Today i cut down 3 Brewster lychee trees i planted over 20 years ago. I did it to give more light to the remaining trees. When i originally planted these Brewsters i purposely planted them close together (15 feet apart) figuring i would take advantage of fruiting for a few years and then later remove every other tree (to get 30 feet apart). Was good in theory only. Brewsters don't fruit very well here, and by the time i got around to removing them they were giant trees, and shading out some of my other preferred lychees. As i mentioned before, any part of a lychee tree that is shaded will not fruit. Oh well, live and learn!
This tree in the middle with survey tape is one of the ones i cut down. On left another Brewster i kept, to the right a Kwai Mi Pink (B3) and a Groff:
Tree after removal. Lots more light for the Groff and others:
Was really hard to do this because one of the trees had lots of fruit panicles:
This is what the inside of the trunk looks like. Lychee wood is used here for making drums and even for some furniture. It is very good, colorful, and hard wood:
Some of these trees got very large. This is the trunk of a Kwai Mi that i didn't remove. You can see my foot on the bottom for scale.
I rented a giant wood chipper to come in a few days so i can spread all the chips under the remaining trees. I kept about a dozen lychee trees. Soon will come the task of topping the remaining trees to get them to where fruit is more reachable. Because trees were too packed together they tended to get very upright to reach for the light under intense light competition.
Oscar