Author Topic: Amazing Durian Year  (Read 6833 times)

fruitlovers

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Amazing Durian Year
« on: September 08, 2017, 03:28:27 AM »
This has been an amazing durian year, with the trees flowering succesively 3 times. So at the same time there are flowers, small fruits, and large fruits ready to be harvested.



Probably this is due tog an unusually dry summer. Also much more regular fertilizing than usual.
Right now i'm harvesting 4 types of durians. On the left the large Monthong, large Chanee, small seedling Chanee, and some Durio oxleyanus, that i've nicknamed the Sea Urchin Durian.



For the first time i have way too many durians, and can't eat them all. Have been taking them to some farmer's market vendors, and ofcourse eating as many as i can!

Oscar

Frog Valley Farm

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Re: Amazing Durian Year
« Reply #1 on: September 08, 2017, 04:43:34 AM »
🗯
« Last Edit: March 19, 2018, 09:09:55 PM by Frog Valley Farm »

palologrower

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Re: Amazing Durian Year
« Reply #2 on: September 08, 2017, 06:59:00 AM »
what's the going rate per pound in Hilo now?  Can't wait for quality neighbor island durian to come oahu!

Lory

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Re: Amazing Durian Year
« Reply #3 on: September 08, 2017, 08:05:58 AM »
Congratulations!!
if the variety is good i can eat them as many until i become "drunk"  ;D
Lorenzo

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Re: Amazing Durian Year
« Reply #4 on: September 08, 2017, 12:52:02 PM »
Nice...I wish I could plant durian on my property.

Guayaba

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Re: Amazing Durian Year
« Reply #5 on: September 08, 2017, 01:39:16 PM »
Congratulations Oscar!  That is quite literally a haul of Durian.  It almost makes me wish I enjoyed eating Durian.....almost! ;D
Bob

sapote

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Re: Amazing Durian Year
« Reply #6 on: September 08, 2017, 02:28:05 PM »
Oscar,

I normally bought only the yellow exterior fruits with a tiny crack developed, and avoid the green skin ones for fear of they were picked too soon. Your green ones must be a total different variety. Do people need to wear helmet when under the trees with fruits?

How old are the trees from seeds to have fruit?

Future

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Re: Amazing Durian Year
« Reply #7 on: September 08, 2017, 04:31:56 PM »
Excellent update and pics.  How do you rate each fruit?

Finca La Isla

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Re: Amazing Durian Year
« Reply #8 on: September 08, 2017, 04:37:37 PM »
You don't need a helmet if your durian trees are on a slope and you have a log placed to stop them outside of the impact zone.

Very nice Oscar, I was wondering if the durians might push more flowers as we also had some pretty good dry spells, but not this time.  Durian came early for us in July, but that was it.
Felicidades, Peter

Mike T

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Re: Amazing Durian Year
« Reply #9 on: September 08, 2017, 04:48:22 PM »
Great stuff Oscar. February to April is the main season here but last season I was eating durians from January until late June (June ones from Marshals farm at Kuranda at 400m alt.).My red prawn and penang88 are my most prized varieties and are covered in flower buds now which is 2 moths early, and my young monthong has tiny buds also.Winter was far warmer and drier than usual and that could be the reason.

Samu

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Re: Amazing Durian Year
« Reply #10 on: September 08, 2017, 06:26:42 PM »
Really wishing I am in Hilo right now!
Congrats!
Sam

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Re: Amazing Durian Year
« Reply #11 on: September 08, 2017, 06:51:43 PM »
Very nice fruits Oscar, you are so Lucky! 😄 what kind of fertilize you use and how often?
El verde es vida!

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Re: Amazing Durian Year
« Reply #12 on: September 08, 2017, 07:01:46 PM »
Very nice Oscar!  How they do at the farmer's markets? 

Triloba Tracker

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Re: Amazing Durian Year
« Reply #13 on: September 08, 2017, 07:09:26 PM »
Amazing - thanks for sharing. That's one tailgate party I'd die to attend!

simon_grow

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Re: Amazing Durian Year
« Reply #14 on: September 08, 2017, 08:14:03 PM »
That's awesome Oscar! I love durians but the only good ones we get here are the Mao Shan King from Malaysia which are very expensive. Just wondering, can the Durians be shipped to the mainland? Congratulations on the magnificent harvest!

Simon

fruitlovers

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Re: Amazing Durian Year
« Reply #15 on: September 09, 2017, 03:01:55 AM »
what's the going rate per pound in Hilo now?  Can't wait for quality neighbor island durian to come oahu!
They usually retail for between $4 and $4.50 a pound.
Oscar

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Re: Amazing Durian Year
« Reply #16 on: September 09, 2017, 03:07:57 AM »
Oscar,

I normally bought only the yellow exterior fruits with a tiny crack developed, and avoid the green skin ones for fear of they were picked too soon. Your green ones must be a total different variety. Do people need to wear helmet when under the trees with fruits?

How old are the trees from seeds to have fruit?
All those fruits are "drops", so they are all going to ripen fine. They turn color as they ripen.
I was picking some up off the ground when one hurled towards the ground. With some of the fruits weighing over 20 pounds and being 40+ feet up in the air, those spiky projectiles are very menacing. Helmet would only protect your head. A hit to anywhere else on the body would also be extremely devastating. The land is totally flat so the come straight, there is no rolling. One of the vendors dropped a box that i was delivering and all the durians rolled down his driveway towards me. That was an interesting experience, calling for an immediate withdrawal. haha
Oscar

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Re: Amazing Durian Year
« Reply #17 on: September 09, 2017, 03:16:15 AM »
Excellent update and pics.  How do you rate each fruit?

My favorites are the small seedling Chanees. They have a rich butterscotch flavor and nice dark golden flesh. Also very easy to sell as they are small (1-3 pounds) so not so expensive for the customer. The grafted Chanee comes in second, nice taste but not as rich. The sea urchin durian (oxleyanus) comes in third. Has a very nice taste, no odor, but.very sharp spines, hard to open, and the fruits are a lot smaller. Also the fruit ripens and spoils very fast. The Monthong comes in last. Very huge fruits (10 to 25 pounds), but the texture of this particular tree is kind of stringy. Pulp is whitish and not as rich as the Chanees. Harder to sell because just one fruit is very expensive for customer.
Oscar

fruitlovers

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Re: Amazing Durian Year
« Reply #18 on: September 09, 2017, 03:19:13 AM »
Great stuff Oscar. February to April is the main season here but last season I was eating durians from January until late June (June ones from Marshals farm at Kuranda at 400m alt.).My red prawn and penang88 are my most prized varieties and are covered in flower buds now which is 2 moths early, and my young monthong has tiny buds also.Winter was far warmer and drier than usual and that could be the reason.
er
I am guessing that the durian trees will keep fruiting at least until December, so that will be 5 months of fruits. Yay!
Oscar

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Re: Amazing Durian Year
« Reply #19 on: September 09, 2017, 03:25:47 AM »
Very nice fruits Oscar, you are so Lucky! 😄 what kind of fertilize you use and how often?
Fertilizer is very expensive here, so i am usually very stingy with it. But this year i splurged and it paid off. I fertilized them when they just started to form buds with 0-0-50 and a concentrated nitrogen fertilizer 21-0-0. Two months later i repeated again and they exploded with flowers. Some of the branches look like giant jaboticabas, with flowers all up and down and around all the branches. The ground is totally littered with dropped flower petals. 
Oscar

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Re: Amazing Durian Year
« Reply #20 on: September 09, 2017, 03:30:45 AM »
Very nice Oscar!  How they do at the farmer's markets?
They sell very easily. Big Asian population here, and also lots of durian fanatics, and very few people growing in large quantities. So far i've sold over 750 pounds. Probably eaten way over 100 pounds. This is just from 4 early harvests.
Oscar

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Re: Amazing Durian Year
« Reply #21 on: September 09, 2017, 03:34:07 AM »
That's awesome Oscar! I love durians but the only good ones we get here are the Mao Shan King from Malaysia which are very expensive. Just wondering, can the Durians be shipped to the mainland? Congratulations on the magnificent harvest!

Simon
ri
Yes they can be shipped to the mainland, but it's hard to find a courier that would want to deal with the smell. Also the demand is much larger than the supply right in Hawaii, so why would anyone to go through the hassle of shipping them?
Oscar

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Re: Amazing Durian Year
« Reply #22 on: September 09, 2017, 04:37:17 AM »
Oscar you've got a small paradise for durian lovers!

mikemap

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Re: Amazing Durian Year
« Reply #23 on: September 09, 2017, 04:54:02 AM »
Great pics, thanks Oscar. I would be very keen to taste that chanee seedling. We're seeing the same phenomenon in Hakalau this year, but I'm skeptical of the effect of fertilizing in your case, because neither of the two durian orchards I work for have been fertilized at all in the past 2 years and there are hundreds of fruits on the trees and 3 successive seasons at the same time--big fruits, small fruits, zillions of flowers. These are mostly gumpun/monthong fruits, maybe some chanee. So far only premature drops, no fruits ready to eat yet. I've had a few durians of smaller types from other places this season that are apparently producing in great abundance, like D132 and Pohakulani, Tomorrow I will be tasting a "sulok sionggong" durian for the first time, a hybrid of D. zibethinus and D. graveolens grafted by David Frenz. The spelling and name is dubious. The tree is fairly young, about 6 years I think, and flowered for the first time this year. Likewise for a puangmani tree, which flowered in the 2nd season. It's a great year for some of the more obscure durian varieties to finally fruit. There are so many durian growers around here I'm having trouble keeping track of what's in season.

By the way, does anyone know if it's a problem for pollen to get wet while collecting? I was collecting pollen to pollinate more puangmani earlier this evening and it was a bit drizzly. We put the flowers in ziploc bags and I hope they don't mold before tomorrow afternoon. We've been lucky to catch dry weather collecting pollen previously.
Mike Parker: kefir fanatic, ethnomusicology hobbyist

fruitlovers

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Re: Amazing Durian Year
« Reply #24 on: September 09, 2017, 06:31:41 AM »
Great pics, thanks Oscar. I would be very keen to taste that chanee seedling. We're seeing the same phenomenon in Hakalau this year, but I'm skeptical of the effect of fertilizing in your case, because neither of the two durian orchards I work for have been fertilized at all in the past 2 years and there are hundreds of fruits on the trees and 3 successive seasons at the same time--big fruits, small fruits, zillions of flowers. These are mostly gumpun/monthong fruits, maybe some chanee. So far only premature drops, no fruits ready to eat yet. I've had a few durians of smaller types from other places this season that are apparently producing in great abundance, like D132 and Pohakulani, Tomorrow I will be tasting a "sulok sionggong" durian for the first time, a hybrid of D. zibethinus and D. graveolens grafted by David Frenz. The spelling and name is dubious. The tree is fairly young, about 6 years I think, and flowered for the first time this year. Likewise for a puangmani tree, which flowered in the 2nd season. It's a great year for some of the more obscure durian varieties to finally fruit. There are so many durian growers around here I'm having trouble keeping track of what's in season.

By the way, does anyone know if it's a problem for pollen to get wet while collecting? I was collecting pollen to pollinate more puangmani earlier this evening and it was a bit drizzly. We put the flowers in ziploc bags and I hope they don't mold before tomorrow afternoon. We've been lucky to catch dry weather collecting pollen previously.
Ok, you're skeptical of the effect of fertilizer. And i can't prove that it's what made the difference. But consider this mine have been fruiting for a whole month now, and you say you have only seen aborted fruit so far? Location is probably not a factor as i'm very close to Peepekeo and Hakalau. Are the places you're talking about close to sea level?
Oscar