By special request, we now a forum for discussion of fruits and nuts.

Nice! Thank you.

My Meyer Lemon tree is looking very sick. Branches are stripped of their leaves from trunk along most of branches. Only leaves left are at ends of branches. I've looked morning and nightfall to see what may be large enough to eat that much foliage. Any ideas?

So, is this a place all of us fruits and nuts can hang out?

Eyenana what zone are you in? My myers is loaded with fruit but for whatever reason the fruit is brown? Paul what fruit do you grow? I've got black sapote, white sapote, mango,banana, orange, fig, and avocado Oh, and also a very active star fruit.

Would the seeds from a grocery store Meyer lemon be likely to grow a true Meyer lemon tree?

I have a neighbor who tried it and he got a tree but no lemons after four years, but if you Google Myers lemon trees propagation you might get better advice, I bought mine as a small tree and 2 years later I was giving away lemons, I think they have to be grafted, but not sure.

Ok, thanks. A started plant would give me a quicker crop. I just get tempted every time I throw away the seeds.

Sorry, every time I see "Fruits and nuts forum" I think that it applies to us crazy people rather than the plants.

Fruits I grow and eat every year:

• Blueberries (12 or so varieties)
• Strawberries (alpine and regular)
• Grapes (5 varieties)
• Figs ( 2 varieties currently producing crops, 3 more I will allow to produce next year)
• Mulberries (Red, White and Black)
• Apricots
• Asian Pears
• Cherries (Bing, Rainier, Lapins, Sweetheart)
• Peaches
• Huckleberries
• Thimbleberries
• Service berries
• Salmonberries
• Raspberries (golden and two different reds)
• Blackberries (3 kinds of thornless)
• Citrus (lemons, tangerines, oranges, expect to eventually get fruit from my pomelo and grapefruit)
• Annual Fruits (Melons, ground cherries, tomatoes, etc.)

I may be forgetting a few.

Not big enough yet:

• Pawpaw
• Persimmon
• Hazelnut
• Pomegranate
• Pineapple guava

I grow both maypops and P. caerulea, and several edible passifloras in the greenhouse, but they never set fruit, probably because they're so far apart from one another. I may do something about that this year.

I grew my greenhouse kiwi from seed 10 years ago. Someday I'll get it a mate so I can get fruit from it.

I grow bananas, monstera, and female ginkgos, but don't expect to get fruit from them any time soon. I used to grow papaya as an annual, but I've had trouble starting it here.
I'm told that my oregon grape, fuschias, olives, wild roses, etc. also have edible fruits, but we don't eat them.

I've been told that Meyer Lemons are pretty stable and should come true from seed, but it can take a long time (and a big tree) for them to produce that way. I've started a lot of citrus from seed (mainly for grafting and bud chipping) but I've only ever gotten fruit from my calamondin (calamansi) seedlings.

As far as what could be wrong with one, we really need to start with what part of the country you're in and whether it's in the ground, since there are so many things that can lead to defoliation. If something is really eating it, the pest will be local to your area. They are tough though, and can spring back from complete loss of foliage once the problem is remedied.

Paul, you don't live that far from me, basically the same dry climate, just a zone warmer. You mentioned having a greenhouse kiwi, which tells me that your greenhouse is BIG. Which of your other fruits do you grow inside? What is planted in the ground and survives the winters there? I have tried blueberries, they died. We have a lot of lime in our water, so we planted them in half soil, half peatmoss, and it took them 3 years to all be dead. I have some berries that vine, got them from somebody else's garden. They thrive on neglect. I need a trellis for them and maybe they would reward me with berries. I was told they are boysenberries.

Tell me about the mulberries. If I remember, they are something like blueberries.

Yeah, I have the same thought when I read the title to this forum.

We have alkali soil here, so the blueberries are in (big) pots. I mix my own soils every year, with the primary ingredients coming from the compost heaps. Every year acquire another small blueberry, so I'm getting quite the collection. I'm thinking about heavily ammending a section of the yard and planting them there, but so far they do so well in pots, all in a row on the shady side of my garden, that I haven't been motivated to change anything.

On the producing list, only the figs and the citrus get any protection, and they live outside most of the year. I'm putting figs in the ground next year to see how they do.

I have a 22' geodesic dome greenhouse (see the link in my sig, below) and 20-40' unheated hoop house for spring starts.

Red mulberry trees grow everywhere as weeds here, with the birds dropping the seeds. My mulberries (except for one big stump that keeps coming back) are all improved varieties with larger fruit. They are carefree, really, and well adapted to the area, as long as they get enough water. The fruit is most like a blackberry, I think, though less tart. The one with white fruit has no tartness at all.

Paul, I just checked out your signature links and discovered that your greenhouses are actually a business, not a hobby! Impressive to say the least. Some of your friends, relatives, family might have thought you were crazy, but Noah got the much same reaction when he built the ark! Your project went together much faster!

Heh, thankfully the greenhouse doesn't need to support me as well as an ark, either. After six years (hard to believe it has been so long) the dome is still my favorite structure for a greenhouse. And after fighting off the heavy winds which caused trouble with my hoophouse this spring, I'm thankful that the dome shrugs off 70 mile winds without even a shake.

I'm making plans to move my principal plant production off site, in association with the people who have been retailing my plants this year. This makes the dome more of a personal greenhouse again. I have dreams of producing a much larger, publicly available dome, with the help of more architecturally minded folks than myself, but land is getting so expensive around here.

I make my money with computers, photography, and writing. I may have a plant business, but the business is all about spreading the plants and the knowledge around. My goal is to break even financially each year and get my plants and assistance into more places. It's about trying to do good things for people with plants, and the business lets me do things (e.g. cover the costs of growing 10,000 plants each year, purchase wholesale material) that I couldn't do otherwise.

Oh, I see, you are a sort of Johnny Appleseed! I can see that the dome would catch much less wind, and also provide a place to grow tall plants. It's all very cool.