The Internet's Finest Tropical Fruit Discussion Forum!"All discussion content within the forum reflects the views of the individual participants and does not necessarily represent the views held by the Tropical Fruit Forum as an organization."
Yeah Rob, I refrigerate my pollen, usually only lasts a day for me. Sometimes it is not long enough but often it is, I have 40+ fruits due to start ripening in a few weeks, at first I was worried I had over done it, but as it turns out the tree is handling it well. Best of luck
We don’t really need to pollinate any fruit trees, especially rollinia. But, I’m wondering, don’t you have any of the stingless, melipona bees, in Florida?
I do agree with having mulch and allowing leaves to for a habitat underneath for the lesser known pollinators that do their work at night. I have seen small beetles, flies, and roaches that look very much like a beetle out at night in mango flowers and in tilo flowers hands down the smallest and tightest flower I have ever seen. Roblack do the flowers close at night?
How often do you fertilize your annonas? Eyeballing my Geffner with one measly flower.
Once a quarter with slow release 8-2-12 and minors. Several pounds per tree.Quote from: roblack on April 09, 2019, 09:57:31 PMHow often do you fertilize your annonas? Eyeballing my Geffner with one measly flower.
Quote from: Cookie Monster on April 10, 2019, 09:20:37 AMOnce a quarter with slow release 8-2-12 and minors. Several pounds per tree.Quote from: roblack on April 09, 2019, 09:57:31 PMHow often do you fertilize your annonas? Eyeballing my Geffner with one measly flower. How big are your trees, Jeff? Mine is about 3 years old, has a lot of flowers on them, and I've fed it 8-2-12 as well as some 0-3-16.
My rollinia seems to produce gobs of fruit without hand pollination. The trick is generally tree health -- water, fertilization and protection from leafhoppers. For the first several years that I grew annonas, I had terrible luck with them, but I've now come to understand that it was mainly lack of fertilization: boron, zinc, and nitrogen being most influential.
Early flowers allowed me to gather pollen and hand pollinate ate the same time. My 3 year old tree now has around 30 fruit set and growing. I did another round of hand pollination but did need to gather the pollen and store it for a day or two. I’ll know soon if it was successful. I gathered the pollen in a plastic lid for a mason jar then put it in a ziplock bag and stored it in my wine fridge as my regular fridge is below 40 degrees and I don’t know if that’s too cold for the pollen. Here’s the fruit from the initial set.