Hello friends,
I have a great new guava with some short comings.  The desirable characteristics are that our new guava has 3 inch diameter, extra large fruit all of which are very consistent in size.  Each one weighs about half a pound.  Our guava tre is 8 feet tall and produces about 3 crops per year.  The tree is also a consistent very heavy producer with about 100 fruit each fruiting cycle.  The guavas have creamy white flesh with numerous hard seeds and the fruit have a nice aroma but the fruit is not sweet enough for my taste.  I am looking for someone who has a large guava with good flavor that is on the sweet side.  I want to try some crosses with my guava to try for an improved variety with the best characteristics of both parent plants.  Does anyone out there have a good prospect for us to try?

To anyone who likes avocados, a healthy avocado tree means more fruit for guacamole and other uses.  If you are going to plant an avocado tree in your yard or already have one, here are some pointers.  You need to know what pests you are dealing with.  There are three major problems, avocado root rot which is a fungus, a thrip and the persea mite. 

This weekend I was talking to a friend and he asked me this question:  Is it normal for my avocado tree to loose so many leaves this time of year?  My answer was it is NOT normal.  We walked up to his tree and I turned over a large avocado leaf.  I told him the avocado tree's heavy leaf loss is being caused persea mites.  I have been surprised to find out how many people growing avocados don't know about this problem.  Most people are familiar with aphids on their rose bushes.  They are a sucking insect that does a lot of damage to the plants that they attack. 

The persea mite is also a sucking pest that is very destructive but it primarily attacks avocado trees.   The only difference is the persea mite is much smaller so you can't see them.  The evidence in addition to the heavy leaf drop is fairly easy to see if you look closely.  The upper surface of the infected leaves have lots of small yellow to brown spots.  If you turn the leaf over and look carefully you will see tiny silver areas along the leaf's veins.  The silver is the persea mite's webs.  In the attached pictures you will see both the upper and lower leaf surface evidence.  The first picture is the upper leaf surface and the second picture is the lower surface.

If you see these things on your avocado trees, I suggest you check with a few neighbors who have avocados.  They will almost certainly have the persea mites on their trees too.  The treatment is simple.  Put some persea mite predators on your tree.  You can order the predators from some nurseries or look up a local insectory like Rincon Vitova.   The predators come in a clear plastic vile that has enough of the little good guys to treat an acre of avocados.  We suggest that you share the cost of the predators with a few neighbors as the price including shipping will add up to around $40 or $50.

When you get the shipment, make sure you save the package.  The package predators come in is what we have recommended for shipping mango or other perishable budwood.  Also make sure you put the predators on your avocado tree right away for best results.  We use little Del Taco french fry bags, stapled to a few avocado tree leaves to get the predators onto the avocado tree.  The predators take a little time to get control of the bad mites.  Soon your tree will have nice, clean healthy leaves and more avocados.

We had a little get-together yesterday at my place to talk about the new mangoes.  I put together some of my fresh fruits (mangoes of course), some nice ripe avocados and a few veggies from the garden and I made a big bowl of salsa.  Every one loved it and it disappeared in a hurry.  I like to share good recipes with my friends so I am attaching a picture of the table and a link to the recipe we wrote down.  Just for accuracy, I do grow pineapples but not the one in the picture.  It was just for the table setting.  If you are having a party today, give this salsa a try, your guests will love it!
The recipe link is: [redacted]



mod edit: removed link

Hello fellow mango lovers.  We have a great red one too.  Our new cold hardy mango, Cal Ruby tastes as good as it looks.  Our development priorities were: 1, being adapted to our So Cal climate; 2, tasting good; and 3, we wanted brightly colored mangoes because everybody likes them.  Some of our mango friends might find it interesting that in Japan for example, the bright red ones are considered to be indicative of prosperity, good fortune, good health and other positive things.  They are selling in Japan for $20.00 or more per fruit and they are often given as gifts. 




***mod edit:  made this into its own topic since it was posted on a buy/sell thread ***