Kitchen Garden Forum

Woke up very excited. Not only for christmas knocking on the door but also for the tropical fruits in the store! They don't sell it all year round so you have to be fast and lucky. Not sure about the stores in the UK but yesterday they had dragon fruit here. I bought two of them and today they were already sold out again. Today they had star fruit so I bought a couple, they're probably sold out by tomorrow. And yes I'm definitely saving all the seeds again! Don't get fooled by star fruit seeds. They say they don't germinate two days after being removed from the fruit, but last year I succesfully germinated a star fruit seed that was removed from the fruit two to three months earlier. The seedling is still alive now. Good luck everybody! Time to grow some tropicals again when next years' spring finally arrives.


Dragon fruit, beautiful as usual. And it tastes slightly like nothing. Slightly sweet nothing, it's pretty tasty!


Star fruit, sour and sweet when fully ripe. Can't wait to taste this unique fruit again at christmas!

I guess Christmas is a good time for snatching up unusual fruits, especially if you have any ethnic food shops in your locality. Many people probably won,t have much idea what they are or what to do with them. Star fruit look a good item for slicing up as a decorative garnish but the only time i had one idon,t recall it having any particularly exotic flavour as you might expect.

You make an interesting comment about their seeds not supposing to germinate more than two days after leaving the fruit. I wonder why that is? Some seeds need to be kept in a cold place for a while while tomatoes can fall, rot on the earth and their seeds start germinating almost straight away.

Good to see you back & planning Elmigo! We don't quite have the weather you do but I like your perseverance & your success rate is pretty good. Keep on trying & reporting!

I don,t think I,ve ever come across a carambola before. With its outer layers it rather looks as if it could be a member of the globe artichoke family, but that is a vegetable rather than a fruit so I imagine not. ,

Carambola or starfruit is indeed used for decoration because the slices make star shapes. I just ate one and it tastes very good in my opinion, it's sweet but also a little bit sour and it is very juicy!

Those are my second year dragon fruit seedlings. They grow very slowly at the moment but during summertime with higher temperatues they will probably skyrocket again. They started making a whole lot of side shoots. If I break them off and ground them in new soil there are even more dragon fruit seedlings.

Keep going Elmigo! In another 12 months they may be Christmas tree height and you'll be able to hang your decorations on them!

I am really impressed by the skill and dedication but for myself, I'm going to grow things which grow well and fairly easily, concentrating on things I really like.

I do like to try and experiment with growing one new thing every year. Next season, although my growing may have to be cut back, I
I,m going to try the horned melons and see what happens.