Author Topic: How do you prune starfruit to fruit in the off-season?  (Read 941 times)

Weboh

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How do you prune starfruit to fruit in the off-season?
« on: October 14, 2018, 11:18:48 PM »
I've read that it's possible to prune starfruit trees a special way to get them to produce in the off-season. I can't find much information on how to do that though--much less a picture or video of process. Can anyone share any advice, preferably with pictures? Thanks.

bsbullie

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Re: How do you prune starfruit to fruit in the off-season?
« Reply #1 on: October 15, 2018, 06:51:45 AM »
You dont need to orune it.  Carambola fruit twice a year, late summer and again late in the year around December.
- Rob

pineislander

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Re: How do you prune starfruit to fruit in the off-season?
« Reply #2 on: October 15, 2018, 08:07:04 AM »
Please don't take offense at my suggestion there is some evidence for what I can say about this. I agree they generally have 2 crops here in Florida. You can prune and bend to induce flowering. Commercial growers in my area who have thousands of trees prune rows sequentially to spread out the harvest. You may succeed in doing this if you have multiple trees and possibly on a single tree by sequentially performing the same technique on different sections of a single tree.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXc-kIkNcAA

http://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=29381.msg331892#msg331892


echinopora

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Re: How do you prune starfruit to fruit in the off-season?
« Reply #3 on: October 15, 2018, 01:27:11 PM »
I’ve got one on an espalier, to spread out the harvest I sequentially hard prune a cordon down to 6” fruiting spurs. I do one cordon every 2 weeks after the winter crop is fully harvested. The new flush has flowers right away. It’s nice to have a few star fruit but unpruned trees here get ridiculously big and way too many fruit. My neighbor never prunes his and you need a ladder to get even the lowest fruit. The summer bloom can be managed the same way but I don’t prune back as hard, just tidy back any long shoots and bring the upper canopy in to let light on the lower branches.