As the evil grin spreads across her face.....

Yes.

Well in truth more experience in removing them. My dad, who passed a few years back, had planted a lot of them to sell the fruit. White Sapotes. They reseed easily and grow rapidly. In our garden. They are hard to kill.

If you enjoy the fruit they should be easy to grow since your zone is similar. The do drop a lots of leaves and big trees produce a lot of fruit, if you can not eat it all, beware rats love them and fruits that land on the ground will sprout or at least ours did. Their roots will travel distances looking for water

Thanks Kippy, have you had experiences with other sapotes or sapodillas as well?

Are the roots for White Sapotes difficult to manage? e.g., would they mess with the house foundations? Do they grow like jujube roots? How tall do they get?

I only have experience with the one type. Personally that is they type of fruit I would want to purchase and eat right at the farmers market. Ours seemed to go from unripe to over ripe and damaged in a day. They ended up not being a very marketable fruit

One that sprouted as a seed spit in the street side planter had. Root run under our side walk (cracked it) and under the garage foundation (cracked it) and through the garage where I stopped tracing the root (gravel floor) It was the size of my forearm 20 feet from the tree and fairly shallow. I think a different one reached in to a leech field and another into the neighbors lawn.

They are fairly difficult to dig up and roundup does not seem to do a lot of damage. I have one stump to dig up that we cut the top off 5 years ago and I am still trying to get it to stop coming back from the roots. I should note these were established trees with trunk diameters of 12" or more

I do not enjoy the fruit and we had waaayyyy too many of the trees. Maybe a better variety would do better for you

The ants live to tend bugs on the fresh new growth too. Something I have noticed on other peoples trees as well

Oh boy, White sapotes sound scary to grow. How old were these trees? Were they seedlings? Any way I can control its growth or maybe its roots too?

"would they mess with the house foundations? Do they grow like jujube roots? How tall do they get?"

Sapote can grow to be a big tree if let unchecked -- just like a big mango tree in Florida or in tropic -- but people do keep mangoes small in their small yard in FL by cutting back. I'm in southern California 91501 and my 13 yo sapote is 15' feet tall with 12" trunk diameter. Any vigorous big tree should be planted away from structure foundation. (I do have my mango trees planted 12" from our house foundation. Mango is a small tree in California.) Sapote has surface root like citrus trees -- they are actually close relative. No sapote doesn't have the kind of jujube roots which send up thorny shoots everywhere. I pick my fruits when they are just start getting soft to a little pressure, store in frig for over 2 to 3 weeks without any less in quality. if they are over ripe on tree then no good.

Sapote

Thanks Sapote! What kind of trees with smaller root systems would you say do well near house structure?

Where do you live -- warm Florida?

I don't know what tree you have in mind. Tell us what you are interested and we might be able to help. I read that mango has deep root and so if you keep it small by control pruning than it is a good candidate.

Socal actually, I am interested in growing any sort of tropicals or sub-tropicals or even just regular fruit trees near the house without having to worry about root damage.

I was looking to grow some sapotes but am afraid the trunk/roots to get too big even with continuous pruning (or not much fruits because of the pruning)

Sapote tree should not be near the house foundation. Papaya near south and west facing walls is perfect. Or grape vine along the wall and train then hugging the wall will provide shade, fruits and beautiful light green leaves during hot summer. I also think a small Plum tree -- I like Santa Rosa.

Can you share pictures of your sapote trees? In your experience, what is the best tasting sapote variety and what's their growth speed? Do they tend to have shallow roots?

Cyh you could grow bananas, guavas and passion fruit. Those do good here (Santa Barbara) Guavas make for a nice hedge.

I took out the loquats but they do well also. We had a couple of volunteers, both in bad spots and I have not felt like replacing them.

Our remaining sapote I cut to an 8 foot trunk with nubs because it had gotten too tall and too dense and was supporting a ton of aphids and insects about 2 years ago. I bet it is 40 feet tall again.