Gold Coast Gardener

April 16, 2006

By Gene Joyner, Extension Agent
Palm Beach County Cooperative Extension Service

If you like edible landscaping, you’re probably already growing a lot of tropical fruits. If not, you might want to consider it. There are hundreds of types of tropical fruits well suited for south Florida and many nurseries are now starting to carry larger inventories of delicious tropical things.

Tropical fruits can be used in a variety of ways in the landscapes as small plants, hedges, small trees, medium trees, or large shade trees depending on the particular usage. Many tropical fruits bear over a long season so you can have a lot of fruit to enjoy or share with family and friends. Other fruits are more seasonal in nature and if you’re not a full time resident make sure you select fruits that are in season during the months that you will be in our area.

Most tropical fruits thrive well on a wide variety of soil types, but drainage is very critical for most of them. Root rots and other similar problems can easily kill trees if they are in standing water for long periods of time.

When putting out tropical fruits most like full sun or as much sunlight as possible for highest production. In heavily shaded areas many trees will produce some fruit, but only a small percentage of what they are capable of.

Fruit trees because of their fruit production require regular fertilization with good quality fruit tree type fertilizers. Suggested times are March, June and October on mature trees and on younger trees or newly planted trees you can fertilize every other month, at least for the first year.

Depending on your personal preferences, of course, there are many choices of what types of fruits you can plant and many can be frozen or used in other ways other than fresh so that when the fruit season is in full swing and you have more fruit than you can possible eat fresh you can make various products from them or freeze them for future use.

If you’re not familiar with the different types of tropical fruits in our area, a good place to check out some of the fruits available would be to attend one of the monthly meetings of the Rare Fruit Council, which is a tropical fruit organization in our area.

The Palm Beach Chapter of the Rare Fruit Council International meets on the second Friday evening of each month at 8 o’clock at the Mounts Building Auditorium, 531 North Military Trail in West Palm Beach. They have a sample table of tropical fruits at each meeting for visitors and members to enjoy and you have a chance also to bid on auction plants at each meeting. Many of the club members are commercial nurserymen that grow tropical fruits, too, so you can find out the best places to purchase tropical fruits for your home landscape.

The Palm Beach County Extension Service also has a number of free publications on tropical fruits which can be picked up at their offices during normal business hours. If you have questions about tropical fruits, they can also answer problems or questions over the phone. Simply dial 233-1750 in the north and central county area or 276-1260 in the south county area.

The Extension Service also has several tropical fruit displays during the year and the one that will be coming up shortly will be at the end of June, June 24, at the Mounts Botanical Garden. Look for information on this annual tropical fruit festival as we get closer to that date.