As you can see from my below photo, one of my Sweetheart Lychee trees refuses to green up. At first I thought it was lack of water, but heavy watering hadn’t changed it. Then I thought it may have been nutrient deficient so I fertilized with 8-3-9 with micros. The thing flushed out like crazy but leaves cane out yellow and never changed to dark green. Can’t figure it out. My other Lychee trees are all dark, dark green.

Try doing a soil drench using Sequestrene-138 chelated iron.

Curious. I haven't seen that in the trees down here in this part of broward. Granted, there aren't many planted out, but I know of one in Margate which was gifted to a friend of Walters well before LZ was released. It's been a productive and disease resistant tree for many years. PM is a minor issue here, and yes, this cultivar is highly sensitive to sulfur.

Internal breakdown on LZ is only an issue if not given enough calcium, and in this regard, it's middle of the pack compared to most other cultivars. Fortunately, lack of calcium is not a problem for most of Broward :-). OS sets fruit a lot better (dozens of bb's per panicle), but it's way more prone to jelly seed, and per my experience is MORE vigorous than even LZ.

Walter will cut just about anything down. He did cut down his orange essence tree several years ago (and numerous others as well :-). And the last I spoke with him, he was on the verge of axing the OS too :-). Memory is escaping me, but I vaguely recall him wanting to chop Fruit Punch as well. He's a bit of an oddball.

The biggest drawback to LZ (here at least) is lack of precocity and need for chill to flower. So, it does require some patience. I do think that dooryard trees are under far less disease pressure than those grown in an commercial orchard scenario.

I find it slightly odd that Gary has decided to abandon the LZ when he grafts and sells notoriously disease prone trees such as Julie and East Indian. But, alas, those foolish dooryard growers aren't typically concerned with reaping commercial-level crops; they look to flavor as a primary concern :-).

Quote from: Squam256 on March 08, 2018, 10:11:21 PM

Most people attending or listening to these talks aren’t going to have enough space for 2 Trees of one variety on top of an existing collection of numerous others. The majority are going to plant a couple Mangos at best, many only one.

LZ’s major and fatal pitfall  at this point is it’s extreme susceptibility to MBBS, but it’s hardly it’s only drawback. It’s highly prone to powdery mildew as well (and is coincidentally sensitive to sulfur, to whatever degree that matters in someone’s PM control program), has a very vigorous growth habit, and flowers poorly (particularly as a younger tree). It also tends to suffer from excessive abscission issues and the fruit’s flesh  can be prone to internal breakdown.  Outliers notwithstanding,These observations are based not only on my own experiences growing about 20 LZ trees, but also field notes from other growers in multiple regions.

Thus It’s probably a bad choice particularly for backyard growers with few trees AND commercial growers that can’t afford “black holes”. I suppose for people collecting numerous varieties, having one around may not matter much in the long run. But if you’re the typical backyarder and depending on it for your fruit year-after-year, it’s just not a wise choice in the era of MBBS, particularly with so many other excellent cultivars now available.

We lost almost all our LZ crop last year to disease, and that was with a spray routine that most regular people growing them wouldn’t  come close to following . It’s bad enough that Gary Zill won’t even graft it anymore, and Walter cut his down. We may ultimately topwork our dozen or so remaining trees unless we can recover a sizable enough percentage of the crop to justify keeping them around.

Yeah, I'm not axing my LZ tree, unless I see that the fruits begin to show disease issues. It didn't flower for the last two years due to being severely trimmed back because it was too close to the power lines for the first time, followed by Irma ripping off half of the new branches that grew back this past September.

Clay soils are not like muck soils are not like sandy soils are not like rocky soils,  We happen to have very high water table with sandy loam soil, rich in organic matter which is still moist in many areas during dry periods.  We have stock tanks that channel out thru the grove that drain the grove.  I can tell the height of the water table by the stock tanks which I fill as needed. If I watered everything twice a week it would be too much at my location and would cause major fungal issues and a host of other problems.  Obviously water is required as I stated above “ I am flooding my grove. “.  I’m just presenting my experience which works for me at our location.  I had no idea that modifying a water regime would be so controversial.

I agree. It depends on the soil. In my case, I have deep well-drained sandy soil which dries up quickly.

Dr. Crane also mentioned in this video that Mamey is different than other trees when it comes to making cuts. Cutting minor and major limbs to the origin (flush cuts aka drop-crutch pruning) can cause further die back, so he leaves a stub which results in healthier re-growth. He mentions it in the mamey pruning video in the link I posted.

http://trec.ifas.ufl.edu/fruitscapes/Fruitscapes-videos/mamey/playlist2/mamey_sapote_care.shtml

Either way is fine. Sometimes it's hard to get those central shoots to calm down and grow at an angle (vs straight up in the air). But that might not be the case with mamey. Those 2 existing laterals look nice though.

Quote from: Tropicalgrower89 on February 18, 2018, 04:53:10 PM

Quote from: Cookie Monster on February 18, 2018, 04:18:25 PM

:-) You could trim it right down to the lateral branches (like another foot down). Those lateral branches would then become scaffolding branches.

Quote from: Tropicalgrower89 on February 18, 2018, 04:13:27 PM

Trimmed it.

Sounds like a good idea. My initial goal was to make the tree produce multiple sprouts from the trunk and tip the new growth to promote lateral branching. Now when I think about your idea, I wished I trimmed it down further like you've suggested. I'll do that next weekend.  Thanks 

Yeah, I'll leave it alone for now to see how the central shoots behave. If it becomes uncontrollable and/or the canopy becomes too crowded, I'll go with your advice and reduce the height of the trunk down to the lateral branches.

Trimmed it.

Just some scattered blooms on the Carrie and on the Coconut Cream (coco-cream has new vegetative growth now emerging too). The Pickering has one flower, but is mostly dormant. Both of my NDM's are still dormant with swollen buds. All of my other mango trees (lemon zest, glenn, and valencia pride) are just producing vegetative growth. The hurricane screwed up this mango season for me.

Unfortunately you can’t see the bottom of this tree in the photo but it is about 20’ tall.  It has been, as you can see, frequently topped at about 5’ below the top height.  That is at about 15’.
I think that breaking the tips at 18” is probably a good idea but keeping in mind not to let the shape get too crowded with small branches.  This tree needs work but at least there’s plenty of fruit.
Peter

Nice! Is that a seedling or a grafted tree?

I visited the McBryde Garden (here on Kauai). They had a Mamey tree that must have been 60+ feet tall (wish I took a picture). Problem is when the Mamey's fell it was like a cannon hitting the ground and the fruit was completely destroyed.  Chickens ate the fragments. It was then that I decided that my Mamey cannot get too tall. 

Its been a battle to try to keep it low, as the tree wants to reach for the sky.

Yeah. I want to prevent that issue. The mamey trees probably enjoy the volcanic soil in your area.

Wow. I must have gotten lucky, because my 'pantin' (if it truly is pantin) is not even 6 feet tall, yet it's on its second crop. First crop consisted of 5 - 6 fruits. It's either not a pantin, or the rootstock is dwarfing it, because the tree is 7 - 8 years old.

My pace, on the other hand, looks similar to your pantin and hasn't yet produced.

Nice! Does the fruit look like Pantin?
My pace is a year older than my pantin, yet it is not as large.  It has been a prolific flowering and fruiting tree these past couple of years, but it has popped off all of it's fruit many times. My viejo is the youngest of them all (planted from a 3 gallon in 2014), has a spreading growth habit, and has one maturing fruit on it. lol It currently has some newly formed pea sized fruit and more flowers. My pace currently has tons of pea-sized fruit on it now from the recent bloom set. My pace:

Hello fellow fruit tree enthusiasts. I've been thinking of cutting back my grafted pantin mamey tree. In the picture, there are two possible cutting locations that I'm thinking about in order to make the tree more bushy and more wind resistant. This tree went through Hurricane Irma at this current size (90 mph gusts) like a champ and it still has plenty of space between the tree and the power lines. I would like to eliminate the chance of having to use an extremely tall ladder to harvest the fruit when the tree finally decides to produce fruit and maybe make the tree more productive. It seems to only produce isolated clusters of flowers and a small set of baby fruit in a few areas of the tree. The tree was planted as a 7 gallon tree back in the fall of 2012 so it has been a bit more than 7 years. The tree grows like a weed and it seems to be an upright vertical grower. The number 2 mark in the picture was the height of the tree back in 2012. I will be using a product called Tree bandage to seal the wound. I would like to read some of your opinions on this matter. Here are the three options:
1.) Leave the tree alone.
2.) Cut it at the number 2 mark.
3.) Cut it at the number 1 mark.

You probably need to zoom in to clearly see the marks I made.

Forecasting to drop down to 38 degrees for my zip code this upcoming week. https://weather.com/weather/tenday/l/33024:4:US