The Tropical Fruit Forum

Wow, I would really interested in joining this meet up! 🙂

Definitely thanks to Simon and everyone that started this thread and kept it going.  This is one tree of 5 of my top working project on some of my mature mango trees. The rootstalk is ataulfo. The tree is maybe 20 years old. This tree so far has over a dozen grafted varieties, all new from last year.  I also have several smaller trees.  At the moment I have over 50 varieties altogether. I intend to hopefully and luckily try to add new varieties every year. It is difficult as locally there is not much source of scions available like in Florida. I get an almost perfect take on local source than ship ones and they could get expensive with all the grafted failures. I initially never started out with this intention. Ate mangos all my life. Always preferred them green. I had different southeast asian ones. I liked the ripe ones but never really wow by any like say an cherimoya, atemoya, lychee, mangosteen. That was not until about 2 years ago when I was gifted my first zill mango,  Peach Cobbler, wow. Now a few years later I find my myself collecting mangos ahaha.

I've recently grafted some Painter's cherilata.  But I hear there's also another cherilata. Anyone grow or tasted them and could note the differences?

Yeah I can sell some extra tubers.

PM sent! Thanks!

Hey everyone, how do all of you manage your sugar cane patches?  I only recently started growing sugar cane last summer. So this is one's years growth and all is pretty new to me.  I recently stripped the lower leaves.  But I noticed on videos and some people have patches that grow only 3 or 4 large canes.  Is there a prefer method kind of like with bananas where you only leave 2 or 3 pups.  Here's mine, it's a bit of a mess. Thanks!

Amazing, sounds like so much fun. I need to do a durian tour of Asia that will include Thailand some day!

It is from the 2rd ordered of last year.

Nice! All of mine from that order bit the dust unfortunately. 10 plants i think. Maybe in some years when it's more common I'll jump back on the bandwagon ahah.

I know of one giant tree in the Cerritos, CA area the size of a mature avocado. I would not have believed it was a tamarind tree if it had not fruited because lots of trees seems to have similiar leaves. Now compare to my 10 year old 3.5 feet tall tamarind ...bush. ahah.

1I second sweet potatoes as a must. They can get invasive but if you have space they grow easily. All parts of the plants are edible raw or cooked.  They are not poisonous raw vs regular potatoes

I think people don't grow wingbeans enough. They're good cooked or raw. Galatians, Baker Creek sells a day neutral variety, I have yet to grow it.

Winter melon/Ash gourd. You'll need a trellis. But the mature gourd can be stored like a year without refrigeration. 

Luffa.  Mature ones can be made into sponges but young luffa can be stir fried or made into soup.  The texture is unique and very different from many gourds but it's very productive.

The cold weather in soCal this year delay all of my mango flower buds from opening and they are blacken. The pic in my post #7 of Feb 18 with all the flower buds and none have opened. How is everyone's mango flower condition?

Same here, lots of blacken disease blooms. Some still look like it has a chance.  I have about 30 varieties grafted on 8 trees on one plot, everything began to flush and bloom a while ago except for 2 varieties, Maha Chanok and Bombay, they are just beginning to flush which I thought was strange but a good thing as it would miss our cooler weather and rain and maybe even the peak powdery mildew season.  My other Maha on another plot has just barely beginning to flush also.  Has your Maha bloom?

Z. Jujuba is the more common jujube you find in California. There's been breeding work done here in California and extensively in China.  The fruits are much more sweeter and more airy & drier compare to Mauritiana.  They are eaten both fresh and dried. These are the fruits you typical see dried called Chinese dates and used in traditional Chinese cooking. The fruits dry really well on a tree.  The trees goes dormant in winter.  They are more suited for dryer climates.

Z. Mauritiana is usually called Indian, Thai, or Taiwan jujube. Most of the breeding for them has been done in those areas. They are more suited for tropical or at least subtropical climates. For fruit sizes, some are the size of jujuba or smaller but some varieties are the size of small apples. The larger varieties are bigger than jujuba. The fruits are much milder in sweetness and much more juicier. They are for fresh eating.  They do not dry well like jujuba.  In my zone, 10 CA they don't go dormant but will stop growing in winter.  In colder areas it may drop their leaves but I'm not sure if it's a true dormancy like jujuba. Once establish both grow aggressively but Mauritiana seems to be the more aggressive grower here since they don't go dormant and has a longer growing season. I do not know how it will do in frost.  Both species can be aggressively prune back and still produce fruits.

I've heard they are not graft compatible. But not sure if that's due to rootstock going dormant. There's been other deciduous trees with non deciduous relatives like the persimmon and black sapote that were successfully grafted. But I don't know how long those experiments lasted and if there was any graft compatible issues in the future.

These were the best grapes I ever had and was not like anything I had before. Mind you I've really only had grapes from the supermarkets.  But this was amazing. It was not just sweet and juicy but the texture was the best part. It was the firmest crispiest grape I had, the skin you would not even know it's there. I picked this up at our local Hispanic chain super supermarket. It looks like it's from Peru.  Anyone know what variety this is?  Thanks!

I have about a dozen plantings. I've harvested about 6 different plantings I had so far. Some in Dec, Jan, and recently. We had tons of rain so I would recommend harvesting it if your soil is clayish. Cut the top and regrow that next year, eat the rest.  Fountain Valley tends to be clayish. The tubers seems to develop this bark like skin and cracking that may be prone to rotting in wet cold weather. I had one planting where the tuber rotted but it was probably due to my planting mistakes, had it in almost pure compost. These were all container plants where the leaves all died back.  Even the roots seems to die back as there was no vibrant colored growth. I have several in ground ones that still are still green.  This is my first year harvesting ube.