The Palm Beach Rare Fruit Council Tropical Fruit Tree and Plant Sale at the South Florida Fair Agriplex
in West Palm Beach features hard to find plants, fruit samples, speakers and expert advice
all in a 51,000-square-foot exhibit space.
Photos provided
By Deborah S. Hartz-Seeley
Pomegranates, jaboticaba, grumichama, non doc mai mangoes, Barbados cherries and ackee. Whether you want to plant a rare fruit tree or an exotic orchard, you’ll want to shop the Tropical Fruit Tree and Plant Sale on March 28 in West Palm Beach.
This biannual sale is a fundraiser for the Palm Beach Chapter of The Rare Fruit Council International, Inc., a nonprofit organization dedicated to the introduction and growing of rare tropical fruits.
“People come to this sale year after year; they look forward to it,” says Susan Lerner, chairwoman/manager of the plant sale and immediate past president of the Palm Beach RFC.
The Palm Beach Chapter has been hosting this event for over 30 years.
Once held at Mounts Botanical Garden and then Dreher Park, it was moved to the South Florida Fair Agriplex building in 2003.
Today the five-hour sale welcomes about 1,300 attendees to the 51,000-square-foot exhibit space.
“The sale is unique,” says Douglas Drummond, who, with his wife, Aiva, has been attending for the past seven years. “You get to see unusual things you’ve only heard about,” he adds.
This year he’s in search of a cecropia tree that grows a foot a year and, he says, produces fruit that look like long Gummy Bears. He wants to add it to the 60 tropical fruit trees already planted on his two acres in Loxahatchee.
When you enter the fair, you’ll pass a fresh fruit display. As you wander the aisles, volunteers offer samples of some of those items such as mangoes, mamey sapote and jackfruit. “It all depends on what’s in season and being harvested now,” says Lerner.
Pick up a map and you’ll discover what makes this sale special.
Instead of vendors having individual booths, the plants are displayed in alphabetical order — from abiu to white sapote — by type of tree. And one area is devoted to more than 60 varieties of mangoes.
When you decide which type fruit trees you wish to purchase, you can see all the available specimens in one place — no need to go from booth to booth comparing plants and prices. “That makes shopping easy,” says Lerner.
For identification, each plant is tagged with the grower’s name.
And in case you have questions about your plant’s requirements for sun, fertilizer and water, the growers as well as knowledgeable people from the RFC are available to give advice.
“People think you can just plop a fruit tree in the ground and it will grow. But it’s like having a pet, you have to tend to its needs,” says Drummond.
To further ensure your success, all the plants on offer have been carefully inspected just before the sale to be sure they are well rooted and pest free.
Gary Gomes, owner of GMG Tropical Fruits in Loxahatchee, plans to bring about 300 plants from his 5½-acre nursery. He began selecting and prepping these a year ago.
“I want to offer good looking trees that have been nurtured and fertilized carefully so when you buy them they are ready to go into the ground,” he says.
Deborah S. Hartz-Seeley is a certified master gardener who can be reached at debhartz@att.net.
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