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Messages - KarenRei

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1
I do so unintentionally  ;)  Most of my tropicals are in my grow room, but I have some coffee plants and the like in my living room, and in the winter I break out grow lights for them since no meaningful light comes in from the windows.  So they get lit up in red and purple and white from different angles.  :)

2
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Golden Berries
« on: June 08, 2020, 07:48:24 AM »
As tomato relatives, should golden berries be treated the same as tomatoes, and how has everyone else's success been when growing them and getting them to fruit?

They should be treated as weeds  ;)

I have a couple growing in my grow room.  They fruit profusely, even in the suboptimal environment, and will gladly invade other pots and shade out everything with their tomato-like semi-vining habit.  It's be better if I enjoyed the fruit, but I don't really, even though they're neat-looking little fruit.

They like moisture and develop a moderately large root system relative to their size, but like tomatoes, will root anywhere the stems touch a suitable substrate.  They like light but semi-shade doesn't stop them.  They act like big babies when their soil gets dry, but fully recover when watered.  They're day-length dependent - I've found that they 100% refuse to flower when on a 24-hour light cycle (through growth thrives on it).  Indoors, they can live for years.

I don't have the heart to kill mine, so I just keep refusing to pot them up, and cutting back those that shade other plants and using them as green mulch  ;)

3
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Fruit thieves rant
« on: June 05, 2020, 01:09:13 PM »
Just thought of another way to possibly catch thieves if you don't have any cameras: look for any neighbors on the street who own a Tesla and have it parked outside. Teslas have a feature called "Sentry Mode", which uses the car's autopilot cameras as security cameras if someone trips them. It's possible that the perps might have triggered Sentry Mode either on the way in or the way out.

(If the owner of the car thinks it might have been triggered but they deleted the video, deleted files can still be recovered off of USB sticks if they haven't been overwritten yet)

4
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Fruit thieves rant
« on: June 04, 2020, 09:18:14 AM »
It amazes me that people don't bother to ask.  I showed up to my land the other day to work on the fence in the canyon, only to find a 20-something couple already out there, sitting on my land and trying to poach brown sea trout from the river (which the neighbors have the fishing rights to).  I was of course mad and kicked them out immediately, but it's like... geez... just ask, you might well get a "yes".

5
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Fruit thieves rant
« on: June 01, 2020, 05:13:21 PM »
I'd be tempted to saboutage some.  Inject capsaicin oil into say 5-10% of fruits, the most appealing / accessible ones.  Keep careful track of which ones you did it with so you don't eat them yourself.

Thieves should learn the lesson pretty quickly.  ;)

Honestly, saboutaged bait is a pretty good tactic.  I once had thieves steal a toolbox and two full cans of gasoline (back before I went electric).  So I left out several additional gas cans, which were all promptly stolen as well.  And to be fair, they did contain gasoline.... on the top.  Anyone who smelled it or poured off a little would see gasoline, no question.  But it was only half the liquid in the cans, flowing atop a denser layer of... concentrated hydrochloric acid.  Which eats steel  ;)

The only downside is you never get to see the thieves faces when they realize how badly they screwed up. 

6
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: What Fruit/Tree is This???
« on: May 27, 2020, 01:11:55 PM »
Can you get ahold of a leaf? You could crush and smell it.  Myrtaceae are often aromatic.

7
Culprit discovered (just got another one, more on the way): Eugenia reinwardtiana / Cedar Bay Cherry.  :)

Remarkable how much it tastes like plum. Only real criticism is I'd like a better flesh to seed ratio.

8
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: What happened to Luc?
« on: May 25, 2020, 06:05:14 AM »
I don't know about Luc, but Raul has been selling Luc's Garcinia seeds.  He's got a brand new variety this year, a high-altitude variant.

9
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Giberellic Acid
« on: May 23, 2020, 10:49:27 PM »
I've never tried it for that. I tried it to see if I could induce partial sex reversal in papayuelo. Didn't work - and I ultimately went up to levels that were causing all the leaves to come out deformed.

10
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Sulphur
« on: May 21, 2020, 10:19:40 AM »
Nice tips  :)

11


The town is at 1134m altitude. Given the normal atmospheric lapse rate, if these trees extend upwards of 2000m, up there you could cut about 9°C off of those temperatures.  So in extreme years, it's possible the highest trees could face frost.

12
BTW, out of curiosity, what's the current status of scientific research with regards to this species? Is it any closer to being declared its own species or a subspecies of some other species?  I'm really curious  :)

13
Sign me up for 8 seeds  :)  Do I just go ahead and send $29 to raulglezruiz@gmail.com with my address in the comments, then?

ED: I went ahead and assumed that the above was correct and sent the money.

14
Wow, that's amazing  :)  I need to update my database info on this species!  :)

If they have a high germination rate, sign me up for 4; moderate to low germination rate, for 8.  :)

15
Awesome - hope I make the list!  How do the size, flesh:seed ratio, and taste compare to the others?

16
I did indeed plant it - the leaves when / if it comes up should be enlightening! 

Acerola seeds are also lumpy and irregular... that seed certainly doesn't look like one. Acerola is also more floral-tasting, while this was like plum.

My main reason to doubt pitanga (apart from not having it on my registrar) was that the flesh wasn't tannic (at least the little bite I got!).  BUT, a new possibility occurred. There is also a this unregistered plant growing right nearby:







I had always just assumed it's a Psidium (and haven't seen it flower), but if I'm not mistaken, that might be a match for pitanga  :)  I did get a batch-o'-eugenias a few years back so its possible this might be from that.  Main difference I see with E. uniflora is that mine's leaves are dark and not particularly glossy.

(It's easy to forget and neglect as it's grown as a low sprawler!)

17
It looks very much like pitanga. If you're in Florida or an area that has lots of these, birds can carry them around. Could've dropped overhead or something potentially.

Hehe, I'm in Iceland. These plants live in a room that never sees the sun - not even through a window.  The only bird that could possibly have access to them is a tame amazon parrot  ;)

18
Looks like a pitanga.

I didn't notice any sign of ribbing (though hard to tell given how mangled it was). No obvious tannic taste.

19
So... I'm baffled. While caring for my plants, I found this fruit on the ground. It had been stepped on and was highly mangled, so I don't know what it originally was.  But some key characteristics can be seen - the four-pointed puckered shape at the bottom, red skin, soft / juicy orange flesh, and a single large round seed. There was enough of the flesh left unmangled for me to try it - it tasted very much like plum.




My first thought was strawberry guava. It was right next to a plant that (at least according to my records, and certainly by appearance) is strawberry guava, and it's been blooming a lot recently for the first time. I hadn't seen any fruit on it, but another one of my strawberry guavas has its first immature green fruit on it (tiny little plant, I'm amazed that it can hold fruit!).  But beyond the flesh being wrong, strawberry guava has small seeds, not a single large one.

The single large seed makes me think eugenia. Indeed, there was also a rainforest plum right next to it. But it's another tiny, tiny little juvenile plant, maybe 15cm tall, and I hadn't seen it bloom. Certainly doesn't look like a ripe rainforest plum.  But maybe half ripe?

My acerola is fruiting, and it overhangs a bunch of other plants, and the fruit could roll.  But that certainly doesn't look like acerola, esp. since acerola has three irregular seeds per fruit.

There's so many other plants on overhanging shelves or overhanging or growing around generally around the room, but apart from some capsicums, none have visibly flowered or fruited, and most are varieties that one can rule right out, like cocona, garcinias, jackfruit, lychee, passiflora, palms, mangoes, coffee, tamarind, physalis, mamey, annonas, citrus, and on and on and on (it'd take some time to compile an exhaustive list). 

(There's no possibility that this was some sort of supermarket fruit, as I haven't been to the supermarket since March  :)  ).

Thoughts?

20
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Updated Mamey Info please
« on: May 11, 2020, 07:19:25 PM »
Out of curiosity, what do you all do with mamey?  I've only had it once.  Don't know the cultivar.  It was a sort of carrot / sweet potato taste.  Main thing I could think to do with it was make a sort of banana bread / carrot cake sort of dish.

21
You can figure out the pH with those strips by taking a sample, diluting it, retesting, diluting, etc until you're no longer under your pH=6,6 limit.

Like I said, it takes *tiny* amounts.  ;)

22
This:




Although I now use some leftover soil that has peat (Mix of commerical soil and other things, mostly neutral) in it(I have 3 Mberries)

Looking at that thing brings back bad memories.  I once killed a lot of plants by trusting the pH readings on a meter like that.

Get a proper pH meter.  :)  The type that you have to keep the electrodes moist.  Don't skimp, get a good one.  Clean the electrodes after each use before storage.  Replace the electrodes if they ever go bad.  Calibrate regularly with fresh acid and neutral solution, and don't reuse your calibration solutions.

I recommend sulfuric acid for lowering pH.    Doesn't mess with your phosphorus ratio like phosphoric acid does (though if you *know* you need phosphorus, then sure).  It takes minuscule amounts.  However much you're thinking, well less than that.  ;)  You can get it as battery acid or as professional grade drain cleaner.  Phosphoric acid is often sold as floor cleaner.  There will be other additives, but you use such tiny amounts that they shouldn't matter.

23
I've bought seeds from Maryoto too before. Not only did they arrive alive, they arrived so alive that they had grown a tangle of roots around each other ;)  (it's tough to ship to Iceland, takes a long time!).  Sadly none survived transplant (suboptimal environment, must try again at some point), but everything on Maryoto's end was top notch.

24
That's a clever approach.  E.g. you get your "guaranteed"  fruit from the graft, but still get to try the seedling.

25
Doesn't that mean years of waiting and lots of space to find out whether you lucked out?

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