The Tropical Fruit Forum

I would definitely be interested in them.  If you are not in a rush to dig them up I would be more than happy to help dig them up. I'm free to help out towards the end of this month or early November.

Eggo, your lychee tree looks very healthy. How was the fruits, is the seeds small or large?

Your right about the longan, my tree had the most fruits in a while as well. But not as much as your tree.

The fruits were sweet but had a slight astringency I never tasted in lychees as it was more suttle last year.  I've read before that some fruits that had this may have some more ripening to go through and can get a lot sweeter. I think I picked them early this year as the birds were getting to them.

All the longans did really well maybe due to the even drier winter we had this year.

Seedling lychee.  The tree had fruits sparsely so still determining how productive it will be.



Seedling lychee fruit on the left.  Emperor on the right.

Awesome review Simon!  When will scions be available, lol. j/k.

Looking forward to seeing more of your reviews as your various seedlings begin to fruit.

Looks amazing! Another to add to my wish list.  I attempted a graft of alphonso this year but failed.  I did get lucky and got a Bennett Alphonso to take!  I hope they are similiar in tastes as they say.

Malhar, over the years I found the key to successful graft here in SoCal is to start with a healthy rootstock. I am in the minority here, I prefer to graft from mid April, otherwise, it’s hard to get scions until August from tropicalacres. Benefit of early grafting is, the scion gets a full summer to grow. I don’t like to graft in August or later because there is a high probability of the scion to flower in winter and continue flowering throughout its life. Here are couple E-4 scions I grafted on ataulfo rootstock (scions from tropicalacres) on 4/20/22. I had the rootstock for 2 years and it was probably 2 years old when I bought it. I left the third major branch to graft Angie but couldn’t find Angie scions. I will probably cut the branch and keep the tree as E-4 only. As you can see I have the pot against a brick wall to keep it warm at night. I use buddy tape to wrap the scions and graft union then tighten the union with garden Velcro tape. I use the same Velcro to stake the branches after the scion takes (~4 weeks later).


E-4 scions grafted on 4/20/22

4/20/22



Growth of the scions in 2 months or less

I agree with you. Still new to grafting mangos but i would want to give it a full summer growth.  Here's some multigrafts. These were all grafted in April this year but the last week of April gave me the better take %.  Most already did or are already pushing it's second flush since the graft.


Sweet Tart, Super Julie, Little Gem, Sunrise, and Delores


Alampur Baneshan, ST Maui, and Cecilove



Juliett, Mallika, Val Carrie, Brahm Kai Mea, Honey Kiss, Ambrosia, Diamond, with Peach Cobbler and Maha Chanok on the lower branches.  This one is going to be a mess of a tree but will sort out the vigor later when I have enough grafting material to take, ahah.

I'm currently growing dozen of varieties.  Hoping I will have a one on my list soon, ahah.

Well what started out looking like it will be a great year turn out bad.  Lost most of my fruits to what I think may be a powdery mildew symptom when it effects fruits.  Anthracnose symptoms seems to look different.  I could tell there was trouble when it gets to the size of an apricot. Skin gets rough and develop what seems to be microfractures.  Fruit stays stunted. There's no seed embryo and the seed husk premature hardens off.  I had this 2 years in a row after 3 years of great production.  What do you guys think? Seen anything like this before.  Below is a fruit not effected accompanied with one's that are, same variety.  It seems to effect some varieties slightly different. NDM#4 seems to have a lil bit of the rough skin but fruits split open in half, no seed embryo. Laverne Manila seems less effected but the fruits effected stays stunted and develop a premature hard seedhusk early, no seed embryo.  I will have to try Sapote's method next year of just trimming off all the early blooms and wait for the 2nd flush. 

Please definitely count me in. This would be awesome!

Thanks I will have to try to graft Pickering.  I just grafted an Alphonso and a Bennett Alphonso, got my fingers cross but grafts haven't done anything yet.

Really unfortunate that sweet tart was not good as a green mango.  The ripe mango sounds amazing from the reviews and I was lucky to get some grafts to take this year.  I was really hoping it was the perfect green sour and ripe.  I'm probably about 3 years out before I get to try many of these varieties.  Keep us updated. 

Palingkecil, I thought I would revive this thread as I'm interested in what the outcome was on the varieties you grew.  Which would you deem excellent green eating?  It does not matter whether they are sweet green eating or sour green.

I'm growing out several Zill varieties and one of my objective is finding which one is not just an excellent ripe mango but also an excellent eating green variety.  It does not matter if it's sour.  Some mangos just aren't good green whether it's bland, too tough, too porous and not crunchy, or too much strong terpenes smell and wax.

Just my opinion and observation from some fun experiments I made in the past.  The challenge may be pollinating from the different species and having pollen at the right time.  For example, i was never ever able to get an ilama flower to take cherimoya/atemoya pollens.  Also I would say you could skip #4 if you are trying to get fruit sooner.  But do it if you lack the space.  If you have plenty of land just plant it all out.  The reason is it seems most Annonas bloom easily and early.  If this was a genus/species that took like 10 years to bloom/fruit i could see the need to graft onto an older tree.

Although these weren't cross species hybrids I done step 4 .  I used 4 cherimoya seedlings and an ilama seedling which i had in pots.  I was doing this in my backyard and this was my experience.  It took about 2 years to get a good size scion to graft onto a mature in ground cherimoya.  After grafting, the first year no bloom that's pretty obvious. 2nd year also no bloom. The 3rd year for me was when it usually bloomed.  So i may have saved myself a year or two vs planting the seeds out.  Cherimoyas here takes like 5 years, maybe 7 at worst to bloom and fruit from seeds.  Atemoyas  may bloom a little earlier. Sugar apples bloom so early like in 2-3 years, just here in socal they grow much slower to not have the structure to support the fruit that early.

As for the experiment, none of it yielded what I was trying to achieve ahaha. These were from Dr. White store bought fruits and I wanted a firm texture large size cherimoya fruit. I got all very soft custardly flesh fruits that had smooth skin. Since it's from a commercial operation I think the pollinating parent may been Honey Heart.  I only kept 1 cherimoya from this experiment as it produced very large size fruits with thick smooth skin almost looks like a green reticulata but less uniform.  It's incredible sweet, too sweet i would say.  Unfortunately, it's produces a very soft custardly flesh fruit.  My family prefers the firm texture of an atemoya.  I kept it out of curiosity although not for our taste I could definitely see this taste/texture profile suitable for others.  As for the ilama seedling, cool fruit and flowers but I cut it down several years back, it never produce anything worthwhile in my climate and I did not enjoy the texture.

Emperor blooms and fruits consistently for me.  I've had it for many many years.  It's a later ripening lychee here and will bloom/fruit one year and take the next year off.  In my area, it doesn't get that sweet. It's more of a sweet tart tastes before it's fully ripe which is when i eat them. If I let it really ripen, it's more of a bland sweetness.  It doesn't have the intense sweetness that's typical of most lychee varieties. However, fruits are huge and the size of golf balls.  I could see why it would be describe as inferior to Brewster ahah.

Sweetheart is a much more sweeter fruit and ripens earlier here along with Mauritius.  Both more typical lychee profile.