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Post by mgulfcoastguy on Oct 24, 2019 15:27:22 GMT -5
Has anyone heard of planting these trees? Particularly LauraFl since we are in the same zone? The description on the nursery website says zone 9B to11. Officially we are in zone 8B but I think it is really zone 9. Since the seedling would initially be 1 to 2 feet high it would be fairly easy to build a pvc frame work for plastic sheeting in the winter and bird netting in the summer. Hopefully after it gets a couple of years old it would be winter Hardy.
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Post by Laura_in_FL on Oct 25, 2019 10:33:37 GMT -5
Unfortunately, I think Barbados cherry is going to be really iffy for cold hardiness for you (or me!), even as a mature tree. I don't know anyone in North Florida who has tried to grow one, though they are quite common in South Florida. According to Purdue: It is easy to forget after the past few warm winters that we do have cold winters from time to time along the Gulf Coast. Most recently, I had low temperatures in the mid-teens in both 2010 and 2014. In fact, in January 2014 two different unusually cold weather systems came through a few weeks apart. Both cold fronts dropped my temperatures into the mid-teens for a couple of nights each. The second front came with 0.1" of ice pellets - my house, yard, and fruit trees were coated in ice. I had a mature Owari Satsuma mandarin orange tree (rated for zone 8A, cold hardy to 16F). That tree was roughly 15 years old and big - it produced 400 lbs of oranges that year. I had never protected that tree from the cold, except maybe the year I planted it. But my tree died later that year. And a Barbados cherry is not nearly as cold hardy as a Sastuma! In a warm winter, your Barbados cherry might not need protection once mature. In an average winter, it likely will need to be covered a few times. In a cold winter, it will need not only a cover, but supplemental heat to survive. If you really want one, I would plant it in the most protected location possible (on the south side of a building near a brick/block/stone wall is ideal) and make plans to cover it and provide supplemental heat. Since Barbados cherry gets 12-20 feet tall, a mature tree is going to be difficult to cover and heat. You might look into whether you can keep it pruned into a shorter bush (multiple trees could be pruned into a hedge) and still have it produce well. If you can keep it about 6 ft tall, it will be much easier to cover and heat in winter when the need arises. Otherwise you might have to do an emergency severe pruning before a cold front to shorten the trees so you can cover it. A severe pruning just before the cold would put even more stress on the tree.
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Post by mgulfcoastguy on Oct 25, 2019 11:14:08 GMT -5
Moving on.
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Post by Laura_in_FL on Oct 25, 2019 17:14:14 GMT -5
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