container black sapote seedling is flowing

[brian]

I went out to my greenhouse to pick some oranges and noticed that my black sapote seedling has flower buds!  I bought this seedling just 16 months ago as a 4in starter plant and it is now 6ft tall.  Is it normal to flower in the fall?  What are the odds of having both male & female flowers? 




when I ordered it on Etsy, June 2019

[achetadomestica]

I have 2 seedlings growing in my yard. One produced fruit last year and it was 2 years old and
it has even more fruit this year. The other tree is constantly flowering and hasn't produce yet.
I guess you have to wait and see but my fruiting tree the fruit is geting large now and was ripe last
December/January

[RodneyS]

My Bernecker black sapote had many flowers this year, but they all fell off.

[brian]

Should I paintbrush-pollinate these?  There aren't any pollinators in my greenhouse this time of year

[achetadomestica]

Should I paintbrush-pollinate these?  There aren't any pollinators in my greenhouse this time of year

It can't hurt
Maybe keep track of the ones you try

[Mike T]

Going from flowers to fruit is the challenge.

[brian]

Do very few flowers typically fruit?  I don't know much about black sapote

[brian]

My solo seedling black sapote flowered again and this time a few fruits formed.  Hopefully they hold.

[drymifolia]

Hi Brian, I wonder if you have any updates on this tree? What size container is it in now, if you still have it, and how big/productive is it?

I'm hoping to eventually have one in a container that I bring into the greenhouse for most of the winter, but keep outside for the summer months. I'm starting some seeds now and had intended to graft them, but maybe I'll just grow them out if they might fruit that quickly.

[brian]

I still have this tree and it has been fruiting frequently ever since.  The fruit quality is good and I usually eat them all, but it isn't quite as good as the ones I had tried at Excalibur nursery years ago.  I would try a grafted tree if I were growing another one. 

It is about 6ft tall in a 20gal container, trunk is about 1.5in diameter.  I have pruned it lightly for height but it isn't overly vigorous.  The seedlings grow fast but once it reached this size it slowed down quite a bit.  It should be able to stay in the pot forever, or at least for a long time.  I am hoping it will make more lower branches and I can keep it reasonably compact. 

It accumulates some scale insects in the greenhouse, but not severely.  It has otherwise been trouble free and easy to grow. 

Here is a current photo.  It is crowded in the greenhouse right now so it is hard to see the tree outline

[elouicious]

Thanks for the update brian!

do you eat them out of hand?

[brian]

Yup I eat them out of hand, with a spoon usually.  I prefer them when they are still slightly cocoa brown inside with a bit of texture.  By the time they fall off the tree on their own they are more gelatinous than I like.

[drymifolia]

Thank you for the update! I'm mostly wanting mine for pollen to attempt to hybridize with D. texana, but I'm having trouble finding a list of which cultivars have both male and female flowers. If I can just grow a handful of seedlings to fruiting size within a couple years, then I can just pick a male or hermaphrodite and get rid of the rest.

[Plantinyum]

I have one seedling, about a meter in heigh, the species is easy to care for and the plant does wonderfull as of now. I hope it can also fruit on its own, when mature enough.

[Tropheus76]

Because I picked a Balck Sapote up in a nursery going out of business sale a few weeks back, I intend on keeping it in a container for the next few years until its big enough to survive our winters in the ground. What kind of soil mix are you using?

[brian]

Mine is in the same soil all my other trees use.  I see no reason to believe they are finicky about soil. 

I am not exactly sure of my soil component anymore as it is a constantly-recycled pile that I occasionally add new mulch to.  It started as something like a 5-1-1 mix

[zwanif]

But black. Spote is not true to seed?!
Is. Yours grafted?!

[brian]

My seedling black sapote produces nice fruit on its own.  I guess there is some chance of it being dioecious but I am not sure what the likelyhood is.  And while grafted varieties might be even better, the seedling fruit is certainly not bad.  Big difference compared to say apple or prunus where a seedling tree will be nearly inedible.

[drymifolia]

Big difference compared to say apple or prunus where a seedling tree will be nearly inedible.

Apologies for pulling this thread off topic, but just wanted to discuss this part....

I think with apples the only problem is crabapple being a likely pollen parent when open pollinated anywhere that crabapples grow (i.e., pretty much anywhere apples grow). Apple seedlings where the only available pollen is also a good dessert apple will generally produce good fruit (though not identical to parent of course, especially since most apples are not self-compatible so you're pretty much guaranteed an outcross). However, many large-scale commercial apple growers specifically, intentionally plant flowering crabs as pollenizers because they often have long flowering windows that will overlap with most apples. So store-bought apples are quite often going to have inedible seedlings as a result of this practice. If you get apples from a U-pick farm with dozens of different varieties planted near each other, you have a better chance of good seedlings.

I've mostly heard people praising the good quality of peach seedlings (which tend to be self compatible and self-pollinized), but I know cherries are more problematic since there is often available pollen from ornamental or inedible cherries. I don't think it's true that Prunus in general makes inedible seedlings, though. It's mostly a matter of what pollen is available.

[brian]

Thanks for clarifying, I was not actually speaking from experience on the temperate fruits but rather based on my rough recollection of from stories of my youth.

[zwanif]

I went out to my greenhouse to pick some oranges and noticed that my black sapote seedling has flower buds!  I bought this seedling just 16 months ago as a 4in starter plant and it is now 6ft tall.  Is it normal to flower in the fall?  What are the odds of having both male & female flowers? 




when I ordered it on Etsy, June 2019

i didnt know that black sapote can fruit from seeds i thought it needs grafting ??,

[drymifolia]

i didnt know that black sapote can fruit from seeds i thought it needs grafting ??,

I said this already when you posted an earlier thread asking about trees able to be grown from seed, but I'll say it again: almost every type of fruit tree in the world can be grown from seed, other than a few truly seedless things like bananas. The only questions are:

• how long does it take to fruit?
• how similar will seedling fruit be to the fruit of the seed parent?
• does a particular species need to be grafted on another species due to local soil problems or for dwarfing?

For black sapote, it seems that the answers are "a few years," "somewhat similar but non-identical," and "no."