The Tropical Fruit Forum

Hey Sheehan!  Hope you and the fam are well my friend.  I certainly try to stay busy.  If I already didn't have a good sized pedalai that's already in the ground, I would have tried to put that on the jack as well.  Trying to collect some rare and tasty artocarpus here.  My main goal is going to be getting some good mango varieties going so I can show these fine folks what a real tasty mango is all about!  I'm just waiting for a buddy of mine in Miami, who works for the courts, and volunteers at Fruit & Spice and others...to get busy on collecting scions for me...but I won't mention any names!!!  LOL!

Nail on the head Mike.  It's been very very dry and very very hot.  The worst is the very low humidity and that is the killer. 

As for the cherapu, I originally planned to plant all of them out in the yard, but now thinking I might just keep them in containers until they begin to bloom so I know what I'm dealing with.  The rubber trunks are very annoying.  They are at a stage where growth flushes are happening regularly to the tops just keep getting heavier and heavier.  They certainly do much better than pulasan.

It's been getting drier and drier here in Thailand.  They believe the trend will continue.  No shit here...I had better growing conditions in my damn greenhouse than I do here it seems.  My trees sure looked nicer and grew better.

Peter...I'm still waiting to hear back from him.  I know they use something, because no matter what precautions/preventions you use, it still raises its ugly head.

Terry Mynhier is an American durian farmer way out in the boonies of Kanchanaburi province, Thailand.  Not an investor, but a get-your-hands-dirty, sweating-your-ass-off, working-all-day, farmer.  I've chatted often with Terry on Facebook for well over a year and finally got to meet him and see his farms for the first time.  He has run several successful businesses around the world, including real estate, so he has the mindset to make durian production successful as well.  He also has a Thai wife who grew up on a farm and this is the ace up his sleeve.  Terry did his durian research online.  He got out amongst the locals and learned all that he could about growing durian.  This included planting on mounds and double tree planting.  Double tree planting is not only insurance...in case one dies...but allows the trees to grow together and increase production.



Terry currently has three farms and only one of the farms has mature durian producing fruit.  Monthong is the main crop.  He has planted Chanee, Gan Yao, Kradum, Black Thorn, and Musang King.  What he found was Monthong is pretty much the only variety that will do well in his area.  Chanee does okay while the rest are a struggle to keep alive.  These are being replaced by Monthong as they die and are pulled out.  The Monthong just does much better in their drier climate.  The other consideration, and probably the most influential, is that the commercial market ONLY wants Monthong.

My buddy Tong Chom drove down to meet and join us.  This was also the first time that we meet in person.  It was great having him along and look forward to future fruit tours together.






All pics above are from the farm with the youngest trees.  Over 900 trees.  Terry has several water retention areas and I believe will be digging another pond soon.  He currently has three wells supplying them and the trees.  This year the heat and drought was just brutal and has been very hard on durian in particular.  Terry was giving his trees lots of water every single day and it certainly paid off.  The trees look great and the older ones produced tons of fruit.  Most farmers in the area did not water for one reason of another.  They lost many trees and those that survived failed to fruit.  The younger trees on this farm will be kept pruned to a height of no more than 6 meters.







The above pics are from the older farm with the mature and producing durians.  He also grows and markets mangosteen.  Other trees include some rambutan, pomelo, and a few others.  There were pickers dropping fruit to go to export or to local markets.  Still lots of fruit on the trees.



Most of the trees were very healthy and producing well.  But no matter how much prevention effort is expended, issues still pop up.  The tree in the pic was attacked by a boring insect that carries a deadly disease and infects the tree.  The bark around the entry area must be scraped away until clean, healthy bark is hit.  Then that brown splotch will be dug out, then the tree will be treated.  It is somewhat manageable at this stage.  However, if the disease hits the roots, then it is game over and nothing will stop the decline.



We spent the entire afternoon and well into the evening with Terry and his wife.  They were fantastic hosts and we ate our fill of mangosteens and durian.  The highlight was a Monthong/Gan Yao hybrid that was just out of this world.  So many flavors...bitter chocolate, coffee, caramel, citrus...and so smooth and creamy.  I recorded a wonderful interview with Terry, but unfortunately, my Iphone decided to somehow trash it altogether.

He has two full-time workers and will contract out to locals for larger projects, harvesting, and such.  I asked him about failures and/or unexpected challenges.  Planting varieties other than just Monthong was a failure on his part.  While these other varieties were planted in much lower numbers, he feels that he did not heed the local's advice as much as he should have.  So mistakes were made.  The heat and drought were bad enough to contend with, but the very low humidity really punched below the belt.  Constant watering during the drought is certainly necessary, but higher humidity will definitely give the trees a much better advantage to survive.  His concern is that this trend continues or gets worse as people predict.  He hopes it won't last indefinitely.

Purchased a box of these and arrived several days ago.  Seller said to wait until the fruit turned completely yellow...still has some green on the stem end.  Not really seeing any color change so far.  Tested on today.  More tart than sweet and flavor was lacking.  I see the potential, but this first one fell short.

Update on my marang grafted onto jackfruit experiment.  The plan was to slowly start cutting the rootstock away from beneath the graft.  Well, back on April 14, on my second cut, I mistakenly cut all the way thru the rootstock.  By the next morning, all of the leaves had dried completely up.  I should have removed them all after severing the rootstock, but I thought it has had plenty of time to sync up...grafted on Jan 2.  After the discovery, I removed all of the leaves except for part of one at the top.  So the graft has been attached to the jackfruit only since April 14.  As of today, as you can see in the pic, the graft is pushing a nice new leaf from the tip.  I'm going to call that a positive sign.  Hopefully it will continue to push.

Brian...yeah...moisture during the winter months is really bad.  The gas heaters are wonderful, but really cause a wet environment.  All of my trees were in ground, so cleaning the glass was a pain in the butt.  It was a circus show with me balancing on the ladder blasting away with a big power washer all the while trying not to strip the plants from the pressured water.

I forget the mfg of my two corner ceiling fans, but they lasted since 2006.  Not sure how they still operated.  Pretty much fell apart when I took them down for safety.  Had one ceiling fan that helped and relied on several floor, oscillating fans to move air and branches.

I always pined away about having a better growing zone to grow anything I wanted.  Now that I have it, it really isn't all as great as I hoped!  7 month complete drought periods with terribly high temps and even more terrible low humidity is challenging.  My trees in the greenhouse fared and looked better.  I do miss the greenhouse.  I had several specimens ready to fruit and I missed out.  Hopefully the new owners are following my directions!  LOL!

Even in a greenhouse, getting germination will be tough.  Tougher still is getting the trees thru the first year.  Chances are 0 to slim.  Then you have to get the tree to a decent grafting size.  If you reach this far, grafting will be even more difficult in your location.  I'm not trying to discourage you, far from it.  Everyone knows I tried growing all kinds of stuff in my greenhouse, but it's tough. 

If the trees ever make it thru the first several years, you will probably be okay in a container, but I would prepare for putting them in-ground inside your greenhouse.  Even if a graft is successful, it's still an incredibly long haul until fruit.  Oscar at Fruitlovers.com will have seeds and scions as well.  Any langsat seed will probably do if planning on grafting.  For scions, go for Longkong.  I wouldn't worry about trying to diversify seed choices and such.  Just concentrate on keeping what you get alive.  I would purchase lots of seeds.

The fruit is very very good.  Worth the expense, effort, and heartache?  To be honest...no.  There are folks with better environments that can't keep a seedling alive for longer than six months or so.  We all want to push the zone and it can be exciting to try.  Hope for the best, but prepare yourself for disappointment. 

Wisdom?  Hmmmmm...that would be a stretch!!  Lots of mistakes were made.

jungleyard...of course

My first word was "yes".  LOL!  I'm in Bangkok area.