($25)




The white plastic pipe is 63" tall. I did some pre-digging and root pruning yesterday to prepare for moving this tree. I will dig it out and move it in 14 days. If no one wants it ($25) then I'll move to a less desirable spot in the back

I have two of these PSM planted and am moving this one and planting an avocado tree. This Pim Saen Mun is about 6ft tall and gave fruit this year during July. It was planted 2.5 years ago and came in 7 gallon size so it got off to a good start. If you want this tree let me know.
Pine Island description>>>  http://www.tropicalfruitnursery.com/mango/pim-saen-mun-mango.shtml

I will put a notice in Craigslist in a day or two. I will pre-dig the tree for you  previous to you taking it away. This makes for better transplanting.



thanks!
Zands

 Plant carambola , loquat now for payback later
Miami Herald, The (FL) - Sunday, March 7, 2010
Author: BRUCE W. GREER Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden
BY BRUCE W. GREER Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden

March should be a gloriously delicious month in your garden and provide a chance to prepare for years of benefits. Temperatures will be moderate, winds gentle and it will be relatively dry.

This means that the herbs you planted in the fall are coming to maturity and you will be picking basil, thyme, oregano, dill and others from now until rains start at the end of May.

If you planted vegetables from October through January, you will have enough cherry tomatoes, lettuce, peppers, radishes and carrots to make a salad every day, providing the maximum benefit of vitamins and minerals.

But if you were unable to plant vegetables in the cooler fall weather, you could get creative now and find a spot where they will prosper in the hot weather that is just around the corner. A very light shade from a large oak or a location with only morning sun might allow you to squeeze in one more vegetable crop this season.

You might find it more pleasing and ultimately rewarding to put your efforts this month into planting a few good fruit trees. Here are two fruits that children love to eat right off the tree. And let's be honest, when it comes to tropical fruit, we all are children.

The star fruit or carambola (Averrhoa carambola ) is a great choice for your garden. It is a yellow translucent waxy fruit about three to six inches long and is star shaped when cut. It is believed to be from Asia, where it has been cultivated for centuries. While it can easily grow to a dense 20-foot canopy, it can be kept as a small symmetrical tree and will bear heavily with very juicy fruit high in vitamin C.

Carambola seedlings have been grown in South Florida for almost a century. You may want to enter the Fruit Lottery and try to find a one-in-a-million new seedling variety. However, if you decide to purchase a grafted variety, you will be assured to get the sweetness you desire.

A local homeowner, Morris Arkin, took that chance for you in the early 1970s. He grew a seedling in his backyard that was so large and delicious it was subsequently named the Arkin. It is now the most popular variety available. Arkin fruit are bright yellow, juicy, sweet and store well. However, if you have space for two trees or prefer a milder taste, the Fwang Tung is a Thai cultivar that is light yellow -- almost white -- and more delicate.

Carambola trees prefer a slightly acidic soil. In South Florida, they benefit from hearty mulching out to the drip line. Pine bark or oak leaves will acidify the surrounding soil just enough to allow you to grow your tree organically.

You should expect heavy crops to give you more than enough fruit to eat fresh, plus enough to make jellies and refreshing juices. A well-grown tree should provide two or more crops a year, with the summer crop being a little sweeter and more prolific.

The loquat or Japanese plum (Eriobotrya japonica) is a great tree for every garden. It can be espaliered flat against a wall to grow in a narrow space, pruned low and artistically as is done in Asia, or you can let it naturally become a dense shade tree about 25 feet tall and 20 feet wide.

It will grow in most soils in South Florida and is salt tolerant. The loquat likes reasonable moisture to produce best, so mulch of its own leaves or other leaves in the vicinity will keep its feeder roots happy.

Loquats yield large crops of sweet-to-tart, yellow-to-orange, one-inch in diameter fruit that are great eaten out-of-hand or used in pies, preserves or other recipes.

You can purchase a seedling that can vary in size, color, taste and bearing. Or you might look for a named grafted variety so you can easily know what your fruit will be and when you can pick it.

There are different cultivars or varieties that fruit at different times from December through April. "Christmas" bears very early in the season as its name implies. "Bradenton" is a midseason cultivar for February, and both are recommended for a home garden.

Some fruit will be susceptible to the Caribbean fruit fly, but these two varieties produce early and will provide more fruit than you need.

Loquat wood is soft and, therefore, pruning is very easy. You can keep the tree at less than 10 feet and pick all the fruit you want by hand. If you want very large fruit, simply thin out the crop when the fruit first appear, and the remainder will have the energy to grow larger.

When that old farmer said to "plant what pays you back," he probably had the loquat and carambola crops in mind. Take a little time to plant these two trees in the mild March weather and they will pay you back with fruit for many years to come.

For more information on tropical fruit and other garden subjects and activities, go to www.fairchildgarden.org.

Bruce W. Greer is president of Fairchild's Board of Trustees and a lifelong gardener.

Bought at Broward Meat and Fish--- Anyone know what kind this is?  Doni?
They were selling Florida mangoes for $1.49. These avocados were $.79. Just about all were rock hard. Bought two that were hard and one that was ripe to eat yesterday. I would be happy to have such a tree in my backyard

Sharpie pen for size comparison

HIS WEBSITE with accounts for different varieties>>>>
http://www.growquest.com/Fruit%20trees%20-%20better%20plant/Avocado_trees.htm

Here is the video from same person as the website. Notice how he plants the tree three inches above the soil line and does not want mulches

avocado tree planting soil line and mulch

Here are effusive reviews for superthrive  super thrive rooting hormone
http://www.amazon.com/Superthrive-VI30155-Vitamin-Hormone-Supplement/product-reviews/B000EJ0PD4/ref=sr_1_3_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1


What brand do you plant and tree geniuses use for rooting hormone? I have a lot of perennial peanut I am establishing in some bald parts of my lawn. This perennial peanut is from Bill Whitman's estate via another person who was given cuttings from Bill when he visited in 2001. Now he has perennial peanut established all over his back yard. The ducks eat the cute little yellow flowers...... I can get many cuttings from him and already have a good patch in my front yard I established three years ago. Believe it or not the perennial peanut likes to grow with lawn grass and protects it, they are both growing synergistically in a formerly scrub weed inhabited spot. Lawn grass wants nitrogen and perennial peanut being a legume captures it in its roots


    my well established peanut
  Perennial peanut being established ...just planted

Mark in Texas has said good things about it>>
It is used as a foliar and/or drench
I am about to order a quart or a gallon (possibly) to split with neighbors

INFOS

http://www.greenhousemegastore.com/product/dyna-gro-foliage-pro-9-3-6/fertilizers

http://www.thehydrosource.com/dyna-gro-foliage-pro.html?___SID=U

http://www.greenhousemegastore.com/view_reviews/2076/fertilizers

http://www.dyna-gro.com/936.htm

Dangerous snarling fruit bandit gets nabbed with mango bait. A younger possum and I think just one from his family. Rats will get drowned but for possums I phone up The Transporter (Jason Statham) for his relocation services. Trap is a HavaHeart.

I happened to see a tree and tasted one of the fruits.  Anyone have info on how large the fruits grow and when they are ripe in South Florida. Thanks

How do you rate this variety?

I have a Carrie tree that bloomed a lot but only has 15 fruits developing. In hopes of stimulating a second bloom I have clipped all non-producing panicles to half an inch. Hoping they will dry up sooner so they will fall off sooner. Making it easier for new panicles to come forth. I did this on some other mango trees too. This is an ideal year for wanting a second bloom, with trees here being highly variable in how many panicles were produced. Due to the warm winter.
We shall see.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/movies/2013/01/04/filmfest-pullman-fruithunters/1810317/

Pullman's enthusiasm for living off the land prompted his appearance in a documentary, 'The Fruit Hunters,' debuting in Palm Springs this week.

Lots of people juggle careers. Bill Pullman has grafted his.

Pullman, who played the president of the United States in Independence Day, will play another U.S. president in the NBC comedy, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, debuting Jan. 10. But he's also included in Canadian director Yung Chang's documentary, The Fruit Hunters, because he's so involved in growing fruit on his 2 1/2-acre orchard below Hollywood's hillside sign.

The film, making its U.S. debut at the Palm Springs International Film Festival this week, tells the story of individuals who cultivate and go to extraordinary lengths to savor fruits few people have tasted.

MORE: The Desert Sun's Palm Springs International Film Festival coverage

Pullman, who grew up around an orchard in New York state, is one of those fruit hunters.

"Growing things and being able to live off the land has always appealed to me," he said in a phone call. "I think in California it really blossomed. This climate is sensational for growing a lot of different variety of rare fruit plants from other climates all year-round. That idea was intoxicating to me."

Pullman, 59, has grown over 100 different varieties of fruit, including four varieties of oranges, four of grapefruits, and many varieties of mandarins and tangerines.

"I would say the biggest surprise to me, the tree that I just find so cool (is) Persian mulberries," he said. "They're so fragile, the farmer's market will sometimes sell a single layer of them to gourmet chefs, but they're pretty pricey. But, if you stand under a tree and eat away, you just feel so lucky to have a sensation that very few people get to have."

Pullman is included in The Fruit Hunters with a shamanistic native fruit expert in Borneo, a Honduras scientist "racing against time" to breed a banana resistant to a devastating fungus and a 19th-century Chinese worker who cultivated the Bing cherry before being deported under the anti-Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. But Pullman provides a sense of drama when he galvanizes his community to work with a government agency to buy some Hollywood orchard property slated for development.

That effort failed, but the neighbors still get together for what Pullman calls a "picking kitchen."

"This picking kitchen is really going back to threshing bees (ceremonies to celebrate the threshing of a crop) — just pitching in to do something together outside and learn about fruit," he said. "We had one in May about loquats (a yellowish fruit grown mostly in Japan). Most of the people had never eaten one before. We have a lot of loquat trees in the canyon that we identified, and we picked them and harvested them and made sauce out of them. A lot of people get to feel like a farmer, even if it's just for four hours on a Saturday."

Pullman found himself in the middle of what he calls a zeitgeist of interest about sustainability and community. They exchange ideas at these picking kitchens that are quite sophisticated.

"This whole climate change and what it's doing to our environment is frightening to people," he said, "and to have a forum where they're discussing things like this, it's very rewarding. The Asian psyllid (an aphid-like insect) is moving up. It could destroy a lot of citrus trees. There's the whole whirling disease (infecting fish with parasites) and you've got colony collapse (caused by the mass disappearance of worker honey bees). Getting the word out for people to share knowledge is important. I think it begins in people's neighborhoods."

Pullman was organizing picking kitchens and saving the hillside while his acting career also was in full bloom. He did a TV movie called The Innocent in August and September 2011 and promoted his TV series Torchwood in that fall. He also shot The Fruit Hunters that fall before doing an L.A. play called The Jacksonian with Ed Harris.

"When we continued the picking kitchens, it was extremely emotional — all these things we did in the spring," said Pullman. "(Chang) had gone to Borneo and was doing other things, but I was doing the play and getting up in the morning on Saturdays and doing the Farmer's Circle, and then doing a matinee and evening show. That was a crazed period."

But he found calm savoring the flavor of his fruit. "It's all about the heightening consciousness of flavor and experience of life," Pullman said.

NPK fertilizer
I put some is a jar with enough water 3 days ago. Only 20% dissolved. I put it in a Vita-Mix blender to make dissolve quicker. Still not dissolved. Anyone know what the most soluble components are with a standard 10-10-10 fertilizer? The nitrogen, potassium or phosphate?

Does it make sense to plant a type A flower avocado tree and a type B flower avocado tree to enhance pollination and fruit set? Should you have one of each tree? They would have to blossom at the same time. For example -- Brogdon has flower B is and Lula has A. If this makes sense then how close should the trees be?

Avocado flowering and pollination http://ucanr.org/sites/alternativefruits/files/121264.pdf