Introduction

Hello and thanks for visiting my little piece of the web!

To start, my goals for this blog are 3 fold:

• Be a place to write up the fun DIY projects I concoct/attempt
• Be a log of my plants' growth
  
• Be a resource to others trying to grow tropicals in temperate climates

Hopefully this will make me document what I've done a bit better so that I can reproduce successes, minimize failures, and get good suggestions from those more experienced gardeners out there. Just to be clear and get this out of the way early, everything I grow is 100% legal!

A bit about me: I'm a graduate student studying energy conversion and storage in Wisconsin (US Hardiness Zone 5). I live in a rented apartment that has a nice South facing 2nd floor patio and a bit of room for my plants and animals. Because of these things, time, space, and money are always a concern when it comes to my plant addiction hobby. I try to find cheap, local, recycled ways to grow things whenever possible. Most of my seedlings start life in (washed) red Coleman cups recouped from the lawns of frat houses on Sunday mornings or around town after Badger games.

My collection of plants includes:

• 7 Miracle fruit plants (though, 1 may not make it)
• 4 Key lime plants (grown from seed)
  
• 11 coffee plants
• 3 cherimoya seedlings (with more likely to sprout)
• 4 mangroves (in a salt water aquarium)
• a number of guava seedlings
• ginger
• various outside plants I'm trying to over winter indoors (peppers, lemon grass, citronella, skull cap, basil, and a few houseplants)
• 3 jaboticaba seedlings and 2 loquat seedlings

These plants mostly fit on a large table and in a small, cheap, high humidity vivarium I designed from 3mm drop cloth plastic and a metal shelving unit. I have the plants to over winter under a 150W HPS grow light and everything else is under 6500K flourescents (some compact, some 4ft linear T8 bulbs). Now for some pictures!

Here are my coffee plants, thriving and growing like crazy! On the far left, you can see one of my cherimoya seedlings and on the far right, a loquat in my homemade, recycled self-watering container.

My mangroves, growing and helping to keep my snowflake moray eel tank clean!

Miracle fruit madness! These bad boys are nearly breaking out of their enclosure. Hopefully I'll have some fruit soon.

My hydroponic red savina habanero has officially hit the ceiling.

Meyer lemon seedlings in the vivarium. I've read that these don't typically grow true to seed due to the plant being grafted to different rootstock. The owner of the tree assured me that he'd planted this on its own roots but only time will tell how exactly these turn out! Also, in the green pot, is a cherimoya seedling. They don't seem to like the high humidity of the vivarium and so, test complete, this little guy will move out with the other seedlings on the table.

More pics to come later!

I'm hoping to expand my collection when I can. Some of the plants I'm hoping to get in the future include:

1. Theobroma cacao (chocolate!) -- feel free to let me know if you have a good source for fresh pods!
   
2. Barbados cherry
3. a few types of passion fruit vines
4. Acai palms
5. Neem plants
6. pineapple and strawberry guavas
7. dwarf pomegranate
   
8. Vanilla orchid
9. Cinnamomum zeylanicum (Cinnamon tree)
10. I'm always open to other suggestions as well! Go ahead and post a comment for a recomendation.

I hope you enjoy these posts and please do leave feedback if liked what you read or there is anything in particular you'd like me to post on!

One further disclaimer, as you probably see some advertisements, I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. My goal isn't to make much money but to earn enough so that I can try out and add reviews of books and other products to this site for the benefit of this blog's readers.