By the way, starting 3 nights ago, I strung about 10 old fashion "C9" type Christmas light bulbs inside the canopy, the night's low were about 45F, 46F. So far: no more cracked fruit!
Not sure what can I conclude from this simple experiment, but it looks encouraging to me, so I'll continue with it until all the fruits are harvested...
Rain and cold night causes Anonas to crack. My crop has been devastated by birds and squirrels. The atemoyas have been splitting in the last two weeks
Hello everyone,
It has now been almost a month since Dec. 2017 when I strung the Christmas lights under the canopy that had about 25 fruits or so. The consecutive nights low have not been hitting any lower than 41s during this time, according to weather.com; but they were few days of 42s and mostly mid to higher 40s.
With that info upfront, I would like to update, that there has not been a single fruit split nor cracked since I strung that C-9 type Christmas lights; with total fruits now down to about 21 or so still hanging...
So, as was already mentioned by JF above, I come to a rough personal conclusion that sudden decrease in night temperature was also a factor that can cause my cracked fruits, besides the commonly known sudden increase in watering (as in the case of rainfall).
Hope this little info can be useful for those trying to prevent their African pride (Or annonas in general) from splitting by stringing some C-9 Christmas light bulbs under the canopy...