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Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Bloom Fairy Coming to South Florida
« on: February 17, 2017, 06:38:37 PM »
My NDM #4 and Carrie are popping out blooms now
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nice. The sri lankan weevil seems to have taken a liking to your venus :-).
Oh that's nothing compared to what they've done to some of the other trees. They really love Fascell, Cambodiana, and Harvest Moon but they'll attack pretty much any mango. I think about half the Sri Lankan weevil population in SFL lives on the farm here in West Palm.
Good work. You may have to cut it back a few feet each year (right after harvest).Why did you cut back three of your mango trees, Alexi?
They were getting too large and began to overtake the other fruit trees that were near them. The Lemon Zest was getting way too close to the power lines and was beginning to grow over the viejo mamey. Notice the power line underneath the highest power line (refer to the third pic of the pantin mamey)? It was just inches away from that. That's how huge it was. This was the first time I did a major pruning to the Lemon Zest, and now it looks like it will be more bushy. The Glenn mango was over taking the guava and pickering mango and getting way too close to the pantin mamey. Some of the tertiary branches of the glenn showed symptoms of mango malformation or Witch's broom, so I eliminated all of the infected and possibly infected wood and just left the main structural branches. I also disinfected the tools I used to trim these diseased branches. It looked naked for a little while, but she is coming back nicely. My goal was to make the tree more bushy and prevent the disease from spreading further. The Coconut Cream was growing into the soursop and had a lot of long skinny branches that were flipped upside down, causing new growth to aim towards the ground. So, I gave it a good prune for it to become more bushy and less spaghetti-like. If it wasn't for disease and lack of space, I would leave them alone.
I'll probably be cutting back the NDM#4 this year after harvest, since it is pretty close to the chirimoya and the pantin mamey.
The trees look great! Wish we had that kind of soil in Coral Springs. Always wanted to grow mamey; gave up after unsuccessfully trying to grow Pantin and Pace.
Why did you cut back three of your mango trees, Alexi?
Great job Alexi all your trees have exploded in the last 5 years,
Yep, I think you're right on the drought stress. Mamey are basically intolerant of drought. My pantin dropped 3/4 of its crop when we had that drought a few weeks ago. I subsequently installed an irrigation system on that lot, and everything has been doing much better since then. I now have pantins the size of oranges on a tree that's only 6 feet tall! Keep them babies watered!Wow, those are some healthy trees you got there. Definitely some nice soil in your neck of the woods. Surprised the mameys haven't born yet. The pantin is giant.
Thanks! The Pace has a ton of newly forming fruits and some new developing blooms. It has been 5 years since I have planted it. The Pantin has been in the ground for 4 years and it has outgrown the Pace. The Viejo seems to follow the spreading growth habit according to the IFAS mamey cultivar chart. It also has some blooms and a few newly developed fruits. Some fruits developed last season on the Pace, but it rejected all of them due to drought stress. I have fixed the sprinkler system, so I just have the sprinklers on twice a week (if no rain) for 2 hours. The Viejo seems to be even more precocious than the Pace. From a small set of flowers, a fruit reached to the size of a key lime before the tree rejected it after a fertilizer application last year(I regretted doing that) and it had only been in the ground for about a year. I planted it back in 2014 as a 3-gallon tree. I haven't fertilized them for about a year now and I just give them a good dosage of sequestrene 330 FE twice a year. Hopefully by keeping them hydrated, they will hold some fruit till maturity. The Pantin has a handful of tiny pea-sized fruitlets on one of the branches in the top main canopy. Lets see what happens. Hopefully, I'll be eating mameys in 2018. lol
Wow, those are some healthy trees you got there. Definitely some nice soil in your neck of the woods. Surprised the mameys haven't born yet. The pantin is giant.
NDM #4 is a wildcard. It can sometimes be extremely dwarf (my neighbor's tree, which is over 10 years old hasn't cracked 8 feet yet, and another neighbor's tree stands at 4 feet after 6 years in ground), or it can be moderately vigorous (as is zands' tree). I don't know what causes this.
Your LZ experience is atypical. All 3 of my LZ trees have been extremely vigorous with near vertical growth habit with long internode lengths, including the one that gets zero nitrogen on the sandy lot. Same story for most of the LZ trees I've seen. And cutting into woody upright limbs unleashes a flurry of vigorous growth which can't be slowed down with tip pruning of resulting growth.Pretty much any mango tree, other than a julie, dwarf hawaiian, etc, will require a yearly, or at the very least a bi-annual, pruning to maintain height once the tree has been in the ground several years. What is undesirable is a tree, like the lemon zest, where one must prune thick and woody upright branches, which triggers a vigor response and "more of the same" upright growth and can limit production for the following season. The coconut cream pruning regimen consists almost purely of pruning terminal ends vs woody, upright branches. Of the 30+ mango trees I grow (over 20 cultivars), CC is the easiest to maintain.
So, maintainability isn't just a factor of how many growth spurts a tree has in a year or how long the internodes are; it's about the tree's response to pruning as well as growth habit (vertical vs horizontal)
Oddly enougj, I would say the opposite for my LZ & CC.
Other than maybe some cosmetic or limbing up, my NDM on dwarfing rootstock I have basically never had to touch since being planted as a 25 gal over 6 yeats ago.
March should still be part of the first crop. Second crop should be summer, stretching into aug if memory serves. Maybe it's not old enough to produce 2 crops yet? My tree is about as tall as yours but with a trunk thickness about equal to my forearm. Produces > 100 fruits per year.
PS -- the other identifying characteristics of tikal that I've seen (other than the dual harvest) is the tendency to produce round saps in addition to the football shaped ones.How old / big is the tikal? Once they get big, they start producing very well, and you'll get 2 distinct crops per year: one around Feb and another in the summer.HAHAH yah, 500 bones is pretty steep. That would be around $50 on the retail market here.
Saps are excellent. Makok tends to be too sweet for my taste though. Tikal is probably my personal favorite these days. Very productive, 2 major crops per year, large sized fruit. I don't get why Pine Island rates it as 3 stars for flavor and production?
The Tikal I have usually produces around 9-15 fruits per year. Not much, but what it produces is incredible. If you let it get dead ripe to the point that it falls off the tree and refrigerate it over night, it will taste like super sweet mamey/raisin flan. Or let it get it soft on the tree, then pick it before it falls and let it get very ripe, then chill it overnight in the fridge. It seems to taste even better cold. I agree with your statement. I'm not sure why Pine Island gave it only 3 stars. I currently have seven fruits on the Tikal, two fruits on the Hasya and one on the Alano (some new developing fruits also).
The tikal was a 3 gallon tree 4 years ago and it is about 12-15 feet tall. I tipped the growth that was growing skyward, so the tree would widen. Usually, the main crop ripens around late December and again around March from a second smaller crop. This crop has been a bit small cause these weird caterpillars ate through most of the flowers. They tunnel right through them causing them to just dry up and fall off. I never fertilize any of my sapodillas. I just water them and mulch them.
How old / big is the tikal? Once they get big, they start producing very well, and you'll get 2 distinct crops per year: one around Feb and another in the summer.HAHAH yah, 500 bones is pretty steep. That would be around $50 on the retail market here.
Saps are excellent. Makok tends to be too sweet for my taste though. Tikal is probably my personal favorite these days. Very productive, 2 major crops per year, large sized fruit. I don't get why Pine Island rates it as 3 stars for flavor and production?
The Tikal I have usually produces around 9-15 fruits per year. Not much, but what it produces is incredible. If you let it get dead ripe to the point that it falls off the tree and refrigerate it over night, it will taste like super sweet mamey/raisin flan. Or let it get it soft on the tree, then pick it before it falls and let it get very ripe, then chill it overnight in the fridge. It seems to taste even better cold. I agree with your statement. I'm not sure why Pine Island gave it only 3 stars. I currently have seven fruits on the Tikal, two fruits on the Hasya and one on the Alano (some new developing fruits also).
HAHAH yah, 500 bones is pretty steep. That would be around $50 on the retail market here.
Saps are excellent. Makok tends to be too sweet for my taste though. Tikal is probably my personal favorite these days. Very productive, 2 major crops per year, large sized fruit. I don't get why Pine Island rates it as 3 stars for flavor and production?
I chuckled heartily at "A amplify ejaculate lifestyle."
Yep. You have more than 3 inches of soil :-). My pantin that is on imported sand is doing extremely well and has probably 2 dozen golfball sized fruits right now.
No fruit on mr chinta, but he's growing very nicely. Has flowered multiple times but nothing sticks (it's still too small).
Noel had a huge, beautiful consistent fruiting monster at his house in Coral Springs.
Yes, it seems counter-intuitive. But my neighbors have a pantin that is > 10 years old which stands at a mere 7 feet tall and has not produced a single crop.
My theory is that redlands soil is heavy enough to retain sufficient moisture, and the red hue to the soil there probably indicates a large amount of iron. Moreover, I don't think cuban may beetle thrive in that type of soil.
You're quite lucky where you're at in that you have deeper soil. I think if you can get at least a foot of sand, you can grow them successfully. However, many parts of Broward have a mere 3 inches of 50/50 mix on top of limestone rubble. I ended up "fixing" this by trucking in 250 cubic yards of palm beach soil (south lot) and 1,000+ cubic yards of tree trimmer mulch (north lot). Both lots now have a foot or better above limestone, and I can grow pretty much anything successfully now.That's weird. As long as you add chelated iron (Sequestrene 138), it shouldn't be much of a problem. There are a lot of mamey trees thriving in limestone soil in the redlands and on the yucatan peninsula. Did they turn yellow before you pulled them out, or did they just die back?
Got a bit drought stressed and it rejected all of the grape sized fruit one by one.