What are the seasons for the various annona... the approximate dates for blooming to ripe stage for So. Flo. ?

I'm looking for info specifically on cherimoya, sugar apple, atemoya, soursop, and custard apple. 

When do the power companies get called on the carpet for poor routine maintenance being the cause of power outages?

Before Wilma I had several poles on my block that looked like swayback horses because they were in generally poor condition with splinters and crack / fissures up and down the length of the pole. Add to that hundreds of poles had trees growing all around them.

I called FP&L several times in the years and months before the storm and they either said the poles were on a schedule for replacement or that AT&T owned them.

So, Wilma took down many poles, and what happened? FP&L petitioned the "Public service Commissions" for a "temporary" rate increase to PAY (meaning the customers get to pay for the poles) for replacing poles.

What are the incentives for doing proper maintenance during the year when utilities are rewarded by having a utility boot licking authority in their back pocket to pay for maintenance? None! Year end bonuses, stock dividend payments, and raises in executive compensation all around and yup WE sat in the dark once again.

Unfortunately there will be hearings on those who died in the wake of this last storm, but not one dim little candle of light will shine onto FP&L asking "WHY" the power went out for over 6 MILLION (1/3 of the residents) people.

Pass the executive retention bonuses around folks, I bet WE get stuck for the bill again.

I was at the flea market and red / maroon sugar apples were $7 a pound!!! Prime beef is cheaper :-) With mad cow disease, immunizations and antibiotics getting into the beef, salmonella in chicken these farmers are crazy not to switch to exotic foods :-)

OK, I bought one, it's one pound and I have free seeds!!!

I have two large cement planters that I found on my property in ~2008, and EVERY TREE I put in them either outright died, or just suffered a slow decline. I had Guava, lime, soursop, mango, calamondin, and sugar apple in them. Only the Annona survived transplanting into the yard but they were set back quite a bit.

A friend has (or should I say had it's in pretty bad shape now) a wonderful very petite ~20 year old avo (she cannot remember the cultivar)  that got NO care, zero, no water, fertilizer, or trimming other than to cut branches from the sidewalk for people to pass by. It stayed around 10 feet tall but gave tons of creamy fruit. When it got an odd bark disease I saved two seeds and planted them. Right now they are around 7' tall and are growing like gangbusters in the "zombie" pots. I was ready to smash those "zombie" pots and bury them near something I wanted dead. :-)

Here's the fruit from the parent tree taken in 2014. Anyone care to venture a guess what cultivar it is? Maybe a Lula?

My little Pickering gave up just 6 mango this year, today I found two that were unripe missing. So rather than two or four legged thieves get the last four I picked them.

The shoulders just started to color up, what are the chances these will ripen indoors? Arrrggghhh...

I removed a banana that was in ground about two years as it proved to be just too big.  I planted it unceremoniously in a moist sandy spot deviod of life, and after removal it left behind a big surprise, some really nice dark sandy soil full of worms and other slithering insects.

I've removed bananas before and don't recall this side benefit.

Anyway, the mat I removed is about 3' round and over a foot deep. I plan on allowing the pstems and leaves to decompose where they fell but in the past after removing bananas I dumped the mat out with bulk trash. I'm thinking this time to hack up the mat and let it decompose on the surface of the ground also. Other than the possibility of some roots taking hold in the soil as a watch item, might there any benefit to leaving the mat also?

            Carambola Curry Chicken

   Ingredients:

   Chicken strips white or dark meat 1 to 1.5 lbs (I like dark meat it stays moist)
   1/4 stick butter
   2 Tablespoons of Curry powder
   4 large tree ripened carambola (2 carambola per serving, add meat for more servings)
   1 cup white sugar (or 1/2 cup white 1/2 cup brown sugar)
   Large dash of Soy sauce
   1 tsp chopped garlic
   Cooked white rice sufficient for number of servings needed
   1 TBSP Sesame oil (more to taste)

   Prepare carambola by coring and removing the green "wing" tips, blend with sugar(s), add water if needed to make a thick juice. No NOT STRAIN!

   Braise chicken and garlic in the butter and sesame oil to a light gold, and add carambola juice (add some water if carambola is not very juicy), add
   curry, and soy sauce. Bring to boil and lower heat and simmer for ~10 minutes (or till chicken is thoroughly cooked) and serve either over
   rice or on hoagie rolls

   Serves 2 or 3 depending on appetite of guests :-)

I have a couple of seedlings from a very compact donor tree (unknown cultivar) that I want the main tree to continue growing upward and hopefully eventually fruiting but want to have other scions taking hold in the mean time.

I've seen some of the videos Carlos posted on grafting, but I've not seen multiple veneer grafts on the same tree done before. I'm wondering if you can get a better percentage of success if more than one is grafted on the same root stock.

Has anyone performed more than one veneer graft on a root stock?  If so, would the grafts be made along the same vertical line, or spaced around the tree main stem?

I left a 5 gallon bucket about half full of the Excalibur fertilizer out and it rained heavily and filled the bucket with water not long ago. It was after my whatever trees that were fruiting set fruit so I decided to spill the liquefied fertilizer on a few trees. Well, the trees I dumped the liquid on (mostly bananas and Caimito) I also dumped the fertilizer sludge on and all greened up nicely and have undergone a serious growth spurt.

I'm wondering if this accident is harmful, or if it's practiced regularly by others?

My Gold Nugget has 40+ fruits on it, the largest the size of a bowling ball. So far it has not had any hint of a ripening odor, no color shifting, or softening, rounding of the spines or stem browning. I keep checking it but...

I'm going to have a bunch of GN to trade later on for jackfruit varieties, soursop, or other annona. Maybe I can even sell a few. Anyway, how are the jackfruit doing this year? Has anyone harvested any?

Here's a pic of my big one.

For hobbyists this is a cool tool. It's 48" long and easily slices the branches of my peach tree (or cluster fruits like loquats) giving me over 10 feet of reach, more if you use a 6-7' ladder. It cuts the branch and HOLDS the branch so the fruit does not crash to the ground. At $25 shipped it only needs a drop of thread lock on the pivot screw to be a cool tool.

The more than $100 longer reach adjustable length trimmers may be better long term, but if this lasts a few seasons, I'm happy.

Search the Feebay for: Worth Garden Long Reach Pruner

Last year my nicely formed green Caimito which had bloomed for the first time last year broke in half four feet from the dirt.

I was ready to pull it and the advice here was to keep it and that it would recover. Recover it did, but as of today it looked like it was going to be a four foot tall Caimito bush.

So, what I did, was take two of the most vertical new green branches and tie them vertically to a stick, then to each other. After they were vertical I skinned the sides that were to touch and wrapped them tightly with grafting tape. I figure the two branches will fuse like an approach graft and once the graft takes and the new "trunk" hardens off I can cut the tops of the fused branches to let them naturally branch out and then remove (or not) the lower limbs I left as backups.

Has anyone else tried to save a trees vertical height profile like this after a catastrophic break? I figure even if one branch dies or breaks off eventually I'll have saved my tree from becoming a bush. The only thing that concerns me a bit is the "watershoot" nature of the two branches and I'm wondering if the bases of the branches may ultimately be too weak to support the weight of the tree and they both break off?

Here's a pic of what I did.




PS. Yes those are tie wraps. I've used them to repair broken / cracked branches before. they work great, but I always cut them off before the branch gets girdled by them.

I'm in North Broward Florida and have the following seedlings in pots. Cultivar in ( ) if known

3 Lemon drop mangosteen ~3"

3 Grumichama ~3"

2 Purple Caimito 2'

4 Longan 2-5'

5 Loquat ("Supreme" medium size sweet fruit) 1'

2 Avocado ~4' tall

1 Grafted Mango from a Julie seedling 2'

Free to Local pickup only in Coral Springs, trades and replacement pots appreciated