Happenings In The November Garden

We still have a couple of weeks until we freeze for the year. Most of my plants are shutting down. A few completely tropical plants are starting to fruit. I will be repotting some of the smaller plants into a single pot and bringing others indoors as is.

My son’s lemon tree is about ready to harvest.

The Babaco Papaya I am growing is sending out some fruit. The owner of Raintree told me that hers fruits indoors. I am excited to see if these tiny fruit will actually fill out and ripen inside.

I have some sunburned pineapple plants. These guys are not a full year old yet. It takes a few years to get pineapples  going, here in San Antonio. They are next to a “Vick’s” plant. It really does smell like Vick’s vapo-rub.

I have some stuff that I haven’t kept track of that needs to come in. I ordered a henna plant and some other very, very tropical plants. They won’t survive our mild winter outside.

This crazy everbearing mulberry is bearing again! I really love this plant.

My figs are getting ready to drop their leaves. I still have grass to cut and I’m going to do a hard pruning on the fig. It is way too tall to harvest effectively. I also have some plants to protect including the banana bed.

I am actually growing coffee. I started out with about five plants that came in a bundle in a starter pot. I separated them and tried multiple ways to plant them and multiple sun exposures. I did not intend to leave this in a milk jug, but this plant flourished and all of the others died. I believe it is because this jug keeps the plant humid and moist at its base. The milk jug has two small holes in the bottom. The plant does not recover from drought, of any kind. The leaves turn to paper and the whole plant croaks. I also had this plant on a covered porch, so it got indirect light. This is its second year. It will come inside this winter but I’m going to order another set of coffee plants and try them in with the bananas next year.

This has got to be the most demanding plant I own, and I don’t like plants that require life support. However, I haven’t killed it and I now know what it likes. Since I can replicate the growing conditions easily, by using more milk jugs, I will continue to mess with it.

I stepped away from my pots several times this summer and I did lose a couple of plants that I got from a tropical nursery. However, I’ve found my tolerance level for finicky plants and I’m not binge ordering fully tropical stuff anymore. Some of those guys need more attention, cooler summers, warmer winters and consistent greenhouse humidity. They would probably do well as house plants (if I had bright indoor light, which I don’t.) But, indoor plants rarely fruit and I’m all about the harvest. Nope. Not playing with those anymore!

Meet you out in the garden, we’ll compare our crazy attempts at growing tropical fruit!

Crazy Green Thumbs