The Tropical Fruit Forum

Surely you’ll see it if you’ll be all over Oahu. It is a weed tree in Hawaii, not worthy of propogation by a nursery.

I never found the edible cecropia fruit here (Puna area), we had a cecropia tree in the back that I cut down but the fruits were woody and not edible.

Maybe the edible ones are around but I haven't seen them, or maybe we just picked at the wrong time

I had some G. Dulcis at the Hilo Arboretum today and it was pretty good. Some mango flavor and not overly sour, but for the flesh near the rind. I'm interested in how to tell Dulcis apart from xanthochymus because I have some seedlings I need to ID. The leaves look a bit different but there wasn't a xanthochymus there to compare to. The tree was loaded though. We almost had a couple fruits splat on our heads.

Looks like spondias dulcis

Maybe try a low pressure aeroponic cloner. You can make one with a 5 gallon bucket, a pump, some poly tubing, hole saw, sprayers, net cups and neoprene collars.


Here's a good example but I made a circle of poly tubing with a riser and some tees and stuck a couple sprayers on the outside part of it. I cut off the bottom of the net cups instead of shoving the neoprene in the holes like the guy does in the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELfNrq1iq6E

Edit: nearpow makes decent infinite repeat timers for the spraying interval. I think we did 10 seconds on and 5 minutes off. You can do interval timing with a tasmota smart switch as well but I dont remember the command to set it.

The tip burn isnt from thrips.  Have you fed the plant? what kind of water do you use? Looks like salt burn or wrong ph more than likely. I wish iv never delt with thrips they are a nightmare! There top most wanted in my garden lol.

Beauveria bassiana or neem or any other horticultural oil application controls thrips.

Very important to apply several times for control, they have several life cycles in the soil.

They're very frustrating for me when I get them inside (twice now) but someone here expressed the opinion that they're one of the easiest pests to get rid of.

Anyway as to the OP, environmental conditions of the plant would be helpful

The other option that probably works best, but costs a little more, is buying predator mites and letting them go crazy.

Beauveria Bassiana works to control spider mites and many other pest insects. People even use it (off label) for controlling bed bugs.

It is somewhat pricey too but probably better than predatory mites.

Sold as botanigard

Anyway second pic looks like there might be some sort of pH issue.

Old trick for most Cacti if you can stomach it-

Urine

The rich earth institute says the NPK of the average americans urine is 12-1-2

Quote from: elouicious on February 07, 2023, 03:49:44 PM

Old trick for most Cacti if you can stomach it-

Urine

Should be accomplished at night when no one is around!   

Ideally it needs to be diluted, and aged if its not your own brand.

Most places prohibit selling any produce treated with urine afaik

Sounds like a bad ringworm infection or something similar. Best of luck!

Anyway I would imagine that it would be pretty difficult for plant pathogens to jump to animals or humans. I couldn't say for sure though. It does sound a lot like ringworm though, especially how the older infected areas are less red.

The fungus that causes ringworm can live for some time on surfaces indoors and in cloth. AFAIK it doesn't tolerate UV exposure well, but it can take several weeks for it to incubate and erupt into a rash.

Here we treat ringworm with neem diluted in jojoba oil and always a fresh towel when showering. Boric acid in the laundry seemed to help too. Also some kind of powder like corn starch or arrowroot for where the sun doesn't shine. If it is ringworm, it can infect other parts of your body. Mine would jump from the back of my hand to my elbow and eventually under my armpit (horrible experience) and other unspeakable places.

Search for ‘stall rice hull bedding’
Rice hull has 18% amorphous silica by weight.
I use it as a long term silica source for potted plants.

I now switch to diatomaceous earth as a source of silica.
It’s cheaper and more compact.

Thanks, didnt realize that DE was good for silica! I'm thinking it might wash out pretty easily in my LECA though. Silica is why I started using the rice hulls. I was using potassium silicate but it doesn't keep here with the humidity. Mine ended up turning into a brick, and now its a rubbery brick after I tried drying it out.

Quote from: Vegan Potato Man on February 06, 2023, 10:02:13 PM

Not sure what the riddle is supposed to be, but in the cannabis world they call passive hydro like you described hempy pots or buckets.

the riddle is whether it's possible for semi-hydro to be superior for smaller plants but inferior for larger plants. 

thanks for telling me about hempy pots, but they seem a bit different than my pots...



the medium goes all the way down below the drainage holes to the bottom of the pot.  perhaps the closest that i've gotten to hempy pots was putting leca balls on the bottom of the pot up to the drainage holes and then putting the regular medium the rest of the way. 

a friend of mine sometimes puts plastic pots in ceramic pots, which occasionally do not have drainage holes.  when she lifts a plastic pot out of a ceramic pot with no drainage, sometimes there will be quite a few long roots dangling from the plastic pot.  the roots had been happily growing in the water reservoir between the two pots.

Quote from: Vegan Potato Man on February 06, 2023, 10:02:13 PM

Anyway I'd be concerned about growing tree seedlings in them since the bottom reservoir can become anaerobic pretty quick, especially if watering is infrequent.

this didn't quite make sense before i googled for hempy pots, but now i know what you mean.  this isn't an issue with my semi-hydro pots since the medium goes all the way down to the bottom of the pot.  even though the reservoir is filled with medium it can hold enough water to make a difference when watering is infrequent, at least in theory.

Quote from: Vegan Potato Man on February 06, 2023, 10:02:13 PM

I do grow my cannabis plants in them though with leca and rice hulls tho

i've never tried using rice hulls.  i think that i 1st heard of them while watching a houseplant guy in indonesia.  where do you get them from?

I ordered the rice hulls off amazon, for a couple bucks a pound. They're good for insulation too.

Also, hempy mostly just refers to the closed bottom vessel with drainage about 1-2 inches up to create a reservoir. The purpose of the LECA is to promote drainage and attempt to prevent anaerobic breakdown of your growing media. Personally I would be much more concerned having an organic based media sitting in the reservoir. I switched to ~80% LECA and 20% rice hulls because of this. It was pretty difficult to get a decent distribution with the rice hulls due to the difference in particle size though.

Also the way your friend grows with a lower reservoir and the roots growing down into it sounds a lot like Kratky, another form of passive hydro. The roots in the reservoir will wick up to the plant. Even with kratky it is important to change your nutrient solution/ reservoir periodically. As the plant takes up water it can raise the EC of the remaining solution. Personally I would say that passive hydro, at least hempy and kratky, are better suited for shorter duration plants and not (most) trees.

Printed in white plastic, this is designed to keep the grafts as cool to prevent sun damage.

What specific material are the clips printed with?

Be ready to pay through the nose 

Edit: Theres a Hawaii durian growers group on FB, or used to be. Got banned from FB at the beginning of the pandemic. Probably worth checking to see if you can buy it direct.

Do you spread it in the soil?  On the plants?

BB can be applied with a sprayer. Make sure to target leaf undersides and spray during cloudy/rainy conditions. Strong sunlight will damage the spores. I believe it is a soil microbe but I'm not certain if it will persist. I would assume to some extent.