A few years ago, I bought a star fruit and I got curious – could I grow a new tree from one the seeds? I almost gave up on the idea because I’ve heard so many contradictory and discouraging things when it comes to growing stuff from fruit you buy from the store.
Turns out, there are some things you can grow from fruits you buy at the grocery store and star fruit is one of them. And it’s super simple.
In this post, I’ll provide some quick steps for getting your star fruit tree started this spring and at the end of this post you’ll find a video that shows the progress our tree has made since it sprouted in 2012. It hasn’t bore any fruit yet, but I’m betting this will be the year. It can take three years or more before a seedling will be strong enough to fruit and this the start of the third year for us.
We started some new seeds indoors last November and they are already off to a great start. Although, I’m not sure we’ll be able to grow them all, we’ve successfully started five new plants.
If you’d like to try to grown a star fruit tree of your own, check out the following tips:
Growing a star fruit tree (carambola) from seed
1. Start by buying a few ripe star fruits from the grocery store.
2. Carefully cut the fruit, take care not to cut the seeds. Eat some of the fruit (the fun part) to see if it’s sweet and worth planting. You’ll want to plant seeds from the fruits that are the sweetest.
3. Remove all of the seeds.
4. Put some seed starter soil (peat moss mix) in cups and wet it with warm water (it’s important to wet the soil before you plant the seed to keep the water from pushing your seed to the bottom of the cup). You may also use Jiffy Pellets – prepare them by wetting them with warm water, also.
5. Plant one seed per cup.
6. Water thoroughly with more warm water and cover with plastic to keep the soil moist.
Star fruit trees are tropical plants so this is a plant you’ll want to grow in a container if you don’t live in a tropical climate. Start with a small container and keep graduating the plant to a larger one as it grows. It will need to be transferred indoors or at least kept in the garage when the outside temperature falls below freezing or when there is a threat of frost.
During the winter it may loose leaves due to lack of light and lower temps, but it should pull through if you remember to water it every now and then.
We just brought our star fruit tree outside for the season. We’re keeping an eye on the lows and will bring it in if it dips below freezing or frosts again. Over the winter, the tree lost all its leaves, but we are hopeful it will spring back to life in no time. We will keep you updated on its progress as the season goes on.
In the meantime, have a look at what it looked like in the fall:
If you decide to give this a try, share your progress with us! Tell us, have you ever tried growing anything from fruits or vegetables you bought at the store? How did it go?
Hi there!
I stumbled upon your post after looking into buying some seed on eBay, but I might just give this a go, I live in Australia, about 2 hrs drive north of Sydney. It’s not a tropical climate, considered “temperate”, but it’s rare at any time of the year to get frost. From the research I have been doing, they can handle mild frost after ‘established’ (I can never quite work that one out lol! Is I based on time/plant height etc.-I suppose it depends on the plant or veg variety). I have heard these guys generally fruit at 3 years old if that helps-have you got any fruit from your not so small guy yet? I have heard also be hat not all varieties are self pollinating, so to get fruit it’s often recommended to give your tree a companion. I’ll keep an eye out for any updates! All the best with your reincarnated star fruit tree!!!
Hi Rachael! I hope you have some luck with planting your star fruit in Australia. Unfortunately, the star fruit tree that you saw in the video didn’t make it, but we planted a new one and this one is about a year old now, so no fruit, but it seems promising. We’ve brought it in the house for the winter and its only lost a few leaves. If it can hold on til the Spring, I’m sure it will be strong enough to produce next spring.
I have an Avocado tree I started from seed from the store, and it is about 3 to 4 yrs.old. I keep transplanting to bigger pots. No fruit yet, and yes it is a indoor plant, by a big window. I live in a colder climate. I have some star fruit seeds and now I have some inspiration to start a star fruit tree! Yeah! I am a retired/active Nurse,and I need some fun activities to do. Thanks everyone for your input and I will keep you posted! Susan J.
Hi Susan! I’m glad you’re having success with an avocado tree. I started a seed once, but I had to move and that disrupted its grown and it eventually died off, but now I’m inspired to try that again. Let me know how your avocado does and good luck with star fruit!
Thank you for that video! That was a beautiful tree 🙂 Really loved that you gave your ‘recipe’ for fertilizing. I’m going to get some fish emulsion. I’ll have to look up how much epsom salt to put on things and have got to find a ‘shicken poo’ place! I’ll give a dose to all my plants and fruit trees. Living in Florida, the soil is mostly sandy so I have to put real dirt in the hole before planting but things wash through too fast. Maybe I’ll feed a little more often?
Thank you again for sharing that wonderful information! I shared it on FB and Pinterest 🙂
Hi AvaC, sorry for the late reply, but life really gets busy sometimes and things (like your awesome comment) get overlooked. But anyway, I wish you great success in your planting endeavors in Florida! And thanks for sharing!
I was really wanting to know how the seed is turned to plant it and if anything else had to be done to the seed before planting it.
Hi Jeanne,
You don’t need to do anything. Just put it in some dirt and keep it moist.
Hello, just wondering if your starfruit tree ever produced fruit this year.
Hi Angelica,
Our first star fruit tree from the video died from the cold during the winter, so we had to start a new one and it hasn’t produced yet.
Hi! I would like to know if you were succeding in getting fruit?
Tx
Phillip
I’m about to try this for the first time myself. I stumbled on your post and had just one question for you about your tree.
Have you looked up about pruning the tree? If I remember correctly, there are several articles out there. It might help the health and look.
Well, I’m heading back to my seeds and begin my journey of star fruit farmer….lol. Ta-Ta-For-Now!!
Just stumbled on your starfruit post- because as I was cutting the one my son picked out grocery shopping I wondered the same thing!
My best success story was growing tomatoes from store fruit. We has a straggler sitting out that was getting soft after all of the other ‘maters had been eaten. When I finally cut it open I noticed most of the seeds had started to germinate inside the tomato. Since it was planting season, I just took the tomato and a small trowel, and scooped out the “slime” along with the germinating seeds- and plopped small blobs into my potting mix. I treated them just like I was starting any other garden seed, and we soon had dozens of tomato seedlings! (More than I could handle, even in our large-ish plot, sadly I had to thin them several times due to the number of plants that grew.) That year we had a bumper crop of tomatoes to can.
On the other hand, I have had very little success trying to use sweet/bell pepper seed from grocery peppers.
Happy growing- I will definitely try the starfruit. Should even be a fun project for the kids!
Hi Jen,
Thanks for stopping by and sharing your experience with us! I had a grocery store tomato do the same exact thing, but it was too late in the growing season to do anything with the sprouts. Now, I wish I had done something with those seedlings! I hope you have great success with the starfruit seeds. Please take lots of pictures and share them with us!