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Planting
Days to maturity
Seasonal yields
Sow indoors · Direct sow · Transplant outdoors
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Plant · P-501
Soursop
Annona muricata
Soursop is an evergreen tree that grows a large, spiny green fruit with white, custard-textured pulp that's juicy, refreshingly acid and pineapple-scented, eaten raw, blended with milk or ice cream, and even used immature as a cooked vegetable. It's one of the most cold-tender fruit trees grown, unable to take any frost at all, but it rewards a heated house or a large container: seed usually breeds true and a tree can start bearing 10 to 50 fruits by its second year. Its flowers are pollinated by flies and beetles rather than bees, so fruit set is often disappointing unless pollinated by hand, and the seeds and irritant sap in the stems are toxic enough to keep away from stock, poultry and children.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full Sun · Partial Sun
- USDA zone
- USDA 10–11
- Soil
- Sand · Loam
- Moisture
- Well-Drained · Moist
Vertical layer
Sub-Canopy- Soil pH
- 5.5–6.5
- Plant type
- Evergreen Tree
- Mature height
- 15–20 ft
- Mature spread
- 8–12 ft
- Plant spacing
- 15–20 ft
- Root type
- Fibrous-shallow
- Spread pattern
- None
Keep exploring
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The deeper layer
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- Primary
- Locked ecological function
- Secondary
- Locked ecological function
- Byproduct
- Locked ecological function
Behind the record
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