tradewindsfruit.com/ordering_info.htm

I see a few things I would like to order.

Thanks.
Tj

TJ,
There are plenty of folks growing sugar apples, good ones, that would probably be more than happy to send you seeds this spring/summer. Heck, I will if mine fruit and come full term. Same with tamarind. I wouldn't waste my time on most citrus. Key lime will come true to type but most others will not. While it is fine to grow from seed, if you can get a grafted/air-layered plant of what you want, that would be the way to go. But I would go off buying any seeds unless they were truly something difficult to obtain. My two cents.

My experiance with Trade Winds Fruit has been a mixed bag. The first time, out of seven types of seed, three grew (2/4 of the Uganda Powder Flask seeds, 2/3 Rose Apple seeds, and all the Pacay seeds). The next summer, I noticed how well the seedlings were doing, and order 13 more types of seed. Nothing came up. I should note that it could have been something I did to kill the seeds (I did leave them outside on a really hot day once by mistake, and this was also almost a month after I got the seeds; however, my rose apples took several months to come up, so their exact cause of death is indeterminable), and when I emailed them a question about this, they were quick to respond. I'll probably order again just to give them another shot, because they're selection is awesome, but if you order, I wouldn't count on great germination rates, although I wouldn't be surprised if you got something really nice out of it, either. Their Garden Watchdog rating isn't too bad looking, however, so maybe I just got unlucky.