Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.


Messages - Jose Spain

Pages: 1 [2] 3 4 ... 15
26
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Lychee Thread
« on: December 15, 2023, 07:08:34 AM »
I have a sweetheart that has been in ground in east Orange county(FL) since 2012. Its one of my original trees I planted after Bob from Green Jungle(RIP) gave me some fruit from his trees. I was hooked. My tree is about 15 feet high and about 10 wide. Never had any cold or frost issues while nearby longons, which are supposedly more cold hardy, froze. I have also never even had a flowering. Really flipping annoying for one of my most otherwise successful trees. My Texas plum at least blooms.

I havent gotten much fruit off sweetheart either.  Thry also get lanky and break branches.

Mine has been flowering for the past 3 or 4 years but didn't set any fruit yet. I don't know if is a matter of auto-incompatibility or the tree just needs to get bigger.

27
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Is this a graft union?
« on: December 12, 2023, 03:01:17 PM »
Yeap, it seems like a graft, not only the bark but the union line and the graft's thickness, which seems a bit wider than the rootstock.

28
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Grow bags?
« on: December 11, 2023, 10:00:58 AM »
Wouldnt having plastic dishes under them eventually rot the bottoms of the bags?

The ones I use are ok, and the oldest have been there for 3 years or more, some even have moss growing on them and no problems so far. They are pretty resistant to humidity and sun.

29
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Mangos in san diego
« on: December 10, 2023, 12:08:26 PM »
Hi Ken, smart move to remove the fruit.  I think 5+ year of removing it is smart.  Cutting the panicles off is even better.  It stops the fruit sooner and keeps the tree from sagging from the weight of flowers.

This worked great for me with a lot of cvs, the only exception being Sweet Tart. I don't know if it has to do with the cv, the rootstock or both, but I'm having a lot of trouble trying to keep the branches of my tree straight with sticks and ropes.

Instead of trying to prop it up, I think its better to prune the long brwnches back and let them grow back.

That’s the truth.  Prune those lanky branches. Everytime I don’t get around to pruning trees, a wind storm tolls through and prunes them for me with horrible consequences, usually taking the whole branch.  Shorten those branches and your tree will get thick.

In fact, it was after a wind storm that the tree lost for good its shape, no broken branches but most of them hinging in every direction. I was thinking of something like that, and when winter passes I gonna finally do it. Here the growing season is also painfully short, that's why I was reluctant to do it. I imagine that if I do the pruning in April-May, the chances of the new shoots being panicles instead of vegetative will be almost zero regardless of the temperatures, especially when cutting woody branches.

Thanks both for the advice!

30
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Mangos in san diego
« on: December 09, 2023, 07:00:38 AM »
Hi Ken, smart move to remove the fruit.  I think 5+ year of removing it is smart.  Cutting the panicles off is even better.  It stops the fruit sooner and keeps the tree from sagging from the weight of flowers.

This worked great for me with a lot of cvs, the only exception being Sweet Tart. I don't know if it has to do with the cv, the rootstock or both, but I'm having a lot of trouble trying to keep the branches of my tree straight with sticks and ropes.

31
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Grow bags?
« on: December 09, 2023, 06:57:01 AM »
I got excellent results with pitayas and mangoes, but they indeed need more water than normal pots. Because of that, it's key to use in the mix a high proportion of stuff that can absorb a lot of water, like coir, and don't let it dry. As these bags provide high aeration, using big plastic dishes in the bottom and keeping them full of water helps to keep the moisture without the risk of creating anaerobic conditions of normal pots.

32
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Dragon Fruit thread.
« on: December 09, 2023, 05:49:05 AM »
I would call it floral rather than dish soap flavor.  Some people percive cilantro as dish soap flavor also and find it bad.  It maybe the same kind of thing.  Some people just dont like that flavor.  For me, i think it makes the s8 taste good.  The only thing is there no acid in the S8.  Its floral and sweet but lqcking acid.

It's funny because I love cilantro flavour but I've been eating it since childhood, while most Spanish don't and often complain about that aftertaste I never noticed. Now I know how they feel, I started to notice it with PP, and just after it appeared also in S8 but never so strong as in PP. :P I'll try to convince my brain that is floral during next season  ;D

33
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Dragon Fruit thread.
« on: November 28, 2023, 01:08:14 PM »
The good thing about megalanthus, at least here, is that it's ready in spring when the rest of them are still in vegetative mode. Flavor-wise, as with everything else, it depends on personal preference. megalanthus is my wife's favorite, it tastes like a big white grape. For me, a good CC or PG is hard to beat. S8 is very good too but this year some of them had like a dish soap aftertaste (also present and more marked in Pink Panther) which was kind of weird, don't know if it had to be with the fertilizing regime or what happened, previous years S8 was the best for most of us.

34
They definitely are undatus, to difference varieties close pictures of the stigma from different angles are helpful for most common cvs, but if yours are for grafting other cactus there are good chances this is not a cv for food market but simply a rootstock (still might be something worth eating). To know if they are pollinated, look at the hardness of the base of the flower. If it starts to feel soft to the touch, it has not set and it will become yellow and eventually drop. If it is still hard and green after ~2 weeks, it is pollinated.

35
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: SoCal Tropical Storm Watch
« on: August 19, 2023, 02:48:07 AM »
Be careful out there, this guy is a monster (cat 4 right now) and will hit your area around 6 PM tomorrow (the first rains are already there).

https://twitter.com/NWSLosAngeles/status/1692743270516838432




And remember that the cone does not correlate to the impacts, the damages, particularly by floods and winds can be serious:



36
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Nice Red Jabo Fruit Clusters
« on: August 05, 2023, 03:37:12 PM »
Thank you both, I have to change some things and hope for some improvement!

37
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Nice Red Jabo Fruit Clusters
« on: August 02, 2023, 06:38:40 PM »
Red Jabo setting fruit again:

Kevin

Impressive for a ~6 year old plant, at least for me. May I ask under what conditions do you grow it, soil mix and so? My red jaboticabas are about the same age and painfully slow growing. I just keep them because they don't die but at this rate maybe my great-grandsons will get to taste the fruit... ::)

My 4 year old seedling is fruiting periodically. I use a peat based soil mix with lots of perlite. They are not tolerant of heavy fertilizer use, but they do accept small amounts frequently. HollyTone works for me, but I doubt available in Europe. I am trialing cottonseed meal right now, which is recommended by some FL growers, seems promising so far.

I have plenty of peat and perlite, and some pot-mix for acidophiles so I gonna give it a try this very week following you experience. Mine don't like heavy fertilizer use either, almost kill them using osmocote, which is supposed to be safer than not slow-releasing fertilizers but definitely not for my red jabos in the quantity I used at first, now I'm much more careful. I'll check some similar formulas to HollyTone here and the availability of cottonseed meals as well. What water do you use and how often do you water them? Thanks for this useful info!

38
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Nice Red Jabo Fruit Clusters
« on: August 02, 2023, 05:46:55 PM »
Red Jabo setting fruit again:

Kevin

Impressive for a ~6 year old plant, at least for me. May I ask under what conditions do you grow it, soil mix and so? My red jaboticabas are about the same age and painfully slow growing. I just keep them because they don't die but at this rate maybe my great-grandsons will get to taste the fruit... ::)

39
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Persian Mulberry Fruits - in SoCal
« on: July 31, 2023, 05:21:17 PM »
All the M. nigras are a great distance superior to other mulberries.

How many years has the graft been in place?

On mine it was four years from graft until the fruit was juicy. Before that time it was dry and sad.

The berry you posted pics of is far from ripe, they need to be completely dark, and any red signifies unripe. The fruit is best harvested with needle nose pruning shears as the stem is quite short, and any manipulation of the berry will break it.

Give it time, mine became a prolific fruiter when it became a larger tree.

+1 to the whole post. Absolutely crucial to pick them up only when fully ripe (black), birds don't care that much though.

40
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Top 3 mango varieties poll
« on: July 30, 2023, 08:22:29 AM »
Pick them mature green. Allow to ripen indoors and eat at first sign of give when pressed. Picking mature green allows them to retain some acidity. It just takes some experimentation with eating them at different stages of ripeness.

For example, Nam Doc Mai, when eaten at the right stage is a top tier mango, with an excellent subacid and sweet combo and great complexity of flavor. Eaten at the wrong stage, it's not appealing at all.

Could you elaborate a bit about the right stage for NDM? I remember reading your explanations about this topic for Maha but for NDM they went under my radar, sorry if you already explained in another thread :P

Thanks!

41
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Top 3 mango varieties poll
« on: July 28, 2023, 03:22:39 PM »
For example, Nam Doc Mai, when eaten at the right stage is a top tier mango, with an excellent subacid and sweet combo and great complexity of flavor. Eaten at the wrong stage, it's not appealing at all.

Could you elaborate a bit about the right stage for NDM? I remember reading your explanations about this topic for Maha but for NDM they went under my radar, sorry if you already explained in another thread :P

42
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Dragon Fruit thread.
« on: July 28, 2023, 03:12:06 PM »
What time of day, or when can you tell it is good to take the pollen. I haven't had much luck trying to hand-pollinate the Astuna3.

I open the flowers with my hands at about 8 PM (these days; as a rule, when there is like one hour and a half of light still), wait for about 20 minutes for the pollen to be ready (if you collect it just after opening the flower you get less quantity), collect the pollen with the bottle and proceed to pollinate. The pollen I don't use goes to an airtight plastic box with bags of silica gel, and 24 hours later to zip bags 4x6 cm (with cv and date annotated) and to the freezer.

43
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Tape Types for use grafting . . . .
« on: July 26, 2023, 12:42:49 PM »
If you look at the 3M website, they say Temflex has "no adhesive," just a natural rubber resin backing that adheres to itself. So more a pseudo-adhesive.


That's a very interesting data, had no idea but that explains the good results. I know some people in Spain that used other brands and ended up having problems.

44
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: NDM vs NDM#4
« on: July 26, 2023, 05:48:59 AM »
You have very good information about the different clones in the web of Alex: https://www.tropicalacresfarms.com/mangos?lang=es

45
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Black Fig Fly Protection
« on: July 26, 2023, 03:50:02 AM »
Btw, one good thing when the attack is not extremely severe is that BFF makes a natural thinning of fruit and the remaining figs get much larger.

46
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Black Fig Fly Protection
« on: July 26, 2023, 03:41:47 AM »
I'm taking out all my in ground trees, they are to hard to protect over 7ft tall. I think only way to manage will be containers bagging everything. BSF has really made it a pain to grow fig trees.

I stopped collecting any more fig varieties. I have tried fly traps, bagging, etc. Bagging seems not fool proof either, the timing of placing the bags and getting to the fig before the scourge does.

The timing of placing the bags is... as soon as the figlet can hold the bag. I know is frustrating. FWIW, here in my tree I don't bag all my cvs, it's a 25 year old, cocktail tree with over 50 varieties and the original one is not protected and still give me a lot of fruit despise BFF, birds and Mediterranean fruit fly. (On a side note, I also discovered this year that a couple of varieties are actually Smyrna because I put the bags ASAP and the figs all fell down in the last weeks). So, for a very big, productive common tree, BFF here in Spain can reduce the crop (for figs, for brevas is dramatic enough to bag always if you want to harvest more than a dozen). But for domestic consumption, it can be still worth keeping the tree even without placing bags in every fig. I would check each case in big trees for a couple of years at least before removing the big ones because the orientation of the tree and even the cv can determine how much of the crop is lost (also the weather of each particular year).

BFF is one of those cases when a species that has been always here without giving too many problems suddenly started to be a serious plague for commercial crops in all the Mediterranean basin. For common cvs, I know that deltamethrin is working fine in reducing the population, but Smyrna crops in the north of Tunisia for example are struggling to produce enough caprifigs. In many areas commercial Smyrna figs are done, I think, at least that they come up with a solution to drastically reduce the populations of the fly without affecting the wasp, but moving to common varieties seems just easier. What made this fly so successful in causing these damages only in recent times is still a mystery as far as I know, maybe global warming, maybe it evolved to reproduce faster, or maybe its natural predators were too affected by the wide use of pesticides. In any case, my advice is to don't give up on big, old trees until you have observed the behavior of the fly for 2-3 years (potential predators also need time to adjust to the new prey), and bag as soon as possible for small ones.

47
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Black Fig Fly Protection
« on: July 25, 2023, 04:37:09 PM »
Organza works fine for the BFF, as far as you keep the fly away from the ostiole you're safe. The bad news is that Smyrna varieties logically are not compatible with bagging, the good one is that you don't lose any fig to birds either (Ceratitis capitata is able to lay eggs through organza though, but there are other ways to deal with this fly).

I had read a French fig guy tried many different types of traps and solutions within, but resorted to bagging in the end. Europeans have been dealing with it for much longer, so I trust whatever you guys are doing!

Yes, the French guy, if is the same I know, is the best source on the internet for dealing with this species. The thing is that females of BFF once start to lay eggs they don't care about anything else, actually they are so focused on their activity that you can kill them with your hand if you are fast enough. So it doesn't matter how much time and effort you expend on traps and lures, once a female from a nearby tree comes to your trees on that stage, it won't care about any attractant, it will just do her work and go. So the best solution is to stop her from getting to the ostiole. That obviously also stops the wasp at least that you find a barrier small enough for the fly but that allows the wasp to pass through...

48
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Tape Types for use grafting . . . .
« on: July 25, 2023, 04:24:10 PM »
Temflex is the one I use. I have been grafting with 3M electric tape for years and I have not had any problems with mangoes, figs or Prunus spp, but these are grafts outdoors in a Mediterranean climate (dry and hot summers). The adhesive degrades on its own and the tape itself ends up unrolling it as it grows if there is just one layer of tape. Today I took a look and I had grafts from 3 or 4 years ago with the tape still hanging, I have removed some so you can see how it looks. The color of the tape also degrades with time. But I insist, my case is in the Mediterranean climate, I'm pretty sure that in SoCal the results would be very similar, in a greenhouse or in more humid climates I don't know (adhesive can take more to degrade)...

3 or 4 years old graft:



The same one with the 3M electric tape removed:



A 2021 graft:



Same without tape:




Another from 2022:



I do all my cleft grafts with the same tape, they heal just fine:



This is just about 3 weeks old:



And this is the tape, 3M Temflex 16 mm wide, it comes in different colors and it holds very well the scion in cleft and whip and tongue:



49
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Black Fig Fly Protection
« on: July 25, 2023, 03:57:37 PM »
Organza works fine for the BFF, as far as you keep the fly away from the ostiole you're safe. The bad news is that Smyrna varieties logically are not compatible with bagging, the good one is that you don't lose any fig to birds either (Ceratitis capitata is able to lag eggs through organza though, but there are other ways to deal with this fly). 

50
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Tape Types for use grafting . . . .
« on: July 22, 2023, 06:00:14 PM »
The 3M black electrical tape works good around the union going over something like buddy tape to hold the graft in place.

3M electrical tape works great for cleft and whip & tongue grafts (other brands do not work as well, possibly that is where the bad experiences that some colleagues comment come from). I use lighter colors (yellow, orange...) so the union doesn't get too hot.

Buddy Tape is the best option for chip and other bud grafts and to protect the scions in the case of mango. For avocado, in my experience parafilm works better. Be careful not to wrap the Buddy Tape too much on itself creating a thin cord, this makes it much less elastic and can cause strangulation if not cut in time.

Aluminium foil is useful to protect the scions from the sun, in summer I usually remove it when the leaves of the scion are big enough to provide some shadow.

Pages: 1 [2] 3 4 ... 15
SMF spam blocked by CleanTalk