I've never burned anything with osmocote. The 12 tbs sounds right for a 25 gal pot. Remember -- that's all the food its going to get for 6+ months. So, that would be roughly 2 tbs per month of a regular fertilzer.

The annonas in my experience are not light feeders. They appreciate a lot of nitrogen, especially in the spring and summer, and don't produce well without it. The jabo, while salt sensitive, will produce way more fruit way more often if given plentiful nitrogen. One also normally wants those things to grow at a quicker pace.

Most of the selected cultivars are either smooth and free of grit (eg, alano, silas woods, makok) or with a very tiny / nearly undetectable amount of grit (tikal, morena).

Oddly, though, I prefer the fruit of seedling trees with plenty of grit. The grit gives it substance and reminds me of a bartlett pear

Friend gave me this fruit from Nelson’s in ft pierce, first one I’ve enjoyed as it wasn’t sweet overload more balanced, but the grit was persistent...questions for the forum what’s the grit? Are their cultivars with non existent sandlike grit? TIA

-Joep450

I"m assuming that the large branch that you cut back had some damage to it, which caused the dead wood visible in the photo. I agree with Har that the grub / worm is simply chomping on already dead wood.

Hello again,
Today I was cutting a rotting branch off a Cogshall Mango and and found this worm (borer?) inside the branch.  Any idea what it is and the best method to eliminate it?

annonas can actually be a real headache :-). Either you're lucky or you're taking great care of them. It took me many years and many failed attempts to grow them. I found that successfully growing them requires leaf hopper control and really good fertilization and watering practices. Mango is indeed a set it and forget it type tree though... unless you get MBBS.

Guanabana grows great for me here, and the fruit is delicious. Tree is beautiful and easy to control. 6 nice fruit ripening, can't wait!

Thinking about either grafting other varieties, or removing one of my not so great trees for another soursop.

White ilama sounds good too, got a little ilama tree from Mike at TreesNMore a while back that is ready for grafting.

In general, mangoes and annonas appear to be 2 of the easiest, most productive, and best fruit trees to grow in SoFl.

2 years? That's nuts!

I waited until late winter time to do the pruning, as many other trees.
They take a long time to heal from the wound, and I would not put anything on the wound, the sap it excretes is more than enough to keep pests away.

Growth habits here in NorCal are different, temp swings are one of many factors, so late winter is the best time for us.
It begins around late April (Early Spring) all the way until early October then it goes completely dormant.

My tree is quite old, I think it's well over 10 years old, grown in a container.
Clusters of fruits on it right now, but the fruits take 2 years or more to mature, yes 2 years.
I think I have your contact number, shoot me a PM if you want to see some pictures or I can email you.

Waxy

smacke01, you have Mango Bacterial Black Spot, probably one of the worst diseases to affect the mango here in FL at the moment.

There are non-sour guanabanas. They are generally popular among Jamaicans (at least as far as I've seen here in FL). They seem to be true to seed as well. The one sold at nurseries is nearly always sour though. I tend to prefer the sour one myself (it's actually a good mix of sweet and sour).

If you like soursop, you would die for white ilama. The white ilama has a similar flavor, just a bit more refined and with better texture.

The anti-cancer thing I think is misleading. I remember reading something that indicated that annonacin is actually a neurotoxin. I would probably recommend refraining from neurotoxic tea unless I literally had no other treatment options. Just sayin...

Correct. That's what I was told by BCPA. I decided that it wasn't worth the effort and just annexed the lot and homesteaded it .

So I would have to sell the fruit in order to qualify or have a chance of qualifying.  Just a hypothetical cuz pretty sure they will never consider anything in the area I live "agricultural"

Saps are really slow growers, even here in FL, where trees pretty much fly out of the ground. They do seem to tolerate salt, so I tend to overload them with nitrogen to push them along (and to get big harvests ). Hence, 5 years to that height might not be realistic? It took my alano 4 - 5 years to get to 10 feet, and we have somewhere around 3x the "heat hours" (forget the term) you guys get.

Cutting side branches to encourage height is not necessarily a solution to pushing vertical growth. Those side branches do 2 things in your favor:

 - They help to thicken the trunk, which then permits the tree to support vertical growth.
 - They add photosynthesis, allowing the tree to grow faster.

Saps tend towards vertical growth, so you shouldn't really need to do much in the way of pruning of undergrowth. Eventually those branches will get shaded out as the upper canopy develops, at which point you would want to cut them.

As far as planting it out -- if it were me, I'd go ahead and plant it. Even if the soil falls apart, that will give you an opportrunity to inspect he root system and cut any circling roots (very important for long term stablishment).

Keep it well fertilized with plenty of nitrogen in a slow release form.

Quote from: Cookie Monster on June 05, 2019, 09:34:35 AM

Definitely leave that branch until the tree is well established (a few years), at which point you can either leave it or prune it (along with its sibling on the other side) depending on how you want the final tree to look.

You could remove that green tape and gradually open it up... or just not worry about it.

Thank you Jeff,

In your opinion what would be the best course of action to grow this alano to a large upright tree.  My hopeful goal would be for this Alano to be 10-15 feet tall in 5+ years or however long it needs to get there. 

Waxy mentioned above that the tree may remained small or dwarfed if left unpruned due to the energy being shared among the branches and not more to the center leader.

your opinion and others would be very much appreciated.

Sorry I forgot to mention.  The nursery owner recommended not planting into the ground yet due to them just re-potting to a larger container just in the last 1-2 weeks.  I was thinking just wait until spring of next year to plant rather than planting in ground during the summer.

Vince

Definitely leave that branch until the tree is well established (a few years), at which point you can either leave it or prune it (along with its sibling on the other side) depending on how you want the final tree to look.

You could remove that green tape and gradually open it up... or just not worry about it.

Yah, and I'm still trying to determine the long term impact in different microclimates. What's weird is that I've had MBBS for several years (since 2011 / 2012 or so?) on a keitt whose entire crop would be lost pretty much every year (it wasn't until around 2017 that I finally figured out what was causing it). Yet, it's still been only a minor issue in my orchard of 30 some mango trees. This year, I've only really seen it on one of my LZ trees, where it's been an issue on less than 10% of the crop. I'm still not sure which of various factors has prevented its wide scale spread across my orchard: fortnightly copper sprays, keeping the trees well fertilized, microclimate factors, lack of rain this year, ...?

Quote from: Cookie Monster on June 01, 2019, 10:30:13 AM

Nuts! I've never seen that.

Quote from: Squam256 on May 31, 2019, 10:19:23 PM

Active bacterial spot lesions oozing gummosis

Me neither.
Looks really nasty.
Hope folks will post experience with limiting this scourge.

Nuts! I've never seen that.

Active bacterial spot lesions oozing gummosis

Yes. The flesh can be soft even though skin is green.

Thanks all! Cookie Monster- is the skin usually still green at the stage you like them? The ones I've had in the past were fully yellow when I got them.