Growing Citrus Fruit or Maybe trying an Avocado tree in the Dallas/Fort Worth area? (palms, avocados)

[Isleofpalms85]

Ok, this may be a baseless question but I wanted to know just the same, has anyone either yourself or someone you know of attempted to grow citrus fruit(They supposedly have varieties and brands that are touted as being more hardy than older varieties), or thought of or actually attempted to grow Avocados in North Texas, aka the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex area?

[denverian]

Originally Posted by Isleofpalms85

Ok, this may be a baseless question but I wanted to know just the same, has anyone either yourself or someone you know of attempted to grow citrus fruit(They supposedly have varieties and brands that are touted as being more hardy than older varieties), or thought of or actually attempted to grow Avocados in North Texas, aka the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex area?

I highly doubt it. Dallas got down to 15 degrees this past January, and had been that low in 2011 as well. No citrus or avacado could handle that.

I think the problem with DFW is that there's just nothing to the north to block arctic air from moving in every few years (no mountains or a body of water to neutralize the cold). I lived in San Antonio back in 89-90 and I remember it getting down to the upper teens there one night. That cold snap killed a lot of palms in San Antonio. Amazing that it can get that cold that far south. SA is about the same lattitude as Orlando. But I never saw any citrus or Avacado trees in San Antonio, and most trees there are deciduous. Some winters in SA you could grow very tropical trees, but then every decade or so, they get one horrible freeze down to the upper teens and it kills tropical vegetation, so most people don't bother.