I Broke My 2026 New Years Resolution But It Was Worth It - New Fruit Trees

I have a confession to make, and that is that my 2026 New Year's resolution, or what you would call my 2026 goals for the garden, was that I was not going to buy any more fruit trees. That I was going to focus on the fruit trees that I have, you can kind of see them all behind me, and really work on them producing as much as possible. And I really, really tried, but it was only a very short period of time that I was like, oh, I have to get them. So let's walk through, and I'm going to show you all of the different fruit trees that I have added to the garden, and why I think that it was okay that I added them, even though I broke my resolution, because they are really, really cool. So you guys might remember this one right here, right over my shoulder. If you watched my video last year, I think it was actually last summer, I had put in this shade garden, and it was just a few different plants. There's some right up here, you probably, just out of frame, is some dahlias and some other flowers. I had a banana here. It was the dwarf cavendish banana. I have a begonia, and then I have some shampoo ginger in the back there. So the banana that I had here, the dwarf cavendish, froze to the ground during winter, and we had one of the coldest winters we've ever had, so it wasn't like a super big surprise for me. The problem is, I've been growing that one for three or four years now. Never have I gotten it to fruit, because every time it even gets close to large enough, we get a winter here that just kills it, and I know that seems odd, right? Because some of us live in south Florida, or some of us live on the south side of central Florida, and you just don't deal with winters. But if you're in the north Florida side, or the north side of central, which is where I am, you deal with a little bit more cold during the winter. We still feel just as much heat during the summer as most of Florida does, but we get these very brief drops in temperatures, and this year's was probably the worst. And so I took it as my opportunity to try to find a new variety that could handle our winter, so that I have a chance of getting some fruit from my bananas at least once in my lifetime. So what I went with is, this one is a dwarf namwah. Number one, I hear it is one of the most tastiest bananas that you can get, which I am super stoked about, like super sweet, firmer texture, doesn't really get mushy, those kinds of things. I haven't tried it myself, but I'm very excited about it, and it handles colder temperatures better. So I'm hoping, I wouldn't have expected something like this to live through this last winter, but they're projecting that my winter this year is going to be more mild. So I'm hoping that this can make it, because if I can get it through one winter, I know I can get it to fruit the following year. But if I can't get it through at least a winter, it's never going to fruit. Right here is how I feed it. This is a Vigo in-ground composter. Inside of here is scraps and gross stuff. It's composting in place, or I put regular compost in. So hopefully we have better progress with this guy. Now, this one is the least, I think, in breaking my resolution, because I didn't actually buy it. I didn't pay for it myself. It was gifted to me by Everglade Farm. They're one of the fruit tree companies that I recommend. Green Dreams and Everglade Farms are my two favorites. I am testing a few of them out that you guys have mentioned to me, but so far those are the only two that I really trust. And Everglades, you know, saw the struggles that I'm having with my banana and they offered to send me one, as well as a couple of other things I'm going to show you. So for me, this was gifted. So technically I didn't break it because I didn't buy any fruit trees, but the essence of the goal was not necessarily that I don't pay for fruit trees, but also that I don't add any fruit trees. So it's somewhat, I did break it with this one, but minimally and with good reason. The next one on our list of breaking the rules here for my resolution is this little guy. You can barely see him right down here. He's starting to grow and vine. And that is a blackberry. I have blackberries. That's what all of these are over here and over there. But it's one variety and I have noticed that it's not super productive. It's okay. It does all right. I think some of it has to do with the fact that I grow it here on the side of my house where it is the West side of house. So you would think it gets a lot, but there's a ton of trees and fencing and structures and stuff on this side that kind of block it from getting a significant amount of sun. So I think that's part of an issue with it. But the other part is, is it didn't have a pollinator friend to go with it. It's not that it needs a pollinator friend. It's not one of those that has to have two varieties in order to fruit, but it does better if you do. I introduced the pink lemonade blueberry to my sunshine blueberry, and I did notice an increase in the amount of fruit that both of them produced. So I thought, I think I need to add a pollinator for my blackberry. So this is the Nanchez also from Everglades farm, also gifted, right? So once again, I didn't break it. I don't think I really added a new fruit tree because it's a replacement. Well, the banana was a replacement and this is an addition. So I'm not adding a new fruit. I'm making all excuses here, but to me it made sense. I'm like, Oh, it's, you know, it's needed because these blackberries, in order for this whole area to get nice and big and full and give me a lots and lots of blackberries, which are one of my favorite fruits. I think there's a lot of my favorites, but I needed a pollinator. So I'm hoping that this one does well with these other ones. I don't even remember what the variety is of my original blackberries. I got them from, I think Home Depot, I'm going to say six years ago. It could be seven. It might be five, somewhere between five and seven years ago, I got this blackberry. It was during a time when I was just starting to get fruit trees and I really didn't understand differences in varieties. So I never even kept the tag. I have no idea what variety it is. I know it fruits in this area because it flowers and I do get some fruit, but it's very minimal. It's not a super heavy producer. And when we were traveling, we were traveling around in our RV. We do that sometimes and we'll go for long trips. And we headed all the way out to the West coast and they had huge brambles of just blackberries everywhere. And I'm like, wow, my blackberries don't look like that. And it's just naturally occurring out there in their world. Like they had like apple trees everywhere and blackberry bushes, just natural, you know, native blackberries. And I look, come back to mine and it's all sparse and you know, barely flowers and barely fruits. And I'm like, okay, maybe it just needs a friend. So that's why I got the Nanchez, but there's more to it. Not only do I have the Nanchez, but I also have this one. This is a Prime Arc Freedom. Once again, gifted. This is a friend of the channel traded me some cuttings of one of my plants for some potted little cuttings of his Prime Arc Freedom blackberries. And I was like, score. I have seen his, um, he sent me pictures of them and they are big, beautiful, very productive. And he sent me not just one, you guys, he sent me all these, which is six of them. So once again, it's gifted. So I didn't pay for it. It's, um, in addition, so it's not a new piece of fruit. It is an existing piece of fruit. Um, it's a blackberry that I already have, but it is more plants of different varieties. So to me that that fits, uh, let's get these planted and I'll show you how I plant them before we move on to the next one, which I don't really have a lot of excuses. Well, I got one excuse how it meets it, but yeah, the rest of these, there's no excuses other than the fact that they're just really cool fruit trees that I couldn't pass up. Just move the mulch away and then I'm going to not dig a super deep hole or anything. I have to be careful because there's still like some landscape fabric that's down here and I can sometimes find it. I've done a lot of cutting up of my landscape fabric, so I don't think that there's much left, but occasionally I run into some. I don't think I'm running into any here. The roots of these existing blackberries are pretty good. From here, I'm not going super deep. I'm going to put some berry town and we're going to dump this guy out. The roots are really good, so there's no need to rough them up, but you can if they're really entwined there. Stick him down there. It's really dry, so we're going to need to water him in. Push the soil first and then I push the mulch back over, pushing really hard. Well, not really hard, but some force to really let it stabilize on the ground. And you definitely want to water it in really, really good, both of them. And I do this in stages, so I'll plant two of them and then I'll water the two and then I'll go plant another two and water the two and then I'll come back and water everything one more time because it's really hot. And the plants were pretty dry when I put them in. Now this next one, I think, I think you guys would agree with me. I think it makes sense, right? So once again, we have another gifted tree from Everglades Farm. They did give me three. This is the Barbados cherry. Now I had one before. If you guys have been with me for a long time, you know that I had one over in the shady spot. Did terrible. I gave up on it a couple of years ago and I'm ready to try again, but this time I'm going to grow it in a very large pot in the sunniest spot, like by my RV. So I had to validate or I had to like convince myself why this is okay to break the rules for. And it's mainly because this tree right here, which is my mango, which I'm fairly certain is dead. We're going to check that together. And then this guy way over here is my juju bee. Also very dead. Now both of these I protected during the winter. They went into my shed right here during the coldest of nights. They were never out when it was below 32 degrees. But just being in the shed alone wasn't enough to protect it. And if that isn't going to protect it, there's no way that I can keep these trees. This is actually my third mango. And if you remember, this one was gifted to me by Fast Growing Trees. It's the Glen mango. But, you know, it started to grow. It started to do better, but it really doesn't love being in the container. And it just absolutely hates any form of cold weather. Any form of cold weather we get here, these mangoes just give up. I mean, they're not into it. So let's clip them down and see if there's any salvageable tree here, which I don't think there is. I mean, it's June, right? And it doesn't have one single sprout. Dead, dead, dead, all dead. Definitely dead. Yeah, the entire graft is dead. It's grafted way down here, and I'm not seeing anything that tells me that this tree is alive. Please forgive this makeshift situation I was doing. I was in a hurry, and we had a storm approaching. So yeah, see, dead still. And see, the graft is right here. It's like right there. So if it's completely dead right here, I doubt we're going to find anything. Nope, yeah, it's not alive above the graft. In fact, when the roots come up like that, there's nothing alive down there. All right, now we're going to try the jujube. Once again, I don't think it's... Nope, dead, dead, still dead. See, I thought this was more cold hardy than the mango, but still just might not be cold hardy enough. Yeah, all this is dead. There's no live wood. No, nothing. Root structure's a little more intact, though. I don't know if this is grafted. It kind of looks grafted. Yeah, I'm gonna... I'm gonna... Oh, wait. Holy crap. It's not dead. It's not dead. Color me shocked. I was cutting down, and I came right here thinking this is like the weeds over here. It's not. These are new sprouts. Okay, this one gets a new life. I'm very excited about this. That means the jujube tree can handle some of our cold, which is what I thought. So I'm super stoked about this. I'm so glad like we let these things go a while, because honestly, I was gonna just get rid of this one a month ago. But I was like, well, you just you keep waiting. And I was like, if nothing happens by June, you know, then I'm going to pull it up. And so we're here in June. And I'm like, okay, let's make this video. And I'll just rip this guy out. And you know, I didn't even notice this down here because of the weeds that were in the pot. So I was just kind of clipping, clipping, clipping. And then I got and I was like, oh, it's this green weed. And I'm like, that's not a weed. That is the jujube sprouting up from the roots. And being as I'm not sure, I don't think that this is a grafted tree. It's if it is a grafted tree, it's sprouting from underneath the graft line, but I don't think it is. I'm gonna oh wait, jujube tree grafted. So this is the rootstock variety that's coming up. I'm kind of curious to let it grow and see what it does produce. I'm gonna have to do a lot more research to figure out what the rootstock is to see whether or not it makes sense to let it keep growing to see what kind of fruit the rootstock produces. If you guys know if you're familiar with jujubes and what the typical rootstock is, like, does it make sense to let it keep growing? Or should I get rid of it? Like leave that down in the comments. I'm excited, yet I'm cautious. I'm not going to get too excited. Because knowing that this is grafted, it says it right there on the tag. This is the rootstock growing and that that's probably not ideal. But we'll see. Even though we said goodbye to the mango, and we have some situation going over there with the jujube, we are replacing both of those with a Barbados cherry, which I'm going to end up getting one of those Bego rolling planters to put this guy in once it gets bigger. And just kind of let it grow in that because I do know that these don't love super cold weather. So on those rare winters that we get really crazy cold weather, I'll have to protect him. But I know that a lot of the times they grow out from the root system. So it shouldn't be it's not like a grafted situation. So it's I know that for sure on this guy. So it should be something that I can protect and that will fruit as long as I put it in a sunny spot. Stay tuned on this one and I'll keep you updated on how it goes. We had to come into the patio for these next two because it is just so hot out there. At least over here I have my fans. I cannot believe how hot it got this year. I understand like June, of course it's hot, but we went from like cold to full blown summer in the in the beginning of May. It was crazy. I guess I just every year I'm hoping that spring will last a little bit longer and every year it disappoints me. So I shouldn't be surprised. Now these next two, I have no excuse whatsoever. I have nothing that I can say for myself in terms of getting these. They are not replacements. They were not gifted. They are not, you know, the same variety of something I already have. In fact, it kind of these varieties kind of go against everything I tell you guys when it comes to citrus. And so the first one I got here is a Kalamondon. My friend Jacqueline, she runs the Floridian channel. She has a Kalamondon. She let me try them. We did like a Thanksgiving special together collaboration video and she made this cake and it had Kalamondons, like candied Kalamondons on top of it. And oh my goodness, that is so good. It reminded of me like Sprite or Seven Up. That's all I can say. And now this guy right here, I've never eaten the fruit of this one, but this is called a red finger lime. It is a special lime that is like a oblong instead of round. And this one is red. So I think it's either I'm assuming it's red on the inside and green on the outside. I don't know. Honestly, I didn't even look it up. The other thing that's interesting about this one is the inside isn't like a typical lime. It comes out looking like pearls or boba or caviar is kind of the style that the inside of the fruit looks like. So that's really interesting. Now, I always tell you guys don't go for citrus because greening disease and that is still true. But if there's two varieties of citrus that you want to grow that has the least likelihood of being affected by citrus greening disease or the Asian psyllid, it's going to be these two right here, the Kalamondon and the finger lime. I don't necessarily understand or know why it is that these two are less affected. I don't know if the bug just doesn't go after these plants or if they have like a natural immunity in their roots or their soil. I'm not a hundred percent sure, but these two are kind of known for outlasting that. So even if they don't live the 30 years that citrus used to live, if I could get 10 years out of them, I'll be happy. And check this out. These, can you see that up close? They have like a crazy amount of fruit on this one. I don't think there's any fruit on the finger lime. Both of these are still pretty young, so I wasn't expecting it, but just a few days ago, I noticed that the Kalamondon actually has fruit on it. Very, very young. I don't know about this one. Now I'm going to up-pot these because they should have been up-potted. I can tell that they need to be up-potted because when I water them, and here's a little bonus tip about watering any plant. This is not just fruit, but any plant. If you have it in a pot and you water it and it, you know, holds that water for a whole week, cool, right? And then slowly over time, you start to notice that it's not able to hold the water as long. Like you're having to water it twice a week and the weather hasn't even changed or something. Like if you're going from winter to summer, yeah, I mean, you got to go to twice a week anyway, but now they're getting to the point that I'm having to water them like every three days. So that's kind of telling me that they're running out of root space. Now, another thing you could do is look at the bottom here and the holes and see if you can see some of the roots coming out of the holes in the bottom. And I can see a little bit, but really not enough to make me think that they need to be potted. It's really the idea that I keep having to water these a little bit too often and it compared to my other pots. So that tells me that there's not enough soil in there to hold the water for the roots. So we're going to get these guys out. We're going to put them in pots this size. Now, eventually they're going to go in 30 gallon pots. The Vigo rolling planters that I really like, they're going to eventually go into those, but you never want to pot them up from something this size to a 30 gallon right off the bat, because what happens is, is the soil on the bottom holds all that water really, really well. And so it becomes kind of mucky. And then the roots are sitting in this really, really wet, mucky mess. What you want to do is give it a little space to grow, but also use up that moisture in that soil. You want to up pot every single year, a couple of gallons. This one's a little bit bigger than a couple of gallons, but I think it'll be fine. We're in summer and this isn't the best time to do it. And these guys might lose all of their fruit, but I'm going to be really gentle. I'm going to be really gentle. I up potted my mandarin when it had fruit on it and it still held all of its fruit. So I think if I'm just really gentle, we'll be able to get this done. It's a little bit more. These are the same size. There we go. All right. We're just going to, oh, that did not, that's not gentle. That's not the gentle I was talking about. That's all right. But look at the, look at the roots. Yeah. There's not a lot of soil there. So I'm glad we are repotting them. Now all we're going to do is kind of dump our soil in there, trying to keep this guy in the center. Now I'm not trying to dump a lot of soil on top here. We don't want to bury that branch. What I really want to do is just kind of make it level. Now it will sink a little bit, so I am going to press and make sure I don't have any air gaps kind of brush the top off a little bit more. Yeah, that's good. I think now this one makes me nervous because this one is like old school citrus. It has thorns all over it. And they're like the little baby thorns. So I'm going to put some gloves on because I don't want to get hurt. I'm going to attempt to be gentle on like my last attempt. There we go. And see this one, the root system isn't so bad. It's pretty good actually. I'm going to shake it a little bit and it's very pokey. It's going to be, it's got a lot of soil at the top here. Okay, that's okay. We're going to leave that where it's at. Ah, prickly. All right. Next step for both of these guys is a little bit of citrus fertilizer. Now I'm not going to do a lot because we're not trying to be real aggressive. We're just trying to let them get settled in nice. So maybe like a tablespoon and I'll give it a full feed, you know, later on in the season when we get a little bit closer to fall. But for now, that's all we're going to do. We're going to get these guys watered in, but I'm going to go move them to their shady spot where I can water them in. This is my absolute favorite spot in the yard for transplants or for cuttings or anything that really needs a little bit of a transition. They'll sit here for probably five to seven days. They get about one to two hours of sunlight and then the rest of the time they're completely shaded. Now normally what I do is I leave this pot right here, this little watering can, because usually the soil that I use is pretty dry and hydrophobic at the point that I'm putting them in there and you should wet it beforehand. But this soil actually just came out of another container. I know some of you are going to ask, like, what soil did I use? I usually like ProMix, but for the tropical fruit trees I've been using Expert Gardener. It's a Walmart one. It has a little bit more woods and chips and stuff, and I think it likes it better. It gets less wet feet, but you have to water it more often, so it's a little trade-off. But either way, this soil was used soil, so it was already kind of wet because I just dumped it, so it still had some of the moisture in it, so it wasn't completely hydrophobic dry. But if it were, if you just got it out of the bag or it's used soil that's been sitting for a while, I water it, I set this here, I come back out later that night, the next morning, whatever, go looking for my watering can for the garden, I realize it's over here. It reminds me, hey, I need to water this again. So I give it a nice deep watering again, two days in a row, and that usually allows all that soil to get nice and moist. So I may not have met my 2026 goals, and it's only halfway through the year. I'm still really happy with the fruit that I got. I feel like they're different. I feel like I've learned a lot and that these guys can handle our winters as well as handle our heat, and I know how to protect these new citrus plants. Like, I've learned so much, and if you want to learn everything that I have learned, definitely check out my new book, The Florida Fruit Garden. It's on my website, homegrownfloridagarden.com. It has so much. It has a fruit index that talks about all the different types of fruits, whether it's good for north, central, or south Florida. It also talks about if you want to grow the most productive varieties, if you want to grow a kid's garden, if you want to grow the fastest producer so that you have fruit in one year. It has chapters for every single one of those. It also has all the foundation stuff, like how to plant it, you know, what kind of soil, how to amend it, how to fertilize it, how to water it, how to grow it in containers. I'm telling you guys, I poured my whole brain into this book. You're going to absolutely love it. Thanks for hanging out with me today. Well, we got a lot of work done, even though we failed all of our goals, but that's okay. Happy gardening!