I bought this Keitt tree from Plant-o-Gram 2.5 years ago, and it's done a lot of nothing since then, partially due to my own neglect. So I've been ignoring it for months, and a few days ago I stumbled up on this:





Whoa! I wasn't expecting fruit for another year, at least, and certainly nothing this size (I have big hands). Had I seen this earlier I'd have plucked it off, but now that it's this size I feel like I should just let it ripen.

Or will it? It's in the high 60s/low 70s here in our Los Angeles December. January might get slightly colder, but not by too much.


How does one determine when to pick a Keitt?



If this tree will produce Keitts of this size, then I'm going to stop neglecting it (e.g. clear out the weeds, support it better, kill the gophers, etc)!

Quote from: ricshaw on November 23, 2016, 01:34:51 PM

Quote from: CTMIAMI on November 23, 2016, 08:25:20 AM

P.S. Because of demand, La Verne is growing a ton of Mango trees for the So Cal masses.

Yea, that's what they've been saying for the last 6 years but seing is believing

I want to know what varieties they're going to offer.

JF,

It's hard to tell that your a CALIFORNIA location. Perhaps your town or just Ca near your screen name will help new people as I doubt if any of the other mangos you listed are available in SOUTH Florida.

Yes, I would definitely prefer it if all y'all "Orange County" residents would append a ", CA" or a ", FL" to your profiles


There is a significant OC here in CA, and it's so famous they even made a TV show out of it.

So that was October 22, 2015, and due to an ever-increasing gardening to-do list, I finally got it in the ground two days ago, fully 9 months after receiving it. It did fine in its little plastic sleeve, pushing some leaves and some panicles (that I cut off), and I'm certainly hoping it does better in the dirt.

So 10 weeks after putting this in the dirt, it's happy! All the leaves above the wooden stake are new since transplanting, and all the foliage looks healthy. It's darker in real life than in this photo; the lighting makes them look a bit pale. The drip system is putting in a gallon every 4 days, and it's currently in the mid-80s here in our Los Angeles Indian Summer:

This is also Lomita White. I probably won't let it set fruit this year, so as to encourage vine growth. But I'll let it flower so I can use it as a pollen donor.

So much for that plan. My one Lomita White flower is the only one that set fruit! I pollinated it with pollen from my La Verne Pink, and here it was about a week ago. It's twice the size, now:





As for my La Verne Pink, I've tried pollinating it with the Lomita White pollen (4-5 different times from 2 different flowers from 2 different plants, albeit clones of one another), I've tried pollinating it from itself, and I've tried leaving it alone. Out of 30 flowers, none has set fruit:





I don't have any other reliable pollen sources around, so I may take Rob up on his offer of pollen. If I can ever find a free Sunday. Of course I also need to go to Ventura to pick up my Gold Coast mango tree. Some day.


I should probably invest in an 8-S for the future so that I have a universal pollinator. Where's a good place to buy a cutting? Or something more mature?

Is "morning after" pollen still viable? I didn't check my Lomita White before turning in last night, but this morning at 9:00 AM I saw this!





I used my Perrier pollen collector and got ~1/4 teaspoon of pollen, which is now in the freezer awaiting flowering of my La Verne Pink, which should happen in the next 3-4 days. But I'm going to check every night, just to be sure!


I also brushed some pollen on its own stigma, since it sticks out too far to be close to the pollen. I don't know if this variety is self-fertile, but I suppose we'll found out soon!


Curiously, this flower had zero bees in it or on it, despite being about 5' from 5 beehives. The bees were flying, but none showed any interest in this flower. There was a bunch of ants on it, so someone could smell it.

My specific question is about cross-pollinating dragonfruit, but I'm sure the general question is applicable to all flowering plants.


If B requires cross-pollination, and can be successfully pollinated by A, does that imply anything about the ability of B to pollinate A?


Or is there no relation?

A friend of mine adopts un-adoptable feral cats from a nearby shelter to protect the grain in her horse's tack room. We have coyotes in the area, so the life expectancy of a feral cat can be pretty short, but the life expectancy of an un-adoptable cat in a shelter is a few days.


She specifically asks for a cat that is not tame and that would never make a good pet, then she keeps it locked in her tack room for 3-4 days with food, water, and a litter box, and then she opens a door to the outside. The latest cat has lasted for nearly 2 years now. I see it maybe once a week as it skulks around. It never catches any gophers, but it does keep the rats away from her grain.

I might be wrong, but if I had to make an educated guess, that Df in the first picture is a white variety as well. Almost all whites (and a very few pinks) have that brown stripe on the edges of the branch "blades". Its uncommon in most other varieties. Do you know what type of pollen you used on your first attempt, where none of the flowers set fruit? What is that one supposed to be?

That first photo is from a plant I bought at Lowes, almost 2 years ago. It's supposedly a Pink, grown by La Verne, though it hasn't borne fruit yet, so the jury's out.


The pollen I collected a few weeks ago is from a good-sized vine in Lomita, which itself is from a cutting from a very large vine also in Lomita. The donor says the fruit is white-fleshed, which is why I'm calling it Lomita White. I don't have any other info on its pedigree.


The fruit that set is on a vine in Manhattan Beach that's climbing over its wall so that I can get to it from the public sidewalk. I haven't made any contact with the owner yet. I knocked one night, but they didn't answer. Maybe they got freaked out by the large man holding a stepladder, a flashlight, and a cut-up Perrier bottle  .

As for the other plant showing flower buds, that is common in cuttings. It just means it was a good strong section of the plant, fully mature, and would have set fruit if it were still attached to its mother plant. If you have a solid root system on that one, you should be able to bring them to maturity, weather and other factors permitting.

Interesting. So mature cuttings are definitely preferred to juvenile cuttings then?

This is also Lomita White. I probably won't let it set fruit this year, so as to encourage vine growth. But I'll let it flower so I can use it as a pollen donor.

I've never inspected the root system of a DF. I have some extra La Verne pink plants that I currently have no use for. If no one wants them I might shake them out to inspect the roots. I'll put them back in the dirt, so I'm not planning on sacrificing them, but I don't really need them, so the risk is acceptable. Or maybe I'll turn them into bare root plants for donation to someone.

I had one flower left, and it bloomed the night I came home, so I pollinated it with the last of my collected pollen. So this is it for this batch of flowers.

And apparently I have another batch coming!

I have a 15 buds scattered around the plant. If the same pattern holds about half of them will bloom.

Curiously, my Lomita White appears to have buds as well, which is surprising given the size of the plant:



That's 2 cuttings planted less than a year ago. Neither looks nearly the critical mass that's been suggested as minimum size for fruiting. But the cuttings were thick and mature-looking, so they've got some years on them. These do look like flower buds, don't they?







If I'm really lucky they'll all bloom at the same time so I can cross pollinate everyone.

The extra space keeps all the water in the pot and allows for it to be absorbed evenly across the entire surface, rather than trickling it in to a single spot in the soil.

I'm having this exact problem in all my potted plants right now. I'm have a timered drip system in place, and the drippers just . . . drip . . . in one place. In fact I can see that the soil is a different color in the one place that gets dripped on.


I should probably switch to a sprayer/sprinkler/mister that wets about a 1' diameter circle for all my DFs and pineapples. Any recommendations that don't cost several dollars apiece? I need about 50. The 1/4" tubing is already in place.

For support you might try something like this:

I'm pretty happy with how the bottom part turned out, and with the overall strength. I'm 220#, and I can hang from the top supports without any scary creaky sounds. It should be able to handle whatever grows through it.


But I wasn't really thinking very clearly when I made the top a mirror of the bottom. As it is I have to thread the vertical stems through the gaps between the 2 x 4s, and there really isn't much in the way of lateral supports for the horizontal branches. I might nail some 2 x 4s diagonally across the corners of the top supports, but that makes for a funky miter angle.


Due to the way I've nailed these together, disassembly is pretty much impossible.


If I were to do these over again I'd probably do something like what Tim did at the top of his trellises:

except bigger. Come to think of it, I could use Tim's design both top and bottom. From what I can see it uses less wood and labor.