Hi everyone,
I want to share with you my short experience with lychees. About 40 days ago I planted one Kaimana and one Wae Chee in my garden. Both of them were placed in sunny spots since is known that lychees need sun to grow and yield. Heat has been the usual here at this point of the year, around 84 F, with some days getting up to 90 F. During nights temps drop to 65-70F. They have water almost everyday when is really hot, and every 2-3 days when maximum temps drop to 80 F. Soil have plenty of organic material and both of the trees have mulch. They started to sprout about the same time 1 month ago, but little after started the problems. I have not experience with lychees so at the beginning I thought it was just that they are very slow growers. Days past but new flushes barely grew, and Wae Chee finally gave up and leaves fell:
Kaimana kept pushing, but veeeeeery slowly. Branches under shadow seemed to push faster, but as soon as they got out of the protection from old leaves, stopped:
I understood that something was going wrong but I didn't know what could exactly be until I bought two more lychees 3 weeks ago. One of them was a Salathiel, the other a Fei Zhi Siu. Salathiel had mealybug so I took him away and put it in quarantine while treating it. My surprise was enormous when after a very few days the tree was pushing new branches. But it's even bigger now because it's the only one growing normally. Actually for a variety that is famous for being the slowest, is growing great:
So where is the difference between the conditions for Salathiel and for the other 3? In the exposition. Salathiel was placed in the north wall of the house, so it just get sun in the evening, roughly the 3 last hours of sun. It also receive a shower every 2 days from the irrigation system of grass, in the evening (so the drops you can see in the picture). The other 3 receive several hours of direct sun, including the central ones. And not showers. They all have protection from winds, and anyway wind is not being a problem this month, just a gentle breeze. So my conclusion is that they are too small to receive that kind of direct sun at this moment of the year. I set a shading mesh over the Kaimana to avoid direct sun during central hours and moved the FZS (still in its pot) to the same location than the Salathiel.
Now I'm planing to plant them both near to two big trees that I was going to take out but I'm thinking of pruning them as the lychees grow, to provide some shadow the first years. Any thoughts or alternative conclusions/ideas to what I exposed here will be deeply appreciated!