The Tropical Fruit Forum

Irakle,
Spray with a Copper-containing product mixed with a micro-nutrient product.  Also apply gypsum (Calcium Sulfate) and a palm fertilizer on the soil.  Such cracks can heal up pretty fast.

Much appreciated feedback, thanks a lot.
Never seen those cracks in my mango plants, it was a bit of a shock to me.

Are those plants from the italian nursery?
Didnt see that they sell black pitangas.

I would place a bet that they'll make it, with some initial care.

I like using electrical tape on most of my grafts.
Much easier for me to keep things in place, nice and tight.

Hey all,
  A guy posted a pic in a facebook group, of a whole mango tree he claimed was air-layered. I mean, he air layered the whole tree.
People of course asked questions, so he posted the following video, showing the "procedure".

They say this is a common practice in indonesia, grafting multiple rootstocks on the trunks of mature trees and combine it with some sort of air layering procedure, so to help the plant develope an adequate root systrm when it's cut off.

Please note how that guy inserts the rootstock "scions". No cambium contact, no  nothing. I call that as fake.
What do you think?
Have you seen anything like this before?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=WWkkmUH6xAg

Greetings to all,
 first of all, wherever you are located, I hope you all stay safe and keep it low in your houses until this whole mess becomes history.

Now, just to help us all distract ourselves from that corona virus thing, I'm looking for some advice of what kind of spots I should look for, in order to plant the following plants I just received, in terms of wind protection, sun hours, max/min tolerated temperatures, watering / fertilizing schedules etc.

In the picture below you may see the plants as were received. Plants were bought from an Italian nursery, just before their general lock down, arrived just yesterday after 10 whole days in transit, in a much better shape than I was expecting.
From left to right:
Eugenia aggregata
Psidium guava gialia (it's a lemon / yellow guava)
Eugenia brasiliensis
A second Eugenia aggregata
A small purple jaboticaba
Psidium guinense --> I could post a closer pic of this one, if anyone has his/her doubts if it's indeed a guineense
2 Feijoas, one mammoth and one triumph.

Now, I already grow a psidium cattleianum (strawberry guava) and 2 feijoas so I'm quite confident about where to plant and how to care for 4 of those 8 plants.
I also grow 2 eugenia unifloras, but I realised that grumichama and cherry of rio grande might have different requirements than unifloras.
Jaboticaba? Never tasted one, never saw one in real life! It's just a fascinating plant for me so I just pulled the trigger, ordered it, and hoped for the best.

So, my zone is probably a solid 11, lowest temp we get is around 4-5 Celsius (around 40 F), for a handful of days per year.
We have a short fall and winter, with moderate rainfall, short spring with also moderate rainfall until let's say, mid  April and the we get a long, really long really dry summer from early May to late September. Temps during summer time are well above 30 Celsius (85F) with July and August having frequent 35-39 C (95 - 100 F).
That's "Mediterranean subtropical with a twist of extra dry weather" climate if you want a label on it.

My understanding is that, I should protect Jaboticaba and Eugenias from intense and prolonged sunlight, while at the same time preserving some kind of humidity on the ground, by heavy mulching?
The only spot I have in my garden that provides those characteristics, along with excellent wind protection, is also the coldest one during winter because it basically faces north - northeast.
Also, they will only get sunlight for about 6 hours during summertime and 4 hourse during winter. The rest of the day, they'll be basically under shade (not dark, but still).

So, do you guys see any major problems in my approach?
Any advice, that might prevent me from doing any mistakes that would kill those plants?
Any well-kept secrets of how to make that jaboticaba grow like crazy and let me finally taste that weird looking grape-like fruit?


Thanks in advance!

PS: I just noticed, the tree in the background, is a longan seedling I bought from our local "home depot" store". It's not grafted and just refuses to fruit sufficiently. It makes a handful of pea size longans every year. The b@stard. I threatened it that it will feed my fireplace next winter if it doesn't pull its act together. I hope it listened.

Hello all,
Last summer, in a holiday resort in my country (Cyprus), a country where the only mango varieties you can see in nurseries are Tommies, and a few unknown egyptian ones (most common is Ewais and Zebdah it seems), I came across a very neglected, very sorry-looking tree, planted in a shady corner.
It had the most colorful mangoes I've ever seen. Some of them were allready on the ground. So I picked those who were still good to eat and they were good. Really good. Fi erless (totally), aromatic, no piney after taste, rather than a florar hint. They were tiny ofcourse, most probably due to the tree's neglection.
I asked the owner, she had no idea where that tree came from (it was allready there when she bought the property).
So I searched online and it appears to me that, somehow, a Maha Chanok specimen found itselfnin Cyprus?

What do you think?

So, yeah.
I bought that tree from a local nursery today, brought it home, put it in a nice little hole, in a nice little wind protected spot in my yard.
And then, I noticed this:




So pissed off with myself. And the nursery guys. How could I not seen that when I was picking it?

Anyway, i did use a very sharp clean knife to cut the string off and remove it completely, without avoiding some  cuts on the trunk.
Anyone knows if those trees recover easily, or should i consider it a lost case?
I did cover the wound. Good idea or bad idea?

Why, oh why have i not seen that in the first place?

Hi all, new member here.
My name is Michalis (Michael), I live in Cyprus (yep, that one tiny country in Southeast Mediterranean sea, which you can drive end-to-end in a couple of hours, if you don't care about speed limits! Otherwise, it'll take around...3 hours).

I've developed an interest in "all plants tropical", although so far I've been only growing in yard trees you can consider as "common" here: Figs, Olive trees, Pomegranate, all sorts of citrus (Lemons, Mandarings a couple of varieties of oranges etc). So my interest so far has been theoretical, just something I found myself enjoying reading about.  I though I could never cultivate anything more "exotic" successfully since I believed that the place I live is not the best environment for such plants.

My town, Limassol is on the southern part of the island and my place is located on a hillside, facing southwest. So we indeed never get frosts, minimum temperatures are in the regions of 45-50F and that is only a couple of weeks per year. However, during summertime it can regularly reach 100F. In addition to that, there's allways some breeze coming from the West which frequently escalates to some fairly strong winds, especially during spring and late summer. In other words, you could describe my house as "exposed". In addition to that, my house sits on limestone soil, not too deep (you can reach bedrock 2-3 ft below). And ofcourse, drought: if it rains anywhere between May and September, it's in the news. Kids are afraid that something is wrong, politicians make statements, people get so excited we have mini baby-booms 9 months later, you get the drift!

Anyway, long story short, 4 years ago, I decided to plant a few shrubs/trees other than the usual you can readily find in nurseries here, just to see what happens. Apparently, I couldn't find all species I was interested in 'cause I hesitated to order something from aboard so I just focused on those plants I could find in Cyprus. That is, unnamed varieties, unfortunately. Also, care was minimal (some soil amendment on each planting spot, regular watering during summer, some mulch, not anything fancy).
The results were way better than my expectations:
-Unnamed luchee tree: died within a year. The winds seemed to dry off its leaves.
-Two unnamed longan trees: thriving. The more wind-protected one fruited last year, a couple of dozens of fruits, taste was surpsingly good. The more exposed one, showed more vigorous growth (enjoys more sunlight), it flowered this year for the first time.
-Unamed mango tree: Thriving. Fruited last year for the first time, a couple of mangoes. Taste was..terrible (extremely strong flavor, lots of fibers, resinous aftertaste). I need to find better varieties to graft onto this one!
-Two surinam cherries (orange variety): thriving. Lots of fruits, terrible turpentine-like taste. I'll propably kill them this year.
-Two Feijoa plants: Thriving. Flowered for the first time last year, no fruits set. This year I'm hand-pollinating in the hopes of finally get the chance to taste those pineapple guavas.

So, basically, I was wrong.
It seems that some tropical/subtropical plants can indeed be cultivated in my house, as long as they do have some wind resistance. My goal now is to find those grafted varieties that actually bear descent fruits!

And that's where my long and english-is-not-my-first-language post ends!
Glad to find this amazing forum!