Growing Exotic Fruits in a Cool Zone – Easy to Hard

Easy Fruit Trees and Plants to Grow

Key Lime

Key Lime is one of the easiest trees we've grown in pots at our house and almost feels like a set-it-and-forget-it plant. Once we put it in a pot with fast-draining citrus soil, all we really had to do was watch out for any nutrient imbalances such as nitrogen, iron, etc. Our particular tree also grew into its bushy shape all on its own without any excessive pruning on our part; however, we recognize that we may have just been lucky there.

• This tree has fruited in our zone.

Blood Orange 

Our Blood Orange tree was a lot like the Key Lime in that it felt very much like a plant-and-wait situation. The plant arrived with blood oranges already on it at about three feet tall, and after a couple growing seasons started to send out fruit regularly. Much like our Key Lime tree, this one was simply a matter of watching out for nutrient issues and shaping the tree. That said, we had to train this one to grow into its shape just a bit more which could have been based on the shape of the tree when we got it.

• This tree has fruited in our zone.

Dragonfruit Cactus

While not a tree, our purple Dragonfruit Cactus is among the easier of plants we have at our house. All we had to do was provide a proper trellis for it (in the form of a tomato cage) to create an environment where the long arms flop over and start growing downward to trigger fruiting. Within a year, our dragonfruit cactus had well over a dozen arms that had grown over and reached almost to the ground with minimal intervention beyond passively tugging the arms downward now and again. That said, training the arms downward has resulted in a few breaking off, which we then later cured and propagated into new cacti to give to friends. A win-win!

Yuzu and Calamansi

Yuzu and Calamansi are two new plants for us, and as such we do not have much experience with them just yet. That said, the trees are amongst the best for cold tolerance as far as citrus are concerned, and we expect them to be easy growers for us in the long run even if we have to bring them inside before the first freeze. That said, our Calamansi tree came as a bush grown from a cutting and sent out a huge flush of flowers with the very first set of growth- resulting in over two dozen fruits in the very first flush. Not bad at all. Now we have to wait upwards of 12 months for those to ripen! 

• The Calamansi tree has fruited in our zone.

Pink Guava

Another tropical fruit tree that is growing surprisingly well in our region is a Pink Guava tree. This one is a voracious grower, loves heat and humidity, and seems to just take to our climate in a pot. We, admittedly, purchased an older tree here and when it arrived it was already well over six feet tall with fruit. But even just a few months in a pot it started growing at an incredibly pace, with some branches growing over a foot in a single season, and the viable fruit rose from two to over a dozen in the span of just a few weeks. As such, we expect this tree to be on of our most productive assuming no major issues overwintering while the fruit ripens.

• This tree has fruited in our zone.

Prickly Pear Cactus

Did you know that some Prickley Pear cacti are cold-tolerant? We purchased several Zone 6 rated cacti to place on our hill near our beehives and found that they take rather well to our south-facing slope and overall climate. While these will take years before they grow and produce fruit, we love how hands-off they are. All you really need is either well-draining soil or, in our case, a lightly sloped hill and a boat load of sun and they will seemingly thrive.

Maypops

It may be a stretch to call Maypops exotic, since they are native to our zone, but these North American passionflowers are incredibly easy to grow. Once put in the ground with a trellis (note: one of our few plants not in pots), these vines would be incredible spreaders- both on the trellis and via the roots underground. We had a modest fruit set even in our second year, and really the only real issue we had with these plants was simply pulling out shoots when the roots spread just a little bit too far from our trellis for our liking. That said, in Zone 6b, our Maypops almost always dieback to the ground over winter before returning the following spring.

• This vine has fruited in our zone.

Moderate Fruit Trees and Plants to Grow

Meyer Lemon

We originally thought growing a Meyer Lemon would be a lot like our Key Lime tree- almost set it and forget it. However, we had several problems with this tree. The first was a function of how it was received- rootstock growth was overtaking the tree at delivery and we didn't notice this. This was a function of this unique plant and could happen to most any grafted citrus tree, but what happened after is seemingly a lemon problem- water sprouts.

This growth is a lot like suckers that grow from the rootstock, but grow above the graft line. These are voracious growers that consume a large amount of water and nutrients while being low productive, if at all. These are said to grow after excessive pruning (which we did for the above issue), and we had to fight back several rounds of water sprout growth before the tree ultimately started to grow into the shape we wanted.

• We also have a non-grated Santa Teresa Feminello Lemon bush growing from cutting which also had mild water sprout problems. As such I am exceptionally cautious on all things lemon.
• Our Meyer Lemon tree has flowered in our zone, but the early flowers were stressed and did not pollinate.

Kumquat

Kumquat can be an easy tree to grow in pots; however, so far, in our experience, our trees have been temperamental. The first one was purchased in the fall and likely did not get established very well in the pot and died- possibly due to over-fertilization or possibly not being watered properly (or both). Our second kumquat tree started taking off well and was already starting to fruit while incredibly young. Ultimately, this one made a moderate category for us if only because if you choose to leave the fruit on a young tree, it may be putting resources to ripening fruit instead of growing- opening up risks if the tree is still young. 

• This tree has flowered in our zone.

Longan

We wanted to have one tropical cluster-style fruit in our collection and had originally started with a Lychee for our container forest. You'll read why that was a bad idea in a minute, but we replaced it with a Longan because it is a similar fruit but often recognized as being a fair bit easier to grow. Still, Longan is not without its challenges as this one is sensitive to high winds (particularly the young leaves), can burn in some cases, and requires a slightly different watering frequency than citrus trees. Even just a little improper watering here caused our tree to lose half of its leaves and take quite a long time to recover!

Likewise, bloom is seemingly triggered by cool nights, which may present an issue for pollination if brought indoors in winter. Still, we are giving this one a go just to have a tasty fruit that is a little different from our citrus-heavy crop. As such, we consider this a long-shot crop for fruiting and are in a wait-and-see mode for now.

Mango

Mangos are not a fruit tree you commonly read about growing in a pot, and likely with good reason. Much like a Longan tree, above, they are quite tempermental and look for a number of cues, including temperature, to flower. While our mango tree is growing well and expected, it is a major what-if on whether or not it will ever fruit while in a pot. We expect our cool fall and early spring nights to tilt this one towards a yes, but we honestly just don't know.

Add in other sensitivities to young leaves emerging in two/three month cycles and this tree is not without its risk. Much like with our Longan, we are in a wait-and-see mode on this one.

Fig

Figs are another exotic fruit that deserves an asterisk on this list purely because some varieties can be grown in the ground in Zone 6b (Brown Turkey, etc.). That said, when growing figs in pots, we had lost several during winter dormancy, and even in our moderate environment, growing in the ground requires several precautions like wrapping with burlap and tarp in the winter. One winter we had sustained weather at 0°F and the trees died back to the roots (returning much more vigorously the following season) whereas the next year it barely got below freezing and the following year had explosive growth. As such, this one really is dependent on your winters and how much prep you take to protect your trees, which can be costly and time-consuming.

• This tree has flowered in our zone.

Difficult Fruit Trees and Plants to Grow

Pawpaw

It is interesting that Pawpaw makes its way to our difficult category as this is another tree that is native to our area and can grow well in the ground. That said, our trees have been incredibly temperamental. They seem favored by the local animal population and either get eaten or stomped on (use a protective cage), have issues with too much lighting on our south-facing slope, and are seemingly also quite slow to grow. Add on that it requires two unique trees to pollinate fruit, and you have a lot of hurdles to cross when growing these trees. We're told that Pawpaws become much easier to manage once they're established and mature, but based on our attempts to grow these we can see why they are quite rare to find!

Passion Fruit

As a compliment to our Maypops which we grow in the ground, we thought it'd be fun to try and grow a Passion Fruit vine in a pot with a round vertical trellis. While this one grows vegetatively like mad, and flowers somewhat regularly, we've yet to have a single fruit stay on the vine as they all appear to die off. This plant, along with its Maypop cousin, are notorious for significant fruit drop, and it being in a pot likely exacerbates many of the issues as the vine simply cannot spread (and therefore grow ample flowers) the way its in-ground counterparts do. Throw on the extra foliage being consumers of water, nutrients, etc. and we often find the plant to go through stress cycles on both fronts way more than our other potted plants.

• This vine has flowered in our zone, but the early flowers were stressed and did not pollinate.

Lychee

Lychee has been one of the hardest trees we've tried to cultivate in a pot, and we likely did not do it any favors at the start. Lychee is notoriously picky for the climate it likes, young leaves are incredibly sensitive to disturbances like wind, it prefers rainwater almost exclusively, and is incredibly responsive to fertilizer imbalances. We likely overfertilized our tree when it was young and it likely had root burn and died. Throw on all of the other issues we decided that growing lychee simply wasn't in the cards for us at all, which is why we switched to the much easier to grow Longan (above).

Do you grow any exotic fruit trees or plants in your area? What zone are you in and how successful have you been? Comment below to share!

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