The Tropical Fruit Forum

I'm always happy to see spiders on our trees. They certainly do more good than harm and play an important role in balancing insect populations. Some of the colonial / social spiders found in the tropics might blanket significant parts of a tree, but I don't if there have been any studies on whether they have any negative effects on the trees.

I don’t know of any regular fruit tours to CR.  Individual tours will pop up sometimes around July/August or so when there are the most fruits in season.  Costa Rica is a fairly easy country to visit.  It wouldn’t be hard to organize your own tour. 
I could make some recommendations for anyone interested in that.
Peter

Hard to tell from the pics, but I don't think so. Looks like new growth.

Post another pic in a day or 2.

Hi W,

Thanks for sharing your experience.

I've no luck with fruit seeds from Trade Winds except some rare vegetable and melon seeds.

You gave me encouragement that soncoya is a very easy plant to grow with vigorous growths always. I felt my soncoya are very healthy, outgrowing my 18 pink illama seedlings which were sown at the same time. I mist all my newly germinated seedlings with organic seaweed plant food and happy to see their glossy leaves getting bigger day by day.


Son coya is a tropical, so I presumed you grow it in a greenhouse under zone 7b, right? How old is it? It is still in a big pot for easy management during winter time? Has it ever set any fruit for you? What are the fertilizer and water requirements? Kindly share. Thanks

Paul

I recently picked up a couple Barbados Cherry plants. The spot I had in mind for them gets the most sun in the yard, and it's also one of the driest spots. The 3 Night-Blooming Jasmine plants in that area spend many a day thirsty and drooping. I'm not the most diligent waterer. Could the Barbados Cherries go in that spot or should I look for another spot with a little more shade and moisture? Thanks!

Quote from: Chad on January 24, 2021, 01:45:33 AM

Have you had any success grafting Luc's? I'm waiting on two imbe plants to be delivered that I'm planning to graft my Luc's onto in the next week or two.

Have gradted lots of mature Lucs and they usually flower in sinc with the parent tree from
what I have noticed but I dont think they will be compatible with imbe.You will need a
South American garcinia for rootstock

Well tropo its true that Limberlost is a pale shadow of its former glorious days with tropical fruit. Try to purchase a few rambutans, pulasans, duku-langsats etc while you are at it. You can reach down deep and come up empty. Considering how many durians are out there and how many varieties are grown here it is a perennial problem that keeps getting worse. Only a few private people sell them. There is not much chance of getting a good or correctly named durian from Rusty's or the Mossman market so dig deeper and approach the few people who actually sell quality durians that are grafted.Be careful with seedlings but they probably get a bum rap that isn't always deserved.

Mike, thanks for the stirring the pot. You may not be the sand in my vaseline but the information you have shared will cause my wallet to be feeling raw in the future.  I will now need to hunt down some of these more desirable garcinias.

Are there any named varieties of achacha roaming around down there? Of the few sources I have sampled, they all seem to taste similar and I don't think I could tell them apart in a blind taste test. I had heard from a fellow forum member about a variety called selecto in Bolivia. It seems that this variety is being grown and sold commercially in Australia based on the video I have linked below. Have you sampled this and, if so, is it significantly better than the common fair?


The video is in spanish but use CC and go to settings to translate to the language of choice.

https://youtu.be/C0F6Kz_FPrE

Frustration with my 4 Luc trees being female makes me wonder if I am in for the same treatment with my achacha trees.  One tree I have in the ground, which has yet to flower, is about 10 years old. I planted it in a windy spot, which has slowed down its growth but it is 10ft tall now.  Have you encountered achacha trees that flower but never fruit or do not fruit for an extended amount of time?

Quote from: Mike T on January 21, 2021, 10:42:45 PM

How could I forget acuminate. I am referring to selections of these species of course.

So if you could only plant 1 garcinia in the ground would it be the Ecuadorian macrophylla? I heard purple mangosteen was still better than lucs and achacha. Has anyone grafted purple to lucs to see if it helped with hardiness?
Or should I just plant another lychee?...

A 10ft achacha can pump out 100s of fruit a season and they get loaded.I have eaten 1000s of them and think they would struggle to be in the top 10 American Garcinias if judged by fruit quality alone.