Pineapple, avocado, and ?

I really want to grow edible trees or bushes as house plants that would not survive my climate outdoors.   I'm currently trying pineapple and avocado, but I would love to hear suggestions for others.  Our living room has high ceilings, approximately 20 feet, and the south facing wall is nearly all glass.  Short winter days may be an issue.  We only get daylight 9 hours a day in the shortest days of winter.  Can I grow bananas?  Coconut?  Dragon Fruit?  I'm up to try anything, but would love to get edibles at some point, even years down the road.

People down the road from our local Firehall, have a south facing glass wall attached to their house and they have a row of lemon trees that produce well for them. They have a bunch of buckets of water to act as mass to balance the temperature. I don't know if the trees are grafted to roots to keep them smaller than natural trees, or if they're some special variety. I do not believe they give them supplemental light in the winter. They'd be around 48 degrees latitude, so there's not much sun in the winter!

The fellow is known for growing unusual fruit and grafting multiple varieties of things onto miniature root stock for small backyards. He would advise against bothering with banana as it takes a very long time for the fruit to mature, unless you want to grow it just for the leaves which are used for various foods around the world, but I think as a wrap to cook it in, as opposed to a leaf you'd actually eat.

Here's some banana leaf bags like Jay mentioned and some proof of lemons growing at surprisingly high latitudes, lol! I heard the other day that pineapple tops can be cut in fourths and make four plants instead of one.

agreed, lemons or other citrus are good options. i bet you could get some varieties of papaya to fruit in those conditions too. you could probably do year-round peppers?

Dragon fruit does well in pots.  
This guy's got a ton of videos on it.
https://www.youtube.com/@GraftingDragonFruit

I could see maybe adding a grow light to your living room would help.

greg mosser wrote:agreed, lemons or other citrus are good options. i bet you could get some varieties of papaya to fruit in those conditions too. you could probably do year-round peppers?

I'm actually doing that for the first time this year.  I have four large pepper plants growing in pots and they are doing great.  One is habanero, one is a ghost pepper, and two are some version of hot pepper that I forgot.

Papayas and dragon fruit grow very easily from seed from grocery store fruit. My dragon fruit is only a year or so old, looking very happy, but hasn't flowered. I think every seed I planted sprouted. I have away a few and composted a lot of seedlings.

I've grown papayas a number of times, but our winters have shorter days than yours, made worse by a narrow north-south valley and weeks of cloud cover. In those conditions, they always get spider mites, so I chuck them out in the fall now.

Here's a rather sunburned example of one of my papayas. They grow really fast, so they're satisfying that way. This one was only a few months old.

I have a cutting from a loquat tree from my friends yard in Adelaide Australia.  It’s now almost 40 years old never produced fruit but in the winter it lives in the basement with lights and in the summer gets dragged across and up 20 stairs dragged again to the deck outside. It weighs about 60lbs.  I still hope to get it into buds one year.

Passionfruit would be worth a shot too. Really useful little plant, with the leaves being medicinal, very showy flowers, delicious fruit, seeds make a great little snack if toasted. Its maybe not quite a tree or a bush as you might be looking for, but its just so terribly useful and not picky that I can't help but suggest it.

If you love your chili peppers, give Capsicum chacoense a shot, it thrives in pots and fruits more or less continuously once established

How about cocoa trees? Or maybe they require higher air humidity than you want indoors? But homegrown chocolate... That'd be cool.

Over the years I have grown dracaena, ponytail palm and others trees that I have lost to memory as house plants.

Besides the pineapples and avocados, my mom had a rubber tree that lived in our living room.

Friends have had banana trees and other fruit trees growing indoors.

I believe I have even seen some growing in shopping malls and office buildings, though I don't know their names.

This would make a great experiment to see what trees can be grown as house plants.

Anne Miller wrote:I believe I have even seen some growing in shopping malls and office buildings, though I don't know their names.

Wouldn't it be cool to get a local mall to grow edible plants in their atrium? Plenty of edibles are also gorgeous, like many of the Capsicums, the Passionfruit that was mentioned, and personally, I think lemon trees are very pretty. They could always give the produce to a food bank, and if so, they could likely get volunteers to manage the plants instead of paying a company to grow less useful stuff.

Trace Oswald wrote:I really want to grow edible trees or bushes as house plants that would not survive my climate outdoors.   I'm currently trying pineapple and avocado, but I would love to hear suggestions for others.  Our living room has high ceilings, approximately 20 feet, and the south facing wall is nearly all glass.  Short winter days may be an issue.  We only get daylight 9 hours a day in the shortest days of winter.  Can I grow bananas?  Coconut?  Dragon Fruit?  I'm up to try anything, but would love to get edibles at some point, even years down the road.

Kumquats are cute little trees, easy to grow indoors. It's a citrus fruit, but you eat it whole without peeling. They are excellent when dipped in chocolate!

I'd highly recommend checking out the selection at Logee's.  They're in Connecticut and specialize in plants that can live indoors if needed.

I was at an Indoor Citrus talk this past weekend and the presenters said that Meyers lemons were the hardest to grow and Calamondin oranges were the easiest.  Funnily enough, my lemons do well and I have 10 on the bush now.  The gentleman said that Calamondin are actually kumquats.  They grow well for me too but the fruit is rather bitter.  It sounded like they were easy to grow and sell so that's why you see them for sale everywhere.  They aren't that scrumptious.  I'm really hoping my Australian finger lime fruits this year...

A couple of years ago, a friend from Texas gave me a couple of curry leaf plant seeds (Murraya koenigii). I planted them in a 20" diameter x 20" tall glazed ceramic pot filled with edible (grocery store organic) ginger roots and a 1:1:1 mixture of perlite, sphagnum moss, and Happy Frog organic potting soil.  When garlic begins to sprout, I plant about three bulbs in the pot and let that grow with the ginger and the curry leaf.
The curry leaf plant is now (2 years later) a 5' tall and wide tree. The indoor sun exposure is mostly from the east. Ginger, green garlic, and curry leaves all grow well indoors in the same pot and are delicious fried together in the winter months as a flavor base for beans, stews and fried noodles.

Mary-Ellen Zands wrote:I have a cutting from a loquat tree from my friends yard in Adelaide Australia.  It’s now almost 40 years old never produced fruit but in the winter it lives in the basement with lights and in the summer gets dragged across and up 20 stairs dragged again to the deck outside. It weighs about 60lbs.  I still hope to get it into buds one year.

Loquats (Nísperos) are one of those trees where you need a male and a female. I have two in my front yard in Mexico and one fruits the other does not.

For years I am trying to grow Passion Fruit. I do have the plant. I took it as a small cutting with me from Curaçao (10 hours in the plane and 2 hours in the train). It grows as a long vine. But it never blooms, so no fruits either ...

You can see one of the passion plants here next to the curtain. The other one is in the right side corner of the window, but not clear to see in the photo. It vines up to the ceiling.

An easy edible houseplant to grow is Tradescantia, spiderworth in English (in the past it was called 'wandering Jew'). The green leaves can be used in salads.

Alas, most of the tropicals you might wish to grow want not only light, but also heat and humidity to do well. Some other issues you might see with tropicals, grown indoors here in the temperate zone, are: minor nutrient deficiencies, and insect pests, typically scale (on citrus) and whiteflies (on pineapples). Additionally, you need to be mindful of the pollination requirements, if you want fruit. Avocados, for example, require two cultivars that must have complementary flowering patterns (it's quite complex); most other fruit requires only two two separate cultivars blooming at the same time. You must hand-pollinate, though, if they're flowering in winter (as citrus may).
I'd go with citrus (grafted only, seedlings are tall and very thorny!), and perhaps cultivars of Barbados cherry (Malpighia glabra), which has small but delicious fruit. Also, carambola (star-fruit) takes well to containerization.
Avocados must also be grafted; seedlings will easily top your space without deigning to bloom.
Don't grow pineapples from the tops (crowns); the result will be miniaturized fruit. Use only root-suckers, as is done commercially. Your nursery source should know the difference (it's an epigenetic effect, and fruit sizes may be arbitrarily scaled up and down by propagation from tissue from bottom or top of the plants).
If you have further questions on specific species, query me at: stanton.deriel@yahoo.com
-- Stan

Citrus has long been grown indoors in cold climates with short cloudy winter days (think about the orangeries in the palaces in Northern Europe in the 1700’s).  Citrus lends itself to this practice since most cultivars are self-fertile (not requiring pollination), can tolerate low light conditions when dormant, and can be grafted on Flying Dragon rootstock to keep it dwarfed.  

Avocado would be more of a challenge.  They tend to shed leaves when subjected to a change in environment (moved inside after a summer outside), produce a large number of flowers requiring pollination in mid-winter with only a small number of these flowers actually setting fruit, even on trees growing outside in the subtopics.

Both citrus and avocados are grown in Southern California and so can tolerate low humidity,  although spider and citrus mites, if present, can be a problem on plants grown in low humidity.

Pineapples are more adaptable.  They can tolerate low light levels in the winter (at the expense of productivity), are very drought tolerant, have a minimal root system (making them easy to transplant and stuff in a tiny pot ), and in a greenhouse setting will continue to grow slowly and flower in the winter.  I pot up and grow my pineapples in the greenhouse for the winter, then plant them out in my vegetable garden for the summer.  Typically several of them will start flowering in late winter and will mature their fruit that summer in the garden.  They are said to require pollination, but I’ve never had poor fruit set even on plants that bloomed in the greenhouse.

Maybe pomegranate? Ginger, turmeric, galangal, lemongrass. How about bamboo for edible shoots? Almonds? And what about less exotic options like peaches that produce when the tree is small enough for your purposes, but mostly don't want to fruit with our springs even if you can get them to survive our winter.

I'm a fan of Logee's Greenhouses and heartily second that recommendation. They are a great resource not only for their selection of hard to find plants but also for their knowledge. They've been growing edible exotics at a northern latitude for many years. Everything from dwarf bananas, cocoa and citrus to figs, black pepper, pomegranates, olives and vanilla! Logee's has a good sense of what varieties will work in most situations for most people. I often check their website and videos for insight when I have a question about growing something in the category of exotic edibles. Currently I have figs, kumquat, turmeric, yellow, ginger and galangal ginger.

Citrus is a challenge, but I do enjoy it. They require some extra attention with fertilizer because trace mineral deficiencies can happen easily (in my experience). I've made several attempts over the years and have learned a bunch each time. I did manage to pick an orange that I grew, so I know it is totally possible. Plus the flowers smell amazing, that alone is worth it! For my third attempt with citrus, I've decided to focus on kumquats, because I enjoy their tartness, but also because I suspect smaller fruit will be more achievable to ripen in the home environment (I don't have a greenhouse, just a south window). Other influencing factors in my choice of kumquat is their natural lack of thorns and plant hardiness. Some kumquat varieties can be hardier than other citrus, tolerating cooler temperatures, which allows me to keep the plant outside a little longer in the fall. If you can give your exotic edibles a "summer vacation" outdoors, they will love it. That being said, the plant is handled a fair amount with schlepping it in and out, spring and fall. I'd rather not have thorny branches in my face when I awkwardly carry a 4' citrus tree in a 14" pot through the doorways. Besides it shares my indoor living space too.

I'm on my second attempt with figs, they seem to be a little easier to maintain than citrus and more forgiving about nutrient needs (at least for me). I'm trying something different with overwintering my figs this time and fingers crossed, I will have fruit this summer! We'll see.

Many of the herbs, especially the Mediterranean herbs will do surprisingly well indoors in a sunny window. Over the years I've had good luck with keeping rosemary, lavender, spearmint, oregano and thyme in pots through the winter months in a south or west facing window. They made beautiful edible and fragrant houseplants.

Turmeric, ginger and galangal was mentioned earlier and I totally agree with this suggestion! They are worth considering. Galangal especially because it prefers indirect light and grows happily for me at a distance away from the south window. I currently have Alpinia officinarum which is known as lesser galangal. It's foliage has an interesting cinnamon-like fragrance and the roots have medicinal properties. This is still a new herb to me and I have not tried the roots just yet. But I've found the plant to be super easy to grow! I divided it last spring and will have enough to try harvesting this year. I've read that the young shoots of greater galangal Alpinia galanga are edible and found in Thai cuisine. This galangal also interests me too, but it grows much larger (I think I read 6 feet somewhere). The lesser galangal has stayed under 3 feet for me and I think Alpinia officinarum makes a really great houseplant with potential usefulness.

Last but not least, I must mention turmeric. This has been a favorite of mine to grow in pots for many years. I harvest roots ever other year or so. They do need extra time to mature beyond what a zone 4 growing season will allow. I most enjoy nibbling on the flowers when turmeric blooms. The plant is gorgeous for achieving that indoor tropical oasis look and it can grow quite large (about 4 feet or so). It will die back and go dormant during the winter months, but I find this to be one of it's charms and makes it easy to care for. Dormancy lightens the watering schedule rather nicely and I can set the pot off to the side, in less ideal light until spring. Turmeric resprouts readily as the day length increases or about the time I'm ready to schlep my potted tropicals outside. The same has been true for yellow ginger, although I've found yellow ginger to be much more slow growing for me.

And don't forget good ol' Aloe vera, another super easy and useful houseplant for the south window.

I totally get the allure of growing your own tropical edibles. Obviously, this is a topic I can carry on enthusiastically about! Don't be afraid to try things or even try the same thing again. There is a lot to learn with tropical container garden culture and what works for you, might be different from what works for me. Good luck in your edible houseplant adventures!

Pineapples will be small if coming at all and nasty sour if they not getting heat and sunlight.
Most trees won't make it through the Winter, when you switch the heater on.

Avocados are very sensible. You overwater them once and they die within 48 hrs.

Try to look for desert fruits if you can provide full sunlight indoors.

Otherwise you need a "Winter garden" like a Greenhouse attached to the house to provide the humidity most plants demand.
Indoors you will not reach these levels without rolling the wallpapers off the walls or grow some extra mold behind your cupboards..

Daughter and I discuss moving to a more tropical place. We love eating tropical fruit. We are also experimenting with the local fruit like permissions and pawpaws. So far the trees are growing, we look forward to harvesting.

We have fig trees in giant pots, underneath the fig trees are pineapple and ginger. We are a USDA zone 7b. The ginger does great. Pineapple can 18 months to produce. The figs tend to fall of the tree before ripening. They might be figs from my dad's farm in Yemen. I am growing them for love and sharing with desert friends.

Citrus can do very well in pots. Ginger also produces well for us. We may at some point add a passive solar greenhouse to our home, then the topicals could flourish

Becky Proske wrote:or about the time I'm ready to schlep my potted tropicals outside.

Thank you all for the great ideas!  I'm learning a lot from this thread.  Becky, I gave you an apple for using the word "schlep" in a sentence.  That word always gives me a great mental image and makes me laugh.

Inge Leonora-den Ouden wrote:An easy edible houseplant to grow is Tradescantia, spiderworth in English (in the past it was called 'wandering Jew'). The green leaves can be used in salads.

Whaaaaaaat! I have been growing this for years and never knew this.

Be right back, going to make a salad!!