I went a bit nuts this week and decided to talk about how it might be possible to grow cold temperate breadfruit (artocarpus family) through mentor grafting and careful selection: Franken-breadfruit - by A. Potentilla - Urban Food Forest
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14 years ago the admin on deep green permaculture put up a post on grafting. This was my first experience with Franken-edibles so it can be done. You are going down a fun path it seems.
Reference: original article fourteen years ago. Making an Eggplant Tree. Or an Eggplant and Tomatoes Tree.
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Okra onto rose of sharon anyone?
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This would be my dream! Thank you for the article.
I was surprised to see jackfruit can survive until -3, which means I might be able to grow it here in Mallorca where freezing rarely happens and never below -2 where I am at least.
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Getting viable seed is your next challenge since they cannot be dried and stored like a lot of fruit tree seeds. The seeds are large as well, which makes some quarantine services more nervous.
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I wonder how many seeds go zipping around the world in unmarked envelopes…
For us in Europe we have jurassicfruit.com that deliver fresh jackfruit and other exotic fruit. Right now I have lots of cacao and safou seedlings growing from planting the seeds after eating the fruit.
Maybe similar fresh fruit companies exist in Australia and the US.
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Ah yes, that’s a good point. Never underestimate how far you can get with planting seeds from freshly imported fruit.
As for tropical fruit in the US, I have looked with interest at these four websites:
https://www.montosogardens.com/
I haven’t bought anything from any of them, but they all look like good places to buy unusual tropical fruit. I keep thinking I want to buy some, and then I look at the prices and balk, and then I go back a month later and think wistfully about it . . .
Oh! Do check your local Mexican grocery store, if you have one. I went to mine last week, and I was thrilled to find mamey sapote there. YAY! I finally got to try that species!
In case you’re curious, they taste like sweet potatoes with a floral aftertaste. Very dense flesh, much denser than sweet potatoes. I like the sweet potato texture better and the mamey sapote taste better, and I’d happily grow mameys as well as sweet potatoes, but they’re a zone 10 plant . . .
Well, I mean, obviously I’m going to try growing them in my greenhouse, even if it’s unlikely to succeed. I bought two fruits, so I have two seeds to play with!
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