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Messages - Thefatcuban

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1
I'd go with HLG grow lights. Brand new they're pretty expensive so when I was getting my setup started again a few years ago I just bought a bunch used on Ebay. I probably have 10,000 - 12,000 hours on the lights since I bought them and no issues.

Spider Farmer is also a decent cheaper option but not as good as HLG's lights.

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Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Garcinia discussion thread
« on: January 29, 2024, 09:48:10 PM »
Got some germination on garcinia sp. “squat”

Anyone else growing this one?

Bought some seeds in September, have 2 plants pushing their 3rd set of leaves. One of the faster growing varieties in my experience.





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Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Garcinia discussion thread
« on: January 15, 2024, 03:49:34 PM »
Believe my lemon drop is producing its first flowers, not the easiest to see in the photos but pretty sure that is a flower bud. Tree is right at 4ft tall.





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Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Help with my dwarf carambola
« on: December 10, 2023, 12:23:49 AM »
Thank you so much! When you say, "do not let it hold fruit," can you elaborate? I.e. with cannabis which is phototropic, it will stay vegetative until you go move the light schedule from 18/6 to 12/12. Or are you saying that flowers are to be pruned to force the tree to focus on leaves and general health?


Mine is also under 18/6 and the tree flowers constantly, if I changed it to 12/12 I'm sure this would still be the case. Leave the flowers alone but if you see any that start to develop fruit pluck those off so the tree can focus on vegetative growth.


That is a parallel to cannabis - just because you can flower it, doesn't mean you should.
Yes, my small tree set around 50 - 75 fruit over the summer and although it thinned out most of them itself I still had to remove about ~15 or so larger fruit that set because there's no way the branches could have supported that.

Am I inducing fruit with the light schedule of 18/6? I am completely amenable to building the tree's happiness and health before fruiting. She has recovered very well from the dunking and I am impressed. Your tree looks amazing! Some of the mites are at the very top of the tree which is thick stem, where it was beheaded, so I can't really prune that without shocking the tree. I will approach the situation with the Safer insect killing soap - thank you very much for your input!
I only prune mine because of the close proximity of all the other plants I have but you should be good just to spray. Make sure to get the undersides of the leaves well and hopefully they'll be gone within the next 1-2 weeks. Best of luck.

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Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Help with my dwarf carambola
« on: December 09, 2023, 09:50:48 PM »
Personally I would not let that tree hold fruit and let it focus on putting out leaves - for comparison sake here is mine in June that I let hold 3-4 fruit.



As for the spider mites I will say starfruit is definitely one of my trees that get hit the hardest by them, 2 years ago they completely defoliated the tree because I didn't pay attention. If there's a large infestation I just cut off the branch at this point. Smaller infestations I've used Safer insect killing soap (I'm sure any type of soap is fine) and that works pretty well as long as you keep spraying everyday for about a week. Even now I spray the tree once a week because of how prone it is to attracting spider mites but as long as they're kept in check the damage they do is minimal with how fast these trees grow.

6
I've had a couple lemon drops where all the leaves have dropped from sun scorch, probably took about a month to have new leaves but you could see the leaf buds forming after 2 or so weeks. Also have an achacha that dropped all of its leaves from the cold, that one took about 3 - 4 months before leaves came back but the root system on that one was much weaker. If the root system is good you should be fine, my experience is that if the root system is damaged it's very difficult for Garcinias to recover.

7
Looking like Monday will be the last warm day this year for me, so going to move everything inside next week. Should get to enjoy some Starfruit soon and I think my Eugenia stipitata has set fruit.






8
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Garcinia discussion thread
« on: August 10, 2023, 07:58:08 PM »
General question for everyone here. My garcinias in the past usually grow to a crisp no matter what i have done. Ive tried everything but I chalk it up to our dryness here and intense sunlight.

Out of curiosity do you grow your garcinias differently than your other tropicals? I know most need to be in shade in the first few years but even with misters and a recent greenhouse I still dont see those pretty green leaves

I agree with the dryness and sunlight, I move my plants outside in early-mid april and none of the older leaves were burnt (did have newer flushes get burnt) until there were a few weeks in July that were very dry and had a very high UV index. I have my smaller plants under a 40% shade cloth, the 1st image is a lemondrop that received about 3-4 more hours of afternoon sun vs the 2nd one during that time.




9
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Garcinia discussion thread
« on: August 10, 2023, 07:19:22 PM »
Here's some of the species I've got growing

Achachairu - Tempted fate and got froze last year, starting to come back

Madruno

Lemon drop

Some unfortunate looking Cherapu



Cuban mangosteen



Lemon drop/Superior lemon drop trees

Luc's garcinia

Frankies garcinia seedlings

Luc's garcinia (pumpkin variety)

Seashore mangosteens

Garcinia Assimica seedlings

Garcinia sp brazilian cherapu


Have a couple more species starting to germinate - Bahiensis, Cherapu, Semente Pequena etc..

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Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Garcinia ID
« on: July 17, 2023, 08:59:42 PM »
maybe g. brasiliensis

Thanks roblack.

If it is brasiliensis how close is it to flowering? Maybe 1-2 years? It's about 3 1/2 ft right now




11
Oh how I’ve missed the off topic section ;D

12
One thing you may be able to do to set yourself apart is proper (zero) sales tax for states where food/seeds/fruit-trees are exempt.  My state Pennsylvania they are exempt yet Ebay, Etsy, and maybe others still charge me sales tax to buy.  Likely other states have similar rules but this is such a small market that the big marketplaces don't bother to handle it

Most states have an economic nexus requirement of either at least $100,000 or 200 separate transactions a year, so I would go even further and say, at least right now, he shouldn't be charging sales tax anywhere aside from the state he is located in.

13
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Garcinia ID
« on: May 12, 2023, 11:05:37 PM »
Lost the tag to this one a while back, can't figure out what it is. Guessing lemon drop but I'm not sure.

Current pictures






New growth


14
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Tropical Fruit Tree Memes
« on: May 08, 2023, 09:33:32 PM »









15
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Garcinia sp Brazilian cherapu
« on: April 19, 2023, 12:45:14 PM »
Congrats on even finding seedsI realize that the chance of me ever being able to get this to fruit is next to impossible, but I’ve been looking for seeds for about 4 years. All the online sellers seem to be sold out. Would u be willing to tell us where did u get the seeds?

How many seedlings are you planning on growing? Are you looking for male and female
Plants?

Yeah this is the first time I've seen seeds sold in about a decade, not easy to find. I bought them from Bellamy he had them for sale not too long ago.

I have 5 seeds only one has leaves so far, it being a new world garcinia it might not be dioecious but I'm not willing to risk that.

What is the botanical name of the fruit you are talking about?

Sorry I've no clue, this is the only name I have seen it referred to as.
https://www.bellamytrees.com/sold-out-species/p/garcinia-sp-nv-brazilian-cherapu?utm_medium=email&utm_source=customer_notification

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Tropical Fruit Discussion / Garcinia sp Brazilian cherapu
« on: April 18, 2023, 10:01:05 PM »
Not much info on this one, curious if anybody else is growing this species?

Couple of seeds I have are starting to sprout.



17
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Disfigured new growth on garcinias
« on: December 21, 2022, 11:35:32 AM »
It looks like zinc deficiency.
Garcinias can take acid pretty well. The mix I normally use is largely peat, some perlite, topsoil, and some sand and maybe compost. I think the soil is ok. you could always try to redo it, but I'd just hit with some fertilizer and wait till spring. No need to stress out the plant now.

Will give it some more fertilizer and wait a few months to see if it changes. Usually wouldn't be too concerned but these things don't exactly grow fast.

Realistically it could be sooo many things, but here's how to diagnose:
slurry your soil and pH it. Use water that you'd normally give your plants to get the most accurate reading.

Reference this chart here https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-effect-of-soil-pH-on-nutrient-availability_fig2_277669269 and report back. Note that anything under 5 drops off drastically

I'm guessing your soil is just too acidic because peat moss has a pH of 3.5 and pine bark 4.5, but maybe the perlite is enough to swing the pH back up. I'm not sure, just my gut reaction. I'm thinking that since osmocote is supplying nutrients but your plant isn't receiving them, it's experiencing lockout

I had not considered this but maybe, if in a few months this continues I will raise the ph and see what happens.


Thanks for the help everyone!

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Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Disfigured new growth on garcinias
« on: December 20, 2022, 11:29:15 PM »
The ugly plant is currently in a 40/40/20 mix of peat moss, perlite, and pine bark. What should I add or remove to the mix?

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Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Disfigured new growth on garcinias
« on: December 20, 2022, 11:06:04 PM »
New pictures of my madruno. Both have pushed growth twice and the disfigured one continues to do so, I think it might be calcium deficiency.









21
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Eugenia Anthropophaga leaf drop
« on: December 09, 2022, 11:40:51 PM »
Container looks too big and soil looks too wet.
What soil are you using?

You’re right pot is too big and yea I had just watered it.

Honestly I don’t remember, probably the cheapest garden soil I had at the time. Wasn’t expecting this one to give me trouble so gonna change the soil to something that isn’t horrible.

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Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Eugenia Anthropophaga leaf drop
« on: December 09, 2022, 11:36:56 PM »
Looks like some kind of root stress going on. Possible overwatering would be my guess, i would check out the roots and go from there.

This appears to be the case. Rootball is smaller than when I repotted it from a 1 gallon. Moving it to a smaller pot and see if it improves. Thank you

23
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Eugenia Anthropophaga leaf drop
« on: December 09, 2022, 08:07:27 PM »
Need some help from the Eugenia experts on here. Older leaves yellow and drop as soon as new ones are starting to grow sometimes sooner and this has been going on for about 1-2 months. I am at a loss here as none of my other plants are exhibiting this while being in the exact same conditions. Could just be user error with over/underwatering or fertilizer, any ideas?









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Tropical Fruit Buy, Sell & Trade / Re: ISO: Uncommon Garcinia plants/seeds
« on: November 15, 2022, 05:54:17 PM »
they have cuban mangosteen (garcinia aristata) on tradewinds! best of luck on your search, maybe snag me a few if you run into some rare species  ;)

Going to buy a lot of seeds for some of these species if I find them so I can definitely share a few, don't hold your breath though took me 2 years to find cherapu.

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Tropical Fruit Buy, Sell & Trade / Re: ISO: Uncommon Garcinia plants/seeds
« on: November 15, 2022, 05:50:35 PM »
they have cuban mangosteen (garcinia aristata) on tradewinds! best of luck on your search, maybe snag me a few if you run into some rare species  ;)

My seeds g. aristata seeds had pretty good germination from Trade Winds

 I saw they had a good variety of garcinia seeds on there but wasn't sure of their viability. I'll give them a try if no one of the forum has any, thanks.

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