The Tropical Fruit Forum

We're your trees dripping water or sap from cankers, cracks in branches, twigs or trunk? If so it could be fire blight but it would only be a guess unless you submit samples for positive identification. http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn7414.html

If I were you, I would remove the tree and roots. Even if it did come back

Simon

Richard, your trees look awesome! I have been trying to cut back on my chelated Iron applications because of possible heavy metal contamination. I occasionally buffer 5 gallon buckets of water to pH 5-6 and drenching my in ground trees. My soil pH is above 8 in my newer planting sites so I have to pH lower because of the buffering capacity of my soil. By doing this, I feel I can drench less with my chelated Iron.

Simon

I had a bumper crop from my ugly, un trained Yellow Dragon last year. I got around 60-80 fruits if I remember correctly. I posted pictures somewhere but can't remember the title of the thread. Anyways, as for training, I kept removing the lower growth, only allowing the upper growth to branch out and it is starting to turn into a more normal shaped DF tree. My tree was already leaning towards one side so I just let that side continue to grow as I did not want to remove many fruitful branches. The Yelliw Dragon is definitely a very good tasting variety but I recommend trying to find the giant version as the fruit is much larger. Dragonfruit101 is selling seeds in the buy sell forum.

Simon

Patrick,

You can have the pH of your water tested at many pet stores. The pH of your water will help or hinder the nutrients your plants can uptake. The pH of your water will also affect the pH of your soil, especially if you have potted plants. They add Flouride, Chlorine and Chloramine to my water, among other things and our water is also very hard.

You can do a search for Garden filters or garden hose filters to find more info.

Simon

Thanks for the report Jani. Hopefully you will be able to taste some fully ripened fruit next year.

Simon

JF, your trees look amazing as usual but I'm not sure what looks better, your trees or your mulch. I'm very envious of your beautiful mulch layer. The pH of the soil is so important for plants to be able to uptake the nutrients they require.

Simon

Hey Adam,

Do you have any idea what variety "Jacks" Jaboticaba is? http://www.cloudforest.com/cafe/forum/58740.html

The fruit are large, much like some of the Coronata pics I've seen.

Simon

Quote from: FlyingFoxFruits on November 09, 2015, 11:33:19 PM

If u don't like eating them out of hand, try juicing them.

It's what I end up doing when i have too much fruit to eat

It's a real treat.

http://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=10104

I actually don't mind the flavor of the skin, or more precisely the flesh closest to this. It's almost a bit mangosteen-ish in a way. The problem is, there's not much of this and I neither like the skin by itself, or the greater bulk of the flesh by itself. If the skin was thinner, and the flavor  diffused more through the flesh, I'd be more into them, for sure.  And they're very sweet, which isn't my thing as an acid fruit enthusiast ( I deliberately eat passionfruit well before optimum sweetness for example). I think this is why I enjoyed the pitangatuba so much, it's pretty much a sour fruit lover's dream come true, and I can't wait until my few little trees produce. A while off yet though, 2 or three years.

One thing I wouldn't mind trying is powdering them. I think this might be the key to getting the balance right for my taste.

I thought I was the only one that felt a ripe Sabara tasted a bit like Mangosteen. I got some very ripe fruit from Peter, they were just about ready to ferment and my wife and I both felt the pulp tasted a lot like Mangosteen.

Thanks god the top 6 list JF! Glad to see Peggy and Leo2 holding its own as a late season. In previous years the Keitts I've tried were just average and not very sweet, often ripening unevenly due to its large size. The nose end would always ripen first and the flesh around the shoulders would still be very firm. This year however, I had several Keitts that have tasted amazing with Brix of 21%. They were very sweet tropical mango flavor with just enough acidity to make it interesting. I wonder if the extra heat we had this year in California helped to bring out the full potential of the Keitt?

I read somewhere that Venus may be a good late season variety over in Florida so I am testing out in my yard and a few of my friends yards. It would be wonderful if we could build up a database of all the best late season varieties for SoCal.

Simon

I've had that happen to me on occasion too. Sometimes the soft seeds have started to sprout and other times they are just completely soft with no sprout coming out. I wonder if it's weather related? You will get sprouting seeds if the fruit hang too long.

Simon

Congratulations on the pads, how did the Torrance PCH fruit taste? When I received my pad, the cut was dry and I immediately planted it into a pot and it is doing very well. If you want more plants, you can remove that attached pad, if you don't need any more plants, just leave it on.

Simon

Mark, I was thinking the same thing in terms of Lychees needing full sun for fruit. Leo's trees are very large and the nearby trees are definitely shading parts of the canopy.

Sapote, I just noticed the other part of your question, Leo planted lots of various Mango seeds in his yard, many years ago. He has since grafted various varieties onto his seedling rootstocks with much success. Grafting scions onto vigorous established Mango trees works really well from what I have found. Most of us are relatively new to growing mango in SoCal and we don't have established trees to work with so I suggest purchasing pre grafted trees on Manilla rootstock from JF or Behlgarden if you don't want to graft your own trees or you can perform your own grafts although the ideal time for grafting Mango in SoCsl has already passed.

Simon

Quote from: simon_grow on November 03, 2015, 09:48:00 PM

Thanks everyone!

I have a few experiments going on with Lemon Zest and Here is a quick breakdown. I have two LZ Mango trees ordered from Florida and presumably on turpentine rootstock. They were both approximately the same size when I ordered the trees but one tree was planted into the ground sooner than the other. The LZ that was planted into the ground first busted out with 4-5 flushes if I remember correctly. Because LZ is known to be a vigorous upright variety, I decided to let it grow uncontrolled with no pruning to simulate a word case scenario of uncontrolled growth.

This tree flowered and fruited the first year but the growth was so vigorous and due to the Turpentine rootstock( this is assumption but there are multiple members that can vouch) the vegetative growths were long and weak with an extremely droopy habit typical of what we see from Florida grafted Mango trees but exacerbated by the extreme vigor of the LZ. The majority of growth showed signs of nutrient deficiencies.

The brother tree was slightly delayed in growth because it was in a pot for several more months before planting into the ground and it did not flower the first year. For this tree, I implemented a tip pruning regimen following Dr Campbell's recommendation. Scaffold branching for both these trees start approximately 3-4 feet from the ground. This second tree has flushed about three times and so far the growth is not droopy although some of the growth showed signs of nutrient deficiencies.

My third LZ is actually three different branches of LZ grafted onto a Lavern Manilla rootstock. These grafts took with vigor and flushed three times with tip pruning. These grafts show no signs of droop growth and also do not show any signs of nutrient deficiencies.

My fourth LZ is my Double Stone Grafted plant from this thread: http://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=16549.0  It has flushed three times in three months since grafting onto double Kent seedling rootstock. The trunk has more than doubled in size and it is naturally forming ultra low scaffold branches which may be beneficial for this extremely vigorous upright grower. I would like to keep this tree low, bushy and very fruitful so I feel that very low scaffold branches are required as the foundation.

I also have DSGed LZ on Indian Mango rootstock, Ataulfo, Glenn, Haden, TA, and mixed ( mono and poly) rootstocks. I have also spread some of these DSGed LZ trees to different parts of San Diego in order to get more data points for future analysis.

So far, the best rootstock to use for DSGing is Kent seedling rootstock but any vigorous mono seedling seems to work really well. For long term health of the tree, one Mono and one Poly seedling may give better disease resistance.

Simon

Seems counter intuitive to me to want to amp up the vigor on a LZ.  LZ is the most vigorous mango I have.  I love the idea of lateral growth, if that is replicable you may have a winning combination.  If not, you may have created a monster, a delicious monster, that you harvest with a skyscraper.  I don't think there can be too many LZs in the world.  Love the great work and knowledge your giving.

Doglips, yes, LZ is already an extremely vigorous grower and I said I want to keep it low and bushy and productive but secretly I want to grow a monstrous tree as this is one of my favorite varieties. I do also have NDM and Julie on DSG to see how they handle multiple seedling rootstocks.

As I was speaking with Leo yesterday, he suggested I type up a story regarding my experiments with Double Stone Grafting to put into the CRFG newsletter and I will probably do so when I get more results from the various DSGed trees out there.

Most of Leo's large and fruitful trees are from various seedling rootstocks and I feel that is a big part of Leo's success in growing his beautiful and productive trees. Since the DSGed trees are still new to SoCal, I am still recommending to people here in SoCal to plant trees grafted onto Manilla rootstock as I and other have had good success with this rootstock.

I edited the title to this post so please feel free to talk about Leo's mangos or Mango tree talk in general. If you have specific questions or need specific answers to the Double Stone Grafting technique, please post under that thread as others may be interested in your questions and answers.

Simon