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Messages - foresight

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Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Oak Leaf Papaya-Carica Quercifolia
« on: March 18, 2024, 08:30:31 PM »
Super easy plant to grow. Will take direct sun in blazing heat or deep shade. Cold tolerant to at least mid-upper 20s, but also super easy to overwinter indoors. They can also fruit at like 6 inches tall. The fruits themselves aren't great, but not bad. I don't care much for the peppery taste of the seeds outside of rare occasions but if you can prevent pollination, the seedless fruits are pretty tasty: kind of like a mix between cantaloupe and papaya in my experience. I think it would be a challenge to get one of these to do poorly unless you chronically overwater.

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If you're looking to grow plants to maturity, the ideal lighting range is probably in the range of 25-50 watts per square foot of tent. With that said, most plants will grow fine in less light. If you're just looking to keep stuff alive in the winter then you can get away with very little. I moved last year and I don't have anywhere near enough winter tent space, so I've got probably a hundred plants or so that have been just sitting in 24/7 darkness for all of this past winter and the majority are staying alive just fine. I've got a 100W 2x2, 34W 2x2, 430W 5x5, and 100W 4x4 currently and I just try to orient the plants based on how much light they want. I like the SpiderFarmer bar LEDs as the prices aren't too bad, though I also have some HLG QBs and a cheap 34W GE LED bulb from Amazon that seems to perform just as well as the 100W HLG board in a 2x2. I was originally looking at Kingbrite since it's supposed to be the best in terms of price-to-performance, but the time and extra cost of shipping from China kind of ruins the value unless you're ordering in bulk or are fine with a potentially long wait.

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Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Exotica Nursery Closing Down?!
« on: January 08, 2024, 08:38:56 PM »
If true, that seems crazy to only have two months notice. He's been there since the 90s if I recall. A legitimate OG.

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Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Some Brazil Trip Photos 2023
« on: December 20, 2023, 03:24:20 AM »
That's a beautiful Campomanesia reitziana in the one picture. Love their leaves.

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Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: What Eats Papaya Leafs?
« on: December 04, 2023, 04:34:54 PM »
Probably not the case here but grasshoppers seem to like papaya leaves and the damage looks somewhat similar after they've finished. I've had single grasshoppers eat entire leaves in the span of only a few hours.

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Tropical Fruit Buy, Sell & Trade / Re: BLACK FRIDAY SALE!
« on: November 24, 2023, 09:03:58 PM »
Are heat packs available?

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If your summer highs are only in the 80's, you're probably not going to get fruit from a date palm. Pindo palm might be worth looking into as well as some of the cold tolerant Brazilian species. Lemon guava and Passiflora caerulea should definitely be doable.

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Feijoas. Oak leaf papaya. Maybe Suriname cherry or COTRG.

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I've found that the phone-based lux meters aren't particularly accurate; you can get a dedicated lux meter on Amazon for $10-15.

You may want to plug your latitude into a "solar panel tilt angle" calculator to help determine your ideal reflector angles. Unfortunately, I don't think you will be able to greatly increase light levels without using a more complicated system of reflectors (similar to sun tunnels). With that said, I suspect your current solution could be quite helpful in reflecting light onto any understory plants that are getting blocked by larger plants.

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Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: trees that suffer injury below 45F / 7C?
« on: September 21, 2023, 10:37:01 PM »
I doubt many people bother zone-pushing Couroupita guianensis, but it definitely doesn't like prolonged exposure in the low 40s, especially if it gets wet feet. My seedlings handled the coldest part of winter just fine (34-35 lows on occasion) with mostly dry soil, but the rains and consistent night temps in the 40s during February and March eventually caused 3 out of 4 to succumb to rot (I brought the survivor inside after the others died). Maybe they could've made it if they were older and had woody stems. Other plants that died in the same period were a chempedak hybrid and a young peanut butter fruit.

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Tropical Fruit Buy, Sell & Trade / Re: New seed drop! 9/16/2023
« on: September 17, 2023, 02:57:31 AM »
Wow, the flowers and new growth on that Inga grazielae look crazy.

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I thought those were tomatoes at first glance.

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I’ve never specifically used a heat-mat, but my seeds are generally kept in the same room as my indoor grow tents so that means they were generally in the upper 70s and low 80s in San Diego. With that said I moved to the Vegas area in early June, and on short notice so the A/C was not set up properly. Daytime temps indoors were typically in the mid to high 90s through the summer and my germination rates were much better than what I had with the lower temps.

Fresh seeds germinated more rapidly and old seeds that had spent many months in San Diego temps finally sprung to life. For context the majority of my seeds are Brazilian or other South American species and I germinate all seeds in tupperware containers of moist vermiculite, sealed airtight and kept under a small 9W led lamp. If you don’t have a warm room or indoor setup that you can use to germinate your seeds then a heat mat will absolutely speed up seed germination (genus and/or species dependent of course).

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Leaves are a bit long and not quite as matte as I'd expect but I've definitely seen mangostana seedlings that look like that.

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Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Mango Thief Caught
« on: September 11, 2023, 11:43:33 PM »
Put up a prominent sign that reads 'Pesticides In Use' or something of the like. Even better if you have a sprayer and some bags lying nearby.

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Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Source for chrysophyllum imperiale?
« on: September 07, 2023, 09:25:57 PM »
If you're so inclined you could ask if Kameron has any plants he would be willing to part with. I know he typically grows out at least a few seeds for each species so it wouldn't surprise me if he has a couple. My seedling from the last batch has been growing fairly quickly so if he does have any he's planning to sell I'd expect him to list them fairly soon while they're still small enough to ship.

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I had two of these for around a year as well and they always struggled no matter what I did. I didn't get any brown spots on them but they were definitely prone to chlorosis and the tips and edges of leaves would often turn a bit brown and/or curl upwards. Additionally, they always seemed to drop their lower leaves and sometimes would drop all their leaves before a heavy push of new growth. They seemed very prone to overwatering and always seemed to want more iron. I had them in amended promix hp and used RO water for reference.

Here's one of my seedlings from earlier in the year. Growth appeared healthy and it was pushing to the point where it was falling over, but within a month all the leaves had fallen off despite looking healthy, and they never came back.




 If I tried again I'd probably experiment with a gritty mix and keep them in smaller pots for longer as their lateral roots seem to develop quite slowly, sort of like a garcinia. If you can get in touch with Anderson Tropicals I know he has/had some of the largest and best-looking seedlings for this species, so maybe he could provide advice.



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Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Surinam Cherry Virus?
« on: September 05, 2023, 12:23:47 AM »
I just checked a few of the deformed leaves under a microscope and there is no sign of mites or anything else out of the ordinary. Additionally, I don't believe it would be heat stress as the last few weeks are probably the only time this summer where temps haven't been consistently in the high 90s and low 100s (and they grew fine in these temps).

If it was just one plant I wouldn't think much but the fact that it has spread to multiple plants and is affecting pretty much all new growth has me worried. And it seems to exclusively affect surinam cherries, even plants that aren't touching or sharing drainage. I'm hoping whatever it is is either temporary or only cosmetic in effect. 

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Tropical Fruit Discussion / Surinam Cherry Virus?
« on: September 03, 2023, 09:47:42 PM »
The new growth on a bunch of my surinam cherry plants is strangely bumpy and I'm not sure what it is. It seems to be spreading in a manner that leads me to believe it's airborne but aside from the leaf deformation, there is no sign of spores or anything.






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Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Mammey seeds germination?
« on: August 23, 2023, 03:59:59 AM »
That's surprising to me. I did only grow two seeds, but I think seed to sprout was somewhere between 6-8 weeks for me. For reference, here is one of my seedlings which was from a fresh seed in late January, so it's probably just about 7 months from being in the fruit. My other seedling is smaller but they both sprouted around the same time.


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Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Mammey seeds germination?
« on: August 22, 2023, 07:06:09 PM »
For Mammea americana I was able to just rip the outer husk off with my hands. I put the seeds in a sealed bag of slightly moist vermiculite and the taproot nub formed in around a week. I waited another few weeks for the tap to get to a few inches before planting in a pot though.

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Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: SoCal Tropical Storm Watch
« on: August 20, 2023, 10:54:10 PM »
Desert areas like Palm Springs are already flooded.  I'm currently near Mt Charleston, west of Vegas, and we're already at half our yearly precipitation and we haven't even really got hit yet. Good opportunity to collect some rainwater at least.

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Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Bug identification?
« on: August 15, 2023, 05:38:41 PM »
Definitely destroyer.

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Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Garcinia discussion thread
« on: August 12, 2023, 05:03:57 PM »
Anecdotally, my mangostana seedlings sprouted and grew the best in the 15-20k lux range (measured at highest leaves). In lower light (2-5k lux) they seem to grow significantly slower, but I'd rather have them grow a bit slower and save the bright spots for other plants anyways. Humidity is more of an issue for me, and I'd expect that in higher humidity conditions a lot of garcinia will take more light at a younger age. Another win for Imbe, as it, along with macrophylla, seem to have no issues with low humidity (15-20%).

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Thanks for the input, much appreciated. I've heard of Mala seeds being grown out before but was on the fence since the reported germination rates were in the sub 1% range. I've heard good things about Mala products so I'll give the seeds a shot and worst case, I'll still have some good peppers for cooking.

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