It's true -- they can be hard to grow here. That is probably why mamey trees are extremely rare in this part of broward. Pace is one of the more difficult to grow in my experience.
There are 2 problems with the mamey here:
- Cuban may beetle ravage them.
- Shallow topsoil with limestone rubble base (as is common in parts of Broward) doesn't retain moisture and is high in pH (meaning that minor element deficiencies limit growth and production)
So, you'll see trees that are severely stunted or trees which fail to bring crops to maturity. But this depends largely on your soil and cultivation practices.
With that said, I have had success. Here are some tricks that I've used:
To alleviate the dry soil / lack of water retention issue, I dug out the limestone rubble and replaced with sand + compost to a diameter of about 8 feet and deep enough to hit the deep sand below. This worked well. But, you must be careful, as mameys also hate overly wet soil. They are really finicky in this regard and are averse to both dry and wet soil.
Another way I got mameys to work with shallow Broward soil was by trucking in sandy soil and building up a foot or more of soil above the limestone rubble.
To ameliorate the cuban may beetle issue -- which will leave your mamey looking like a skeleton for 90% of the year -- I mulched over all of my grass, which starved the cuban may beetle grubs of a food source and eventually killed them all off. Interestingly, cuban may beetles don't venture very far from their food source as a grub. So, even though your neighbors have grass 20 feet away, removing the grass eliminates 95% of the beetles.
The nutritional issue can be solved via various cultural tactics. If you've built up a decent soil base as described above, you can lower the pH with sulfur (assuming that the top soil doesn't have more than, say, 1% ca carbonate). Mameys also seem to adore iron, so you can use various fertilizers and foliar amendments to address this. Continual application of fe via a complete fertilizer will do the trick if you've followed all of the steps above.
So, there you have it. Mameys can be grown in shallow Broward soil, but it requires some effort. Seeing as how mamey is one of my favorite fruits, I went ahead and did all of the above. I currently have fruit on my mameys!