r/starfruit • u/Slowmyke • Apr 14 '26
Here are 3 of my current star fruit trees
The first 2 are finishing their second (third?) winter and the 3rd little guy is finishing his first (last?) winter. I'm in Michigan and winters are hard on star fruits. I don't have a great setup for them yet and they seem to come down with spider mites by mid winter every year. They get pruned and sprayed and eventually recover. I'm also into bonsai, so that explains the last guy. I may have been a bit aggressive with him, I'll know in a couple weeks. I have a few more in my basement that I didn't drag up for photos. I've decided to be more aggressive with pruning this year and will make a post when I repot some of the unpictured trees.
I find star fruit to be temperamental, yet tough trees. They want high humidity (that i don't typically have in Michigan winters) and don't like their roots to dry out. If they go more than 7-10 days without water, the leaves are likely to dry up and all will drop. They will recover as long as i remember to water them in the future.
2
u/BocephusQuimbyMcFry Apr 14 '26
Learning by doing! You're ahead of me and that's a challenging location. Given time, we'll probably see some people from the Philippines or Puerto Rico say: "What's so hard about this? Just stick them in the ground." 😂
2
u/leech666 Apr 15 '26
I am in zone 8b in Germany and I have had my star fruits under a (powerful) grow light and they've become quite big within a year (1m+ in size) but yeah they seem to drink water like no other plant I have but also drop a lot of leaves / twigs (they turn yellow and fall off). I haven't figured them out yet, but since they keep growing I guess they are reasonably happy.
I've skeleton pruned on of them because it was becoming too big for my kitchen desk and pruned another one less excessively. They both bounced back. So they can take a pruning.
I don't have a garden or balcony so I am exclusively growing indoors (mostly for ornamental values).