Please read text!
Naranjilla Lulo Fruit Solanum Quitoense Seeds
Packet of 100+ seeds of this rare fruit!
Well, when I say rare I mean rarely grown or seen here in Australia.
It is super common and popular all through Brazil, Columbia, Ecudor, Chile, all through South America.
I got these guys from a Brazilian friend of ours and I am really happy with the plants.
Very cool looking, covered in nasty spikes so the critters and insects keep off them, yet picking the delicious fruit is really easy.
Your hand fits perfect inbetween the leaves, and a little twist and the ripe fruit just pop of the plant.
The fruit themselves have a fine layer of down on them to keep the bugs off.
It actually looks like the nasty hairs you find on a cactus, but in reality this is just dust and it wipes off with your hands. Not spiky or irritating in the slightest.
You can eat them a few different ways, the first being as nature intended.
Pull it of the tree, give it a rub like an apple to remove the fur, cut it in half and just squeeze the juice into your mouth, dump the rind, then grab another one!
In the market places and cafes abroad they are sold as “Lulo Juice” ready to go in cups or bottles.
Also as a common ingredient in sorbet, icecream, sauces, jelly, or baked into pies, tarts and set deserts, pretty much like you would use a passionfruit over here.
It has a really unique flavour, very hard to describe and the closest I can come up with is pineapple, melon, lemon and passionfruit, but sweet and refreshing, not over the top acidic.
It looks like an eggplant or a leather skinned tomato when cut, and is in the same family, but the flavour is very different. It’s very much a fruit, not a vegetable if you know what I mean.
Handles full sun, no water, blazing heat, but since the rain it has really taken off. More than doubled its size in a month.
Seeds grew really easy much to my surprise. I put two seeds per pot and got nearly every one strike. The next couple lots I put five seeds per pot and thinned them out to the best one as you don’t need hundreds of these guys.
I am told fruit appears 10-12 months after seeding and continues for 3 years with 100-150 fruit being produced in the first year. Not on mine unfortunately, quick to flower, but maybe 30 or so fruit each plant which is still plenty for me. Especially considering we have had no rain and I have not watered them at all since transplanting.
Now that they are getting a feed and a water who knows, they might hit 100 by 18months old?
UPDATE! Easily 100 fruit per plant by the 18month-2year mark.
Regardless, awesome as an ornamental, with the massive purple spiny leaves, and not only that it’s bloody delicious!
Grown by me and the Mrs Organically, no chems no nasties no dramas!!!
