The Tropical Fruit Forum

Sasa and José Pabón from Puerto Rico.  Big and tasty and doesn't suck the moisture out of your mouth like many do.

Very nice!  Loaded.  How long did it take for the tree to first fruit?  Was hoping I could acquire this here in Thailand, but no luck so far.

A lot of people squeeze/pinch the blooms and have good luck getting pollination.  Google it to get more info.  Hopefully it helps.

Thank you for the kind words W.  Stinkfist...First thing I'd do would be to sell the passionfruit on Marketplace.  I had no room in my greenhouse for these crazy, non-stop growers.  The Achachairu shouldn't be much of an issue.  Just don't go transplanting in too large of a container for these.  Should be plenty of conversations on this forum and on FB.  Give them as much light as possible during winter.  You might start looking into supplemental lighting. 

Go all medieval on that beast!  Hard to do, but you appreciate it later.

That's awesome Carolyn!  Glad you enjoy the shirt.  Yeah...canal is not an issue.  If we were to get a flood like back in 2011, then it wouldn't make a difference anyway.  I thought working in the greenhouse was bad.  The heat during the day can be brutal.

Hey Ben, good observation.  I didn't see many locations shading either.  Must be acclimating their trees in pots while preparing the land.  Most trees looked good.  I had mentioned that I saw lots of older trees that were dead or dying.  I'm betting most of these were from disease.  However, my wife was reading an article over here that said people were poisoning durian trees.  Yeah.  Someone gets pissed off at a neighbor or whatever reason, and decides they are going to kill a bunch of their durian trees.  Nice, eh?

Every variety has it's best peakness and I've learned that tree-dropped is not the best for all.  For me, mongthong is best when the skin is a little snappy, but the actual flesh is creamy...nowhere near sloppiness though.  I like it chilled or not.  I've had really great mongthong and some that were just okay.  Lindsay always has more durian than they can eat at once, so freezes many.  These were really good also and was very refreshing.  However, I do no care for the frozen durian in the stores.  Also keep in mind that many Thais eat their fruit much earlier than we do.  I have to set aside fruit for myself from the market, or trees, letting them ripen further.

Roadtrip this past Friday for a few days of tropical fruit hunting...and some relaxing.  Brutal heat.  Hovered around 100 degrees each day.  Heat index in some areas reached 130.  It is so dry throughout, it was like walking thru a furnace.

Durian orchards/farms were everywhere.  It seemed like nearly everyone's yard, field, and farm had durian trees.  So many new plantings too.  Huge areas cleared with big retention ponds being dug for irrigation.  Lindsay says some farmers are removing other fruit trees in favor of durian.  Most are planted on mounds, at least the younger groves and newer plantings.  Lots are doing the two trees per mound as well for insurance.  The slower/weaker tree will be removed in a few years.  Many are also jumping on the pruning wagon.  Even older trees are being topped while younger trees are kept at a much shorter height.  Another thing I noticed was that older trees on some of the farms looked horrible.  Not sure if due to Roundup spraying around the trees or maybe phytopthera catching up to them.

Durian Land.  I believe they said that this is the largest commercial durian farm in Thailand.  It was massive for sure.  Mostly mongthong, but have 40 other varieties.  The Chanthaburi #1 was pretty good.  This is a cross between mongthong and chanee.  They also have a zip line adventure where you can speed right thru big durian trees.  Pretty fun.  There is a nice cafe at the top serving all kinds of cool fruit drinks and a big menu of food...and durian!





Suriya Cacao Farm.  Yeah...Thailand is growing cacao on several farms now.  This farm was the first to successfully grow and export their beans.  About 7 years now.  Their beans are not only used for chocolate here in Thailand, but get exported to Belgium and California.  They grow durian, mangosteen, and some others as well.  The durian I'm holding is a 9kg beast of a mongthong.










Auntie Eat durian farm and cafe...I believe this is how it translates to.  Can sit down and stuff yourself with durian varieties and/or walk their farm.




Lindsay and Richard from Year Of The Durian.  Anyone who knows even a little bit about durian probably knows who Lindsay is.  We hooked up with them late afternoon and spent the evening catching up and talking durian.  Dang...but she is a busy busy lady!  She has several tours coming up starting next week here in Thailand and will continue as durian ripen in neighboring countries.  Always on the move.  It was good seeing her.  The last time we were all together was back in 2013 for our annual trip to Puerto Rico.

All I can say is good luck with the maprangs.  These are exactly what I was trying to bring back home with me.  No issue with the permit.  I bare rooted the trees prior to hitting the Thai ag station for inspection.  Didn't find out till I was there that I could have done this at the location.  The fight was that they wanted to call it mango plum or some other name, but always with the word "mango".  USDA will not allow mangoes into the country so having the mango on the phyto was a no-go for me.  Just a long long day.  All this crap and when I got into Chicago, I was waved right on thru even though I honestly claimed that I had shit to declare.  Good for me.  Ended up losing every single one of them in the greenhouse.  One thing I learned from this experience as well as having them shipped to me from someone else...maprangs have a SHITTY SHITTY root system!  Bare rooting just compounds this issue.  Hopefully you will have better luck.

Nice looking trees.
First pic:  Are those branches above the graft?  If below, definitely cut.  I think rule-of-thumb is first branch 21"-30" up...or there abouts.
Second pic:  That vertical branch looks like a nice and thick.  The one below looks mighty thin and doesn't look to be another above that one oriented in that direction for quite a ways.  Could try putting some anchors in the ground and pulling/training the branch to be more horizontal.
Just my two cents.

I've been seeing more videos like this in Thailand recently.  They plant 3 trees together in a triangle to make the trees less susceptible to wind damage as well as to have branches criss-cross to help enhance pollination efforts...having different trees close by with different pollen.  I thought it was pretty interesting.  Techniques are always evolving.

This first video is a good overview of durian cultivation in Thailand.  About midway thru, it talks about the three trees method.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KSKeNuZLq8

This vid is pretty much all 3-tree method.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2o0e_Ezw3e4&t=204s

Agree.  I think one of the biggest reasons for shorter trees is the ease of maintenance...spraying ferts/insecticides.  Lim says the doubling up of trees was sort of insurance in case one dies or is not keeping up.  I planted two Monthong that were gifted to me in the same hole.  If both do well, I will most likely graft them together into one tree.  Regardless, this dude in Thailand sure showing good results.  And in such a short time frame.

I will be keeping mine here in the yard closer together and shorter, but mainly for space issues.  I'm also hoping my multiple rootstock grafting produces good results as well.  I will say, early analysis shows that the one tree where all rootstocks succeeded quickly outpaced the tree where two of the rootstocks failed.  Hopefully they continue to "giddy-up"!