The Tropical Fruit Forum

I'll have to be happy with just longan.  Phoenix 8.x pH soil, water and heat is just too much for any lychee variety.

Quote from: snowjunky on April 24, 2022, 05:56:17 PM

My kwai muk grew from 3ft in a 3gal pot to 7 ft after one year in the ground.  It was also under a papaya for shade until recently when the papaya broke in half. 
It grew long, but doesn't have many leaves.  I guess it can grow in 8.2pH soil with lots of compost.  I'm not sure it can survive this Phoenix summer without shade.
I got it from toptropicals.  They call it Jesses Creme de la Creme.  It doesn't look grafted and toptropocals doesn't say if it's airlayered or seedling.  The root ball was too big for me to check for that.
I bought some seedling kwai muk from etsy and they grew slowly in cactus mix for a year.  After I up-potted them in regular potting soil last summer they began to decline for some reason.
Maybe they needed more aeration in the soil, but the Jesses Creme de la Creme grew very well in the same regular potting soil.  I'm baffled
Here's what my ugly tree looks like:

wow, your mango trees look great

I wish they are mangos.  They are white sapotes.  Mangos hate my soil and I don't have time to pamper them.
My kwai muk is still alive with some unburnt small leaves.  It even put out some flowers in June.  I painted all the branches and trunk for sun protection. 
I guess Kwai Muk is somewhat heat and sun resistant on par with Kohala longan or Starfruit here in Phoenix.

All my loquats are pretty much done now. I will wait a few weeks more and no one else has any more loquat fruits for this year to provide comments on best tasting then I will post the rest of my taste comparisons.

As I mentioned, I started to take Brix reading a month into the fruits ripening for me so I didn't get to record all my varieties. I will say that the lowest Brix reading for 10 and today I tasted the highest Brix reading fruit of 23.

Brix of 23 is very high, it does appear that most of the time, when I do the group comparison the ones with the highest brix seems to come in top of the list for best tasting.

Hey Kaz, we're ready for you best tasting loquat report 

Mango is too much work to keep alive at my location.  I think Manila is a bit smaller and flatter.

I found the best tasting guavas to be from Taiwan. Emperor and Crystal guava are elite selections and some of the best, if you can find a good air layer. Also Diamond guava from Exotica is very good.

Those Taiwanese are the best fruit breeders.

I have two Crystal guavas.  Crystal Seedless from Taiwan is bushy, low vigor, has normal shaped leaves and sets fruit well. 
The other Crystal guava is probably the same as the Seedless guava according to Kaz.  It's from Southeast Asia somewhere.  It has rounded leaves, but doesn't set fruit well.
Both are supposed to be very sweet and crunchy.

Here is Crystal Seedless grafted on Tropic White rootstock:



Here is Crystal aka Seedless guava grafted on Ruby X Supreme:

Quote from: snowjunky on May 30, 2022, 09:26:24 PM

The La Verne Nursery's Mexican Cream guava is sweet and very fragrant, but tiny fruit and unproductive.  The fruit sometimes has pink blush in the white/yellow flesh.  It is definitely different than the medium size Mexican Cream fruit I've seen on youtube and some websites.  I'm not sure why they would graft and propagate something so unworthy.

Because thats what la verne does.  They propogate a lot of mediocre avocados as well.   The care mostly about making maximum $, not selling the best stuff. 

Kaz, did your guava grafts take?

Capitalistic pigs

The La Verne Nursery's Mexican Cream guava is sweet and very fragrant, but tiny fruit and unproductive.  The fruit sometimes has pink blush in the white/yellow flesh.  It is definitely different than the medium size Mexican Cream fruit I've seen on youtube and some websites.  I'm not sure why they would graft and propagate something so unworthy.

I've lived in Taiwan before, and I ate tons of guava over there. People sell guava on the street as snacks that anyone can grab anytime.
As far as I remember, Crystal is good, but not creamy at all. It is more to crunchy type. I don't remember eating Emperor, maybe I did but just did not find it memorable.
The most tasty guava in Taiwan for me was Milk guava. Yes, they call it Niu Nai Pa Le in Mandarin, translated as Milk guava.
It is not creamy nor crunchy, just in between. Not super sweet, but enough sweet with no tartness or any other aftertaste. It has few seeds with very sweet soft inner part.
I actually been trying to find this variety here, but no one ever heard of it.

Do you remember eating Pearl or Century guavas in Taiwan?  How good are they compared to Crystal?

Here's what mulberries I've grown in Phoenix.

Cooke's Pakistan - my favorite, big sweet flavorful and productive.
Thai Dwarf - very productive and large berries, but very bland.
Australian Green - much smaller berries than pakistan and not as flavorful, just sweet.
Tice - flavorful good size berries, but too tart for me. makes me want to take a Tums.  Not very productive.
Tehama - all male flowers when tree is small, but starting to finally produce a few female catkin flowers after 5 years in ground.
Maui - nice sweet medium size berries. Got frost damaged from breaking dormancy too early, earlier than Thai Dwarf or Shangri La.  I'm borderline 9a/9b.
Jan's Best Everbearing - it really is everbearing, productive small/medium size sweet berries.

I grafted Sangue e Latte from Kaz on a mulberry I bought from a nursery. 
Was going to plant it until I pull it out of the pot and saw nematodes in the roots. 
Now I have to graft it again on a clean rootstock.

Looks delish!  I can't wait to see your test results.

Really? Your lychees take the heat better than your longans?  That's good news.
I cut two hole in the bags for ventilation and the bags are in the shade so they don't get hotter inside from sunlight.  I use foil for grafts in the sun.
The bags help with the low desert humidity by keeping moisture in and protects the new growth from drying out from the dry desert winds.
Using bags allow me to graft more fruit types for a longer part of the year outdoors.  So many times I was lazy to bag and the new growth dried out.

It's hard to understand how fast stuff dries in 15% humidity. A leaf will dry out here in two hours when it might take a day in CA.
I always graft late at night when the humidity is a bit higher and never when it's windy.  So far my neighbors have not called the police on me yet.
When grafting I mostly use the quickest and simplest methods like cleft grafting and chip budding so my cuts have less time to dry out.
Take whip and tongue or example, the extra time used to make the two extra cuts and making sure it fits well does more harm than good in low humidity.

Best time to graft loquat in Phoenix is anytime after Halloween, but before Valentine's Day.  New growth in April will not survive for long even in the shade.