I just thought I'd see if there was anything odd you would grow. letting this slide on down, still haven't thought of what I might grow next.

I haven't grown anything odd or out of zone, nor do I have a greenhouse BUT, I would love to grow an avocado tree!

Here is what I have done with out of zone plants. Ill start with food.

pineapple- one fruited to ripening. Tasted great, took 2 years start to finish. They take up a ton of room in the greenhouse so until I get a bigger one Ill pass. Although the plant suffered no issue from cutting the leafs back by half to make them smaller.
Citrus- been growing these for about 4 years.
Meyer lemons- get a couple dozen per year. I need to sacrifice a year of fruit and let the trees get a lot bigger
Key lime- typically get enough to make 1 or 2 pies plus a few for drinks. also need to let them just grow one year.
Armstrong satsuma mandarin- get 6-12 per year. taste better than store bought cuties.
Washington Navel orange.- really need to let this one grow. Only getting 1-2 fruit per year.
Bearrs lime- still small. letting grow for a few years.
Fukushu Kumquat- Fantastic tree. flower all the time. fruit is very tart and sweet. Taste great.
Store bought lemon seedling. about 5 years old now. Flowered for the first time last year but didnt set fruit. Hopefully soon.
Grapefruit seedling- about 3 years old now, been neglected so not growing much. Need to revive it. I understand some wont fruit for a very long time so may scrap this one.
Bananas. Trying my hardest to get a Dwarf Cavendish to fruit. Might be impossible until I get a much larger greenhouse.

I tried mango and avocado. Both from seed. both died early on. I would like to get a patio mango one day.

Non edible. I grow tons of plumeria(reducing from about 40 to 10 or 12), elephant ears annually, musa bananas and Adenium(desert rose) grew a few Angels trumpets and had some flower.
I got on a kick a few years ago to try and grow anything that normally wont grow here and really got overwhelmed. Typically because i was repotting all the time. Now I am going to focus on the ones that give me food and keep a few pretty ones.
mike

I bought guava bushes a couple years ago. After spending last winter in the greenhouse, they bloomed last spring but didn't set on a single fruit. I have two bushes the same variety, but one bloomed before the other. All the blooms fell off. Then the other one bloomed and ditto. They are back in the greenhouse now. They survived an 11 degree night in there last year. I may not let them get quite that cold this year.

I thought about the Meyers lemon and actually searched them out to purchase. But I didn't know if I wanted them or not. I bought some key limes the other day and I will probably see what kind of luck I have with the seeds.

I have some lemon plants I sprouted from seed but they are still small. I am going to try and prune it into a small bush over time.

I grew a avocado a couple of years ago but after reading about them I finally threw it out. Just way too long for any possible fruit.

I'd like to find something that produces over an extended period instead of just once a year.

That's the only thing about pineapples, I can stagger the plantings. But they do take up a lot of space. That is why I'd like to try something different that has more production.

I pondered this question for a while and couldn't think of anything that would give you any sort of extended production.

I grow a few citrus trees like Mike does, and some years I get a pretty good harvest and some years I don't. Usually I have Meyer lemon, lime and a Satsuma orange. What kills me is that I'll let them get too cold on one late winter or early spring night when I am out late at a fire and forget to bring them inside the house or greenhouse on what had been a nice day but is going to be a cold night, and they'll suffer freeze damage so severe it takes them months to recover. Because I let them get too cold in the spring of 2013, I had no fruit in 2014. Maybe 2015 will be better.

I have had luck growing rhubarb in a container. I keep the container at the shady west end of the garden in summer where the shade of the pecan tree keeps it alive (I lose the in-ground rhubarb plants to heat and/or drought every July/August) and move it to the greenhouse for the winter. I get a decent rhubarb harvest in early spring from the plants in the containers that overwintered in the unheated greenhouse. Of course, no one but my husband actually likes rhubarb so I don't know if you could sell any at the market. Got any misplaced Yankees there looking for rhubarb in spring?

I can barely stand to go into CostCo in the DFW metro area in the springtime whenever it is that they have the citrus trees in the store., which likely is March or maybe earliest April. The trees are gorgeous---tall, healthy, glossy foliage and covered with almost-ripe fruit. The aroma from the ones that are blooming is so intoxicating. Sometimes their orange trees will have a dozen or two nearly-ripe fruit on them. They sell for either $29 or $39 and look a hundred times better than my piddly little plants that have struggled through the winter in the unheated greenhouse. I always resist the urge to buy a tree loaded with fruit, but every winter I always say "when they have the trees this year, I am going to get one". I never do, though, because it seems like cheating to buy a tree loaded down with fruit that is about to ripen. It wouldn't be home-grown fruit. I guess I could call it home-harvested.

Alright, I ordered 2 fig plants. 1- brown turkey and 1 celeste. I will keep them in the greenhouse and probably propagate them and then plant the originals outside.

Not exactly a plant that is out of this zone but close enough. I almost went for an olive tree. But I think it would take too much time .

I also found out all the Alco's are going out of business. This small town is really going to miss it.

I'll probably dedicate one corner of the greenhouse for out of the ordinary.

I may get some carnivorous plants also. I'm a glutton for punishment. I'd go crazy if I lived in a tropical zone. I'd love to grow citrus.

I also ordered some more muscadine. Maybe since I'm home I will have better luck keeping them alive during the hot , dry summer.

it sure is hard to not go crazy and order a bunch of stuff.

I love figs. I have two of them, both Brown Turkey. One is in a molasses feed tub container that I can carry into the greenhouse in fall so that the late crop of figs has a chance to mature. The other one is in the ground out in the back garden. It suffers a lot of freeze damage when the first hard freeze is really early, but always regrows just fine in spring. The one I keep in the greenhouse does fruit earlier in the year, so by having one in the ground and one in the greenhouse, I am hedging my bets. So far, so good.

It is very hard to not go crazy and order too many seeds, plants, rhizomes, etc.

When I am in the mood to binge shop, I go to Sample Seed Shop (owned and operated by a GardenWeb member name Remy) where the seed count in the packets is smaller and the cost per package is low. I can order a lot of different kinds of seeds there without spending a fortune. Everything I've ever grown from seed from SSS has germinated just fine and grown well for me.

I really do try to exercise restraint and not purchase more seeds than I can use. Sometimes I succeed at that and other times I don't. I try to order seeds for things that I "need" in fall during the various companies' clearance sales. Then, in winter, I am really just "window shopping" to see what is new. That doesn't mean that I don't order some things, but I order relatively few because I already have everything I need, which keeps me aware of how many seeds I'm buying. Or, at least, it should.

Sometimes when I have an overwhelming urge to buy everything I see on a seed company website, I deliberately walk away from the computer and get out my big Rubbermaid seed storage tote and go through my seed packets to reorganize them. Looking at everything I already have really, really forces me to ask myself "do I need anything else?" The answer always is more like "Well, yes, I want something else." I know that is not the same as saying yes I need some more seeds, but boredom will make a gardener throw caution to the wind and order way too many seeds and plants.

I do hoard seeds sometimes. Last winter when I was pulling seeds out of my seed crate to start seeds indoors, I found a couple of packets, unopened, that dated back to 2003. Ooops. I cannot imagine how that happened.