The Tropical Fruit Forum

 We decided to get an Oro Negro Avocado for our property here in Lakeland FL. Below is a video of us planting it with a short mention of our huge Day Avocado that we planted in 2018, 6 years ago. I have seen the reports that the Oro Negro has production issues. We will see how it does in our context as we have better soil than most people have to work with in Florida. I'll update this in the future.

https://youtu.be/euKkejSr3jE?si=3XN4Am1Wna7AiPU5

  Last night was interesting for us here in Lakeland Florida. We hit 32* at 10pm which is the earliest I've seen freezing temps start for me since I've moved here 6 years ago. We hit 29* at midnight. We went out and lit the burn barrels at 1am to save the mango trees. At that time I was expecting a really cold night. Then between 1:30 and 2 we had a warm pocket come over our property. It spiked the temperature 4* to 33*. We didn't get to 32 until around 5am. At 7 am temps really dropped, going to 27 but was close to 32 by 8am. Many of the nearby areas on weather underground were much worse than I had it. Within 20 minutes of me I saw temps as low as 23-24. Many areas were 27-28 a good amount of the night while we had a mysterious warm pocket over us. I'll share the video of our night here: https://youtu.be/ck7BG9-vbV8

Last weekends freeze hit us worse though mostly just cosmetic leaf damage on some things. In that freeze we hit 32 at 1am and at 6am we hit 29 which lasted about 2 hours. We were back to 32 around 8:30. Lots of frost in this event, much more than last night.

Hope everyone did ok last night and hopefully tonight doesn't get to bad. Only calling for 34 for me yet we're under a freeze warning with possible lows of 30 says the forecast.

Hello everyone, I have attached three pictures of a seedling from a Dream Atemoya seed that I planted around February of this year. It's about three foot tall already and is really picking up the growth pace over the last 6 weeks. My question is if anyone can tell me based on the pics if you think this seedling has more cherimoya or more sugar apple traits? Based on my limited understanding the leaves look more Cherimoya like but I could be wrong. I've heard Cherimoya won't do well in Florida so I'm wondering if this seedling will struggle to produce fruit if it's genes are more from the Cherimoya side. Either way time will tell.

I just ordered some cherimoya seeds for rootstock and when they came in I saw they are brown. I thought they would be black based on what I have seen online. They did come from a source in Florida so it makes me wonder if they are sugar apple seeds.  Thoughts?

Can anyone tell me what this white stuff is in these pics on my mexicola avocado tree? I'm getting a few small branches dying as well and this stuff seems to be on those dead twigs fairly often but not always.

Today I was working on a freeze protection setup for my nearly 15 foot tall almost two year Jackfruit tree. Here is the video showing how it turned out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRIk16Z7970

Any thoughts on whether or not it will work? I might wrap the bottom 8 foot enclosing the tree inside to contain heat and block wind and cold from getting in though it will be open from above for the shower to rain inside. Any ideas are welcome.

I'll be attempting my first graft later this week attaching an Avri scion to a in ground loquat seedling I planted last spring. My original plan was to have multiple seedlings in case of failure but only one of five seeds sprouted so I only get one chance. I've been reading everything I can last few days on grafting. Until the scions come in I won't know how the size will match up with the rootstock so I'm undecided on method at this point. I am looking for advice especially on the graft location of this seedling. Well hardened off area, or newer wood but not fully hardened off or really fresh growth as the seedling is currently flushing. Any advice on anything would be great. Thanks. Pics:

 I'm predicting some serious damage to our project here in Lakeland FL. All my trees that are wrapped with a heat lamp I'm sure will be fine but the trees I planned on protecting with burn barrels are in serious trouble I think. The problems began right away. We have a freeze warning for our area from 3am to 9am so I set my alarm at 1am thinking I would have a good jump start on the freeze. I was shocked to see my thermometer reader next to my bed saying 31 already. I assume we hit 32 around midnight. It's 5:30am as I write this. It took much longer to get the burn barrels going than I had anticipated. It took an hour and a half. So by 2:30 my temp gauges throughout my property were showing 28-29 degrees. It's been holding 28-29 degrees for three hours straight. Now when I went to bed at 10 pm we had a good gusty wind and the forcast was for a decent wind which I need to make good use out of my burn barrels. When I went outside at 1am it was dead still. I haven't felt a breeze all night. Temperature at my trees is only doing good near burn barrel. Opposite side is showing 28 degrees. My water hoses for saftey we're nearly froze at 3 am. Luckily I got them flowing. I think we have another 3 hours of serious freeze left tonight. I'm not expecting things to turn out well. This freeze was so much harder than any forcast model I follow. Usually the forcast are very close for my area. Tough night, I'll be ready for bed in a few hours and make a new plan as we still have two more nights of this. Going to make changes to my overall project as well. Good luck everyone in the path of this freeze.

This is a picture of the first pineapple fruit we have harvested. How common is it to get pineapple with two crowns?

 I bought this banana plant last year which I was told was a "ice cream" but the pics of "blue Java" fruit don't match the fruit on my plant. Thoughts? The fruit is about 4 months old...

Hello this is really my first post other than the one I did in the intro thread. Thought I would start a thread sharing progress videos of our project here in Lakeland Florida. The project is officially one year old now although fruit tree planting didn't begin until end of March, early April, in 2016. We just did our latest update videos today February 26 in two parts which I will post first then I will put last years August video and November update video up.

part 1:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lj3GB6lnolU&t=40s

Part 2:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIePOFxQ7N8&t=748s

November 2016 video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvDdGuJ1cx0&t=258s

August video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMl50NQYd9Q&t=1071s