Are you planning on growing all these from seed? If so, you have a long haul ahead of you, and will not have the benefit of choice of rootstocks. Are you growing in a greenhouse?

I have 6 "dwarf" Mango varieties. All are grafted and all either produced the first year I had them, or should produce the 2nd year (this coming year). Pine Island Nursery has an excellent selection.

Sugar Apples are supposedly able to fruit from seed grown babies, in 2-4 years. I have not found that to be true. My 7' Sugar Apple (annona squamosa) has yet to fruit, and it is at least 5-6 years old. I have a new Red Sugar Apple that did produce this year-a grafted 6' tree. I have lots of seedlings growing well but do not expect anything from them for many years.

My grafted tropical Guava trees are 5' tall, I've had them a year, and they have not fruited or grown much, in the ground.

Sapodillas get too large for containers, even the smaller ones such as Makok or Alano get to be 15-20' tall.

Strawberry guava (Cattley guava) is a great container plant. They produce at about 4' tall and are beautiful plants. They take pruning well.

In your zone, you could easily grow dwarf Apples/Peaches in containers outdoors as specimen plants. I grow them here and they are very productive and beautiful.

I wouldn't bother growing any of the plants you mentioned from seed, except Sugar Apples. They germinate in about 10 days in a baggie with moist peat moss, in a warm spot. The seeds tend to stick to the baby plant and the new leaves tear easily.

Are you just growing these for fun, or do you want fruit?

Lisa

Lisa,
where do you buy your dwarf fruit trees? Do you have Michelias as well. Your garden looks beautiful! How do I upload pictures onto my page on gardenweb?
Malini

Malini, I got my dwarf (Condo) mango trees from Pine Island Nursery. My dwarf apples came from Bay Laurel Nursery. Peaches/Nectarines are easy to keep small with pruning.

What specific dwarf fruit trees are you asking about? Excalibur nursery in Lake Worth, Florida has quite a few dwarf varieties of tropical fruit trees, such as dwarf mulberries, dwarf Carambolas, etc.

Sugar Apples are fairly small trees at maturity and could possibly grow in a large container.

I don't have Michelias, I am not really into flowering plants that don't make fruit(G), yet. That may change since we now have nore planting room since the hurricanes tore through here.

To upload photos, first sign up with Photobucket (free) and put up the photos you want to show in your own album. Then go to your GW member page and paste the center line of "computerspeak text" under each photo onto your Member page. You can minimize/maximize each screen in turn to add pictures and to look at your Member page. You can easily correct mistakes by continuing to view your page and fix photos that are too big or too small.

Lisa

Here is a link that might be useful: Mango viewer

Hi Lisa,

(Scott of mango grafting attempt fame writing here)

do you have white sapote trees in containers? any luck fruiting?

Scott

Hi Scott,

No White Sapotes here. Have Black Sapote and 3 kinds of Mamey Sapote. All are too big to be container plants. The White Sapotes do not appeal to me, and I think they would be a fruit fly magnet from what I have read.

Did any of your grafts work? The donor trees are recovering very, very well from Wilma.

My Julie Mango is flowering like crazy!

Lisa

Hi Lisa,

glad to hear your trees are doing well. flavor is in the taste buds of the taster as far as white sapote goes ;-)
white sapote fruit is one that has quite a bit of variability even eaten off of the same tree, unlike most other fruits. Have you tried them from different trees, and times? I really like the ones I tried, McDill, i think, some were much tastier than others.

the grafts didn't take, unfortunately. i'd like to try again sometime.

Scott

M, like Lisa mentions its better to get grafted or airlayer plants if you want them to fruit for you in a pot. Most seedlings will take an extremely long time to fruit container grown. Sweetsop seedlings seems to flower in 2 to 4 of years in a pot, some mangos seedlings seem to flower in about 3 yrs also. Guavas also matures in about 3 yrs but I have not seen any potted ones do that yet, only in ground seedlings.
Here's a picture of a sweetsop that almost made it with the fruit. Its about 3 1/2 to 4 years old in a 5 gallon pot. Unforturnately that fruit is hard as rock and mummified for some reason.

hi Eggo,

neat! what else is lurking there in the interesting background? :-)

Scott

Thanks, guys. I really appreciate all the info. I have a 3 year old mango seedling that is out all summer long( grows quite a bit each season) and overwinters in the sunroom. I read elsewhere that a good prune at this stage could get it to flower/ set fruit. Any suggestions?
Same with a black sapota ( Manlkara zapota) that I grew out of seed.
M

That sounds interesting. I am not familiar with pruning to get mangos to flower?!? Mine was prune only once when it was potted to encourage branching. I would think that pruning would encourage more vegetative growth. There was a post before by one of our members showing a small 8-10 inch seedling that was blooming, it was amazing. Maybe polyembryonic seedlings blooms faster?
I have not heard Manilkara zapota called black sapote before. Its more commonly referred to as sapodilla or chico sapote or lamut in Thai. Here's a picture of one in my area. I will be attempting an airlayer on this. You can see the developing fruits in one of the pictures. The picture was just recently taken. I don't know how it would do containerize.

Eggo, How old would you say your sapodilla is? I have a small grafted one. Nice pics. It's a neat looking plant. Mine is going thru a nice growth flush just now. Seems to be going more out then up...at least for now. Is your sweetsop grafted or seed grown? I have a seed grown sugar apple(related) about 1 1/2 years old that is really slow going. For something that is suppossed to be able to fruit in 2-4 years(at least they say), it sure is small and spindly. Thanks, J

Hey Jay, unfortunately its not my sapodilla. =(
I think its been in the ground for about 4 years, but I was told it was a good size potted plant before it was ever planted out. I'm sure its an airlayer. That's a seedling sweetsop, they seem to flower easily even while potted, fruit may be another thing, I seen a 1 ft, 1 1/2 yr. old seedling even bloom before too, very skinny and spindly.

Here in Thailand mango tree are not producing flower and fruit if we pruning them. At least we have to wait after we grow for about 3-4 year to producing flower and fruit. Mongo no need to care here and they hate water if you always keep watering them it will not producing fruit to soon. One of my friend uesd to pruning them because it too high and never get fruit after that she have to wait I think 2 year more for the strong old cane.

Nattaporn,
It's odd you that you say mangos are not producing flowers and fruit if pruned. I was over there in June and witnessed many many mangos being severly pruned nearly back to the trunk. The groundskeepers at Suphathraland pruned their mangos way back as well. They told us they would begin fruiting again in 1 year, maybe two. My wife's family just had their trees pruned this spring and they are already flowering. Maybe different local conditions cause a further delay?