The Tropical Fruit Forum

Looking to purchase a small quantity (3-5) of scions of Sweet Tart mango.  Please contact me if you have any available. 

Thanks,
Mark

Glyphosate gets roots and all.  No need to complicate this.

Right, but banana shoots in a mat are all connected by a shared corm and rhizomes, so how do you not kill the whole plant in this case where he wants to keep some parts of it?

Brad, I feel like your attacking my manliness (Lol).  Hey, no one ever called me lazy in the yard; instead, I get in trouble for getting after it too much.  But, yeah, there's something about this banana tree that's intractable for me.  It's rooted into a bunch of river rocks, bounders, brecia, maybe some cement.  I'll give it another go.  I assume digging all the surrounding pups will have some damage on the roots of the one or two I want to maintain.  I'm sure they'll bounce back in time though.  Thanks.

Commercially, glyphosate is sometimes used to kill banana shoots, and it is injected into the shoots to be removed.  Kerosene is used in some places, too.  Personally, I just use elbow grease, especially since the goal is not to kill the entire plant.  The easiest approach I've found is (1) use a wide toothed saw to chop off every shoot you want gone as close to the soil as practical, then (2) use a very sturdy shovel to chop straight down through the remaining stump and corm and pop it out of the ground in pieces until there are no more pieces.  That way you don't actually dig in the soil much, which sounds hard in your situation, you essentially just use your shovel as a cutting blade and crow bar.  You need a really tough shovel for this.  I use one of the Fiskars one with 100% steel construction.

Yes, you will disturb roots of the shoots you want to keep, but you can keep your chopping of roots pretty localized to the shoots you want out.  You'll probably be tired and sore when all is said and done, but it's definitely doable as a one person job.

Anyone know when Jan Boyce avocado is ripe in So Cal?  I've only got one hanging, my first, and I don't want to screw it up and pick it too early.

The unknowns look like Musa balbisiana, which does not produce edible fruit.  I grew it for a while by accident.  Received it as "Blue Java", but it was not.

Congrats.  See, not that hard, but it feels like magic!

Agreed.  And in SoCal they like afternoon shade.

They seem to do fine without afternoon shade in coastal areas in SoCal (or at least in my coastal area).

My recollection is that there have been properly replicated, controlled studies on this question, and that leaving 4-5' of "trunk" (pseudostem) performed measurably better than removing the shoot that fruited near ground level.

Quote from: hawkfish007 on December 27, 2018, 05:54:04 PM

Quote from: simon_grow on December 27, 2018, 05:21:50 PM

Grafting Stone fruits is very easy. Just look up a video on YouTube. You need to graft when the branches are dormant. I like to graft several weeks to a month before I expect the trees to come out of dormancy.

There are also plenty of great mango grafting videos. If you have any specific questions, just ask here. Good luck!

Simon

Thank you for your suggestions. I tried grafting 5 or so scions early November and all of them failed. I am afraid to try more. I remember Gary Zill was stressing about cambium layer on several of his YouTube videos, I have no clue how does cambium layer look like. I would love to see when someone does grafting in person. Please let me know when you do.

Your timing is definitely off. But i would wait to regraft until there are at least 3 days with day time temp over 75f and night time temps over 55f. Previous years i had 5% success rate with peach tree grafts. Then last year i took the advice of some posters on another forum which indicated that for some stone fruits warmer temps are necessary for the grafts to callous. I received scionwood in january  and waited until warmer weather in march. Surprisingly i had 100% takes in peach cleft grafts. I dont think my knife skills improved all that much in one year so i put it down to waiting for warmer weather and storing scion wood in the refrigerator with ziploc bags with moist towel.

You don't need that kind of warmth.  With decent cleft grafts on peach done in January with healthy scion wood and rootstock, you should get close to 100% success.

Quote from: simon_grow on December 27, 2018, 05:21:50 PM

Grafting Stone fruits is very easy. Just look up a video on YouTube. You need to graft when the branches are dormant. I like to graft several weeks to a month before I expect the trees to come out of dormancy.

There are also plenty of great mango grafting videos. If you have any specific questions, just ask here. Good luck!

Simon

Thank you for your suggestions. I tried grafting 5 or so scions early November and all of them failed. I am afraid to try more. I remember Gary Zill was stressing about cambium layer on several of his YouTube videos, I have no clue how does cambium layer look like. I would love to see when someone does grafting in person. Please let me know when you do.

The problem is probably not your technique, but your timing.  You want to graft stone fruit a little bit before they leaf out, not months before they leaf out (unless you are bud grafting in summer).  Simple cleft or whip and tongue grafts are almost foolproof done within a month or so of when the trees break bud.  Even after they start to push new growth, the success rate is really high.  Given where you live in So Cal, I wouldn't think you'd want to graft earlier than late January.  If you know when your tree has typically broken buds, aim for two weeks before that, more or less.

So It’s 12/20 and all my 11 sugar apples aee green as can be with no signs of ripening. Is it possible they they will eventually ripen or am I doing something wrong? Please see image. This fruit lools beautiful and large but when I sliced it in half, it is very hard. Any suggestions?

Aren't they like cherimoya and avocados in that they need to ripen off the tree?  At least a few days?

If you are looking for named varieties (grafted or rooted from cuttings), One Green World and Bay Flora both have some available.  I've bought feijoa from both of them recently and have been happy with what I received.  Smallish, but nice plants.  It seems pretty hard to track down named varieties that don't require knowing a friend of a friend.