Quote from: Sandy.L on September 16, 2015, 10:41:32 PM

I heard anywhere from 3-5 years but seeds don't always grow true to the parent especially if the fruit you got it from is a hybrid.

A seed gets half of its genetics from the plant that produces the flower...  and half of it genetics from the plant that contributed the pollen (another plant flower).

So a seed will never be an exact 'clone' of the fruit it came from.

Corrections and comments welcomed.

For "normal" plants the ovule and the pollen come from the same species/cultivar, so although the child seeds have a mix of genes, the genes aren't normally different enough to create something very different from either parent. Except for random mutations, etc.

Hybrids, by definition, are crosses between parents that _are_ significantly different from each other--either different species or just very different cultivars of the same species (which might, technically, not make them hybrids in the strictest sense). Hybrids sometimes exhibit "hybrid vigor" where the expression of some desirable trait exceeds that of either parent. Sometimes you get the opposite ("hybrid pallor?" ).

But seeds from a hybrid can be sterile or deficient in some other way. Or you might get some wundercultivar that revolutionizes agriculture as we know it.

Crossing of close cultivars is like mixing barrels of Cabernet and Merlot from Sonoma County. You can pretty much predict what it's going to taste like.

Crossing species or distant cultivars is like mixing Night Train, a Slurpee, cough syrup and coconut milk.

edit: I have very little experience doing this; I'm pretty much just summarizing wikipedia. Except for the cough syrup part.

So does anyone on this thread live near Vail Ave. and Robinson St. in Redondo Beach? My gf and I took a walk last night and saw two interesting DF plants :-)

Hi everyone! My papaya trees have started putting out blooms for the first time, and I'm still a little unsure what gender some of them are exactly. I've got some pictures below:

Do you know what variety of papaya you have there?

I have two TR Hovey plants, and my year-old trees have buds that look just like yours. TR Hovey is allegedly self-fertile, though I'm not sure that reference is scholarly enough to cite.

Hello Water-Bug This is how i do it , easy and wont shock the mother plant ..
Ed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJz5oWcy0mo

Heh. Your pup is nearly the size of my mother plant. I suppose I should wait awhile

The Passiflora careulea is loved by bees, why shouldn't they love P. edulis?
I don't think there are pollination problems

I would think the bees would love it, but I have a hive of 40,000 bees sitting 40' away from my two vines, and I have never seen a single bee on any of my passion flowers. They're my own bees, and I've told them where the flowers are, but they have no interest. They spend plenty of time in my squash patch, 20' away from the passiflora.

It looks like your fruit is smooth when you're cutting it open (though it's a bit hard to tell).  I really like the flavor after waiting about a week after they've dropped, when they're really wrinkled.  Waiting tends to make them sweeter and more aromatic.

It was my first one. I couldn't wait!

I'll wait neat time. Maybe I'll do a taste test between just-dropped and wait-a-week fruit.

can never be too much water in a pot, keep drenched.

Interesting! I think that's the first time I heard a recommendation to keep a plant wet, other than water lilies

I also didn't realize they were such heavy feeders. I gave mine a shot of Liquinox about a month ago, and it did seem to perk up a bit and maintain one more leaf. Previously it had been maintaining 5 leaves and dying one off as the 6th emerged. Now it has 6. Here it is, almost exactly 1 year after I bought it from 9GreenBox/Amazon:



Hmmm. Last year I paid only $23.97 for the tree, but I paid $17.47 for the shipping. Now it's $24.99 + $6.49.

But it doesn't matter, because I have a pup!



I'll water and feed more consistently, now that I know.

can never be too much water in a pot, keep drenched and add manure, they are HEAVY feeders and most likely sucked up all nutrients already. Make sure its getting full sun also.

How often should I apply liquid fertilizer to my Cavendish if I choose to use liquid?

These passion fruits are very easy to root.  Why do you want to graft to your seedling?
Just cut a branch on your mother's plant or any desired passion fruit you can get a branch, then put in potting soil in a shade place. They will root in no time :-)
The fruits will be 100% identical to their parent.  Good luck.

The only reason I'd think to graft is that the seedling has nearly 2 years of root system growth on it already. The trunk is nearly an inch in diameter, so any grafted plant would have plenty of resources.

But I certainly don't need a second plant, because the store-bought Frederick is only 15' away, and is catching up fast. I counted 25 good-sized fruit this morning (none coloring yet), so I'd expect good production from it when the vine puts on some growth.

I suppose I just have some emotional attachment to the seedling because I grew it

Just regurgitating what Chris Rollins says, pineapples won't taste any better than the moment they are picked. It is kind of hard to test that theory.

A proper test would have a large collection of pineapples; eat some on Day 1 after picking, some on Day 2, some one Day 3, etc. You'd need a pretty large set of fruit to account for individual variation. The hardest part would be comparing across days, as taste is really hard to remember.

I suppose you could cut and freeze on Day 1, cut and freeze on Day 2, etc., and then have a double-blind tasting of all ages on Day 5, but that introduced freezing as a variable.

Would Brix and pH be a reliable test for . . . something? It's not strict proxy for taste, but at least it would be enough to disprove the "never gets any sweeter" theory.

In my personal experience/history (I've eat a store-bought pineapple 1-2 times/month) aging them on the counter for 2-5 days almost always pays off, assuming I selected a decent one to begin with. They definitely improve in exterior color and aroma.

The few I've eaten on Day 1 tend to be acidic and not very sweet.

I've seen this firsthand where a Haleys Comet plant about 2 years old started sprouting massive ammounts of new roots at the base, enough to make the plant look like it was growing in a pile of angel hair pasta.

Did you take a photo of this? That would be neat to see.

Quote from: TheWaterbug on July 08, 2015, 12:34:53 PM

Does anyone have advice for moving an 8', spindly plant with sharp spines?

The problem is you got started off on the wrong foot.  You should have planted it in a large pot on wheels with an attached shorter trellis and only allowed the top to reach 4 - 5 feet tall.

Now, if you only want to move it to a permanent location, I would wrap the spindly plant in a roll of cardboard and carefully move the pot to its new location.

Thanks! The cardboard did the trick! I belted the pot onto my hand truck, taped a cardboard triangle around the plant, and successfully got it down the ramp, across the apiary, and to its permanent home:



The 8' stem is the main one, and the left-most branch that's curving up is a second plant that refuses to grow out of its top, so that side shoot is all I have. I'm trying to slowly train it upward.

I also have two "throw away" cuttings in the dirt from side shoots that I pruned way. If they root, fine. If not, also fine.

I have drip watering going into the pot, but right now it's teed off downstream of a shared emitter, so I don't really know how much is going in. I'll have to reconfigure it so that it has its own emitter.

Anyone have an opinion on how much water a DF needs in a Los Angeles summer? We're running low 80s during the day and mid 60s at night, with no rain, ever.

I think my purchased-from-Lowes-from-LaVerne dragonfruit is about ready for trellising, so I built this:

. . .
Also, I need to decide on a permanent location for this. How does one move a 6', spindly plant that has sharp spines?

So, 5 weeks later, I still haven't moved it, and now it's growing out its "crown":



The top part beyond the crown has grown another 2'!

Which just makes the moving part harder. Does anyone have advice for moving an 8', spindly plant with sharp spines?

If I don't get moving on this pretty soon I'm going to be asking for advice about a 9' plant.

Or should I chop it off beyond those uppermost side shoots?

I just wish the side shoots had started about a foot higher so I could tie them onto the horizontal supports.