The Tropical Fruit Forum

Hi Mark, one positive of this Shelter in Place is that I'm really catching up on all the chores at home.  I had been out of the country and abroad for 5 out of 6 weeks (work stuff), and all the trees and gardening suffered.  I now have a late garden sprouting in the garage, and today I finished juicing/freezing/canning the:
- Limes
- Lemons
- Pomelos
- Grapefruits
- And left-over oranges

I'm well stocked for citrus for the year, to say the least.

Plenty of other choirs in the outdoors getting accomplished as well.  The Avocado trees are looking good so far.  We had a super mild winter, so I'm hoping for a banner year there.  I'll post some pics and an update later in April.  Have fun!

Hi Mark, thanks for the insight.  I had imagined a new panel each year, but you're probably right that it's not worth the effort at such a low incremental volume increase.  Do you bump up the volume every year, or more infrequently?  We've had an extra warm winter so far here, so I'm hoping all the trees come through without the usual heavy leaf drop and reset.  How's it going there?

Thanks for the pointers.  I don't know what's worse the immediate damage an invading canine can wrought on a garden, or the slow, life-sucking extraction that invading roots from an adjacent neighbor's trees can apply.  I hope you can patch up the hole for good.

Mark, looks like I've got a new mission to accept.  Maybe I'll save this one for 2021.  I'll probably DM you some more questions down the line.  Thanks!

That's great to hear.  With the mild CA weather, I'd expect your trees are in heaven.  It wasn't so too hot this summer relative to what we've seen in some other years.  Looking forward to hearing more about your new varieties.

Hi Brad, it's good to hear that it happens.  It's a new phenomenon from my experience.  It's as if this entire tree is blooming and it believes it's in Spring.  I'm thinking this late-Spring like whether we're experiencing has confused it.  I'm betting none of that new bud and flower makes it through the full Winter though, which is why I figured it might be wise to snip them off -- save the tree some resources.

I have a question for you Avocado experts.  Earlier this year (early Spring I believe it was), I transplanted three Avocado trees in my front yard in "raised beds."  These trees had been growing in large ~50-gal food grade barrel makeshift pots for 7 years or so.  They were heavily root bound, so the transplant was shocking and they dropped all flowers fruit through the process.  They seem to have recovered through the Summer, and we've had a very long summer here in the Sacramento valley.  Right now we're nearing middle of November with daily temps in the high 70's low 80's.  There's been little winter chill yet -- an extremely warm/mild Winter start to say the least.

The reason for my post and my question has to do with the first of three transplants, a Fuerte tree.  You can see it in the pics below.  I noticed this morning that the tree had started to set blooms on nearly all of its terminal buds, and this has me worried.  The tree has never bloomed in the Fall/Winter like this before.  I wonder if it is confused from the transplant and/or this inordinately warm Winter weather.  Does the tree think it's already Spring?  We did have a bit of a cooling trend a few weeks to a month back.

Whatever the case may be, ought I to pinch off these flowers, since the Winter will surely come sooner or later?  Is this common elsewhere in the state?  I was really looking forward to maybe getting a crop this next season (Starting with the flower in Spring '20).  I'm worried that the tree will confuse itself with this early flowering and fail to set more in 4-5 months after Winter ends.  The trees are getting full/100% southern exposure where they're at BTW.  Looking forward to some good advice.  Oh, the other two trees have yet to show any signs of premature flowering.  Thanks!

Yeah, I have volunteers like that popping up here and there on my 30% grade 1/3 acre north-facing hillside.  The chickens take care of the low hanging fruit, and if I'm ever working on the hill in summer, I might pop a few.  The smaller varieties always seems to out-compete the beefier.  The only issue I have with letting a tomato sprawl is that it takes up so much more space for growing other tomatoes, and its much harder to harvest.  If you have ground running rodents, they're more likely to snag the fruit as well.  It is fun, though, to let them alone and get fruit for what seems like "free."

I stopped grafting my tomatoes two years back because it was such a heavy time and effort investment.  I have 20% worse tasting tomatoes now, but there are still some decent hybrids with resistance to my soil fungi you can find coming out of Japan and a few good ones that have worked up through the states.  Have a good day sir!

Everything is looking great.  What was the reason for the heavy prune on Reed?  Just getting too tall for your space?

I also figure I might as well post updated pics of the three Avocado trees I transplanted to the front yard earlier (either this year or late last -- somehow I can't recall).  They had a hard go early on, but they've recovered well through the summer.  I hope they can weather the winter and come through next Spring to set (and hold) a lot of fruit.  Each tree has fruited a bit previously while in pots, but they dropped all fruit after the transplant this Spring.

Hi Kris, sure I do.  I've been babying them all season, though they really didn't set any viable fruit this round.  But as is the usual, the trees look best about this time of year before the cold snaps hit.  I'll aim to take some pictures of the five RootBuilder bound trees to show their progress.  Their size is impressive, on most (ignoring the weeping Holiday).  How are your trees fairing?

Yeah, I had extra cutting and thought I'd try.  I've heard with air-layering that it's possible, but grafting is the only "sure way" to propagate avocado.