growing dwarf / small tamarillo?

Hi everyone, long time (couldn't find the website for a while on my search engine)a

Im in the UK so tamarillo is not used to our climate, mines on an indoor windowsill and is getting pot bound, I intend to put it in a small polytunnel which is 1.5 m hight at the max. Just checking whether they are okay to be pruned into dwarf or small trees??

the polytunnel wont be heated

cheers

 

I can't answer your questions but I do remember an experiment a local grower had conducted in a "Tamarillo orchard" of sorts. He would intentionally rootbound half of his stock and then measure height and fruit output and the rootbound ones grew smaller but were not too far behind in fruit. From memory, he was pleased with the height and continued to rootbound them (not sure how it would go in a drought).

Cuttings would probably be smaller too.

 

Ah thanks there! Will experiment then

 

The best method I would recommend is to turn the Tamarillo into Bonsai. This way you can keep them in the same pots. Just lift when in the dormant stage and trim the roots so there is 2cm of space between the root ball and the edge of the pot, fill the space with new potting soil and then trim the top back, 1/3 at a time will do quite nicely.

 

Hi Bryant, Perhaps that is an option but won't that make it too small for fruit production ?

 

That would depend on how large a Bonsai you made the Tamarillo. I have one pear tree that I keep as Bonsai, it is just under 2 meters tall and it fruits so heavily that I have to remove 2/3 of the set fruit so the tree branches won't break. A bonus is that by plucking down to what the branches will hold at ripening time, I don't have any fruit drop from that tree. I did it as an experiment and will probably do a couple more in the future. My pear Bonsai is in a 6 gal. ceramic container. I use manure/compost/vermicompost tea for the fertilizer.

 

My tamarillos are naturally about 8-10 feet tall and I can reach the fruit on tiptoe. I am a tad over 6 feet tall. I reckon if you just tip pruned them and cut out the central leader from a metre high they would grow into a more spread habit if they had plenty of light. Here the fruit are just starting to turn red and yellow, be ready in about 2-3 weeks. They are pretty short lived here and 5 years is a very old one. An interesting thing to me is that the lower the light, the larger the leaves they tend to grow to compensate and they still bear the same amount of fruit. They drop their leaves here in mid- winter and sprout again in the spring.

 

Thanks for the input Curramore1! I'm really hoping to be able to at least grow one in a small polytunnel, I was a little put off when I was watching a video from NZ where the young guy was showing frost damage, here in the UK there is obviously much bigger risk and my garden is not big enough to try establish larger cover trees or a microclimate, so the polutunnel will have to do and I will just have to cope with the loss if the tree dies off in the cold,
although ... I found this info on a blog I follow and can always try it out on the colder nights, the little polytunnel I am making will be easier to heat so I should be able to use only two tea candles rather than 4, hopefully I can then figure out a way to heat it by reusing some heat from the house or compost etc.and prevent the need to buy tea candles:

https://growingarden.wordpress.com/...-to-heat-your-greenhouse-for-8p-us-10c-a-day/