The Tropical Fruit Forum

  Strange year indeed. I have a dwarf mulberry full of fruit now, I have a Tice mulberry that just finished fruiting a couple weeks ago and I am getting figs from the LSU purple and Tx everbearing. I ate surinam cherries last week and barbados cherries this week. I am just hoping that we don't have a real cold night like last year when we were 30F for 3 hours in the end of February. Up till now we have had one night that was 50F. My peach trees have finally lost almost all their leaves and are flowering now without one chill hour.
  Unfortunately the mulberries and figs are not great tasting either?  I read that peaches fruit will not be sweet if they don't receive adaquate chill hours let alone no chill hours? Strange year indeed!

Mr Coconut
Please put me on the list for pure seeds from the Surinam cherry
THANKS
Mike

LSU purple was my best performing fig this year. I ate 2-3 figs a day all summer long, I had a LSU gold that kicked butt last year but it died last winter on an unusually cold night in the end of February. I planted another LSU purple this year. I have tried about 10 varieties and the LSU figs handle the humidity the best. They also don't loose all their leaves in the winter like most figs and produce the following year. I plant in the ground with allot of mulch which is suppose to help the florida nemotodes. But I also read the LSU purple is more resistant to nemotodes anyway?
 

I have been to Harris nursery and walked through their nursery. Lots of yellow trees and leaf minor everywhere. What a dissapointing nursery. They do have a nice selection and the trees can be taken care of correctly and brought back.  Fruitscapes in Pine island is FANTASTIC. I really enjoy Pine Island and the nursery is awesome. The selection is really good and there is allot of older trees in the ground. You could get there in a little over an hour from Sarasota. If you are going to Disney/Orlando then you are about 30 minutes to Flying Fox. If you can make it there you will be impressed! As mentioned earlier
Just Fruits is also worth the detour. I went there once when I was coming back from Georgia and it added a couple hours plus a couple hours getting trees but I am sure glad I went. If you can make it to Flying Fox make sure you call and make an appointment. The two other nurserys mentioned have regular business hours.

This time of year My trees usually turn a bit yellow and lose allot of leaves. I quit fertilizing the end of September. I also only water 1-2 times a week now. Around the first of February I start to fertilize again. I usually fertilize with granular 10-10-10 or 8-4-8 with micro nutrients. I also drench the roots with 20-20-20 with micronutrients once a week or every 2 weeks. Since I started using the 20-20-20 my citrus trees turn a very dark green and never have looked better. I get the 20-20-20 from Diamond R for aroind $31.00 for 25 pounds. Its a little cheaper then Miracle grow but basically the same contents. It makes all my trees dark green.
  This winter we are incredibly warm. Tonight I saw southern toads on the road around 8:00pm. Toads are suppose to be hibernating by December 12th. Toads are suppose to be hibernating November 12th.  I am not sure what effects this unusually warm winter will have. My peaches haven't lost their leaves and other trees are flushing and flowering now. I sure hope we don't have a nasty night like last year.We had a mild winter last year until the end of February we had a night that was 30F for 3 hours. That caught a couple of my trees offgaurd and I lost a LSU gold fig and a lychee tree. Both trees were flushing and thought it was spring!
Mike

There is a Macadamia farm in LaBelle, FL zone 9b. I lived next door to the farm and also received a couple trees from the owner. He also lost his trees a couple times initially due to frost. He has all of his trees planted in full sun. His largest trees are now around 20+' and the frost doesn't bother them. He sprayed a plastic coating on the trees when they were small and watered heavy on frost nights. My two trees I planted in heavy peat in full sun and I sprayed them on nights when frost was predicted. I neglected the trees and they grew very slow but very steady. After the first two years I didn't spray them and the frost didn't bother them. I had them planted close to a pond which probably created a couple degree buffer but they did get frosted several times and were fine. We had temps in the mid to high 20s several nights. The trees love acid and the owner of the farm injects acid into the watering system. His soil was very high ph. I lived at the property for 10 years and his trees definitely were growing well. He had allot of Australian and Hawaiian types. He never produced allot of nuts considering he had 20 acres planted. He did have allot of flowers at times??? As many people have already said the first couple years protect the trees from frost. Watch the ph of your soil and water. I received a tree a couple years ago and I didn't plant it in peat. The leaves burned fast and the tree died before I realized what I was doing. The trees are drought tolerant. I never watered the original two trees I had and each summer the trees flushed constantly in our rainy season and in the winter they were basically dormant but didn't look dehydrated. Good Luck.

I use to live next door to the macadamia orchard. George has 20 acres planted. Some of the older trees are 25' tall and 15' wide. He has 20 or 30 types of trees. He has been around for 20 years or so. I am not sure what he's up to now but if you google his name he has several older ads. At one point he was trying to offer an alternative to the ailing citrus industry by offering select cultivars of australian macadamia that you had to sign a non-propagate agreement to obtain. I did get a couple Hawaiian cultivars and I accidently added allot of peat in a raised bed and one tree grew great with no attention. Later I got a couple more trees and they died fast. My soil and water are high ph and the trees are very sensitive to ph like blueberries. The original tree did fine in peat. George liked to brag about his Australian cultivars that no one can get but he wouldn't sell me one tree. I had to buy 1200 trees and sign the non-propagate? Like I said I don't know what he's up to these days, but at one point he would
have sold a few Hawaiian trees to a collector and showed you his orchard. His older trees are really impressive!
Mike

Erica
The trees are deciduous and loose their leaves each fall. Are your trees going dormant and then dying? I have mine planted in a high well drained sandy soil. I gave one to my neighbor and he planted it in a low area and it died the first summer. They love water but need well draining soil.
Second what rootstock are your trees on? Hopefully your trees are on Florida gaurd? I think it is the only low chill nemotode resistant rootstock for Florida peach trees?
Mike

Steve told me this is the worst year he has ever seen for the weevils.  I did buy 2 lychees earlier this year from Fruitscapes and the leaves were not chewed until they got to my place.  I use 2oz per 12 trees and the imidacloprod is Macho. I have heard nuprid is better and will use it for now on. Are there orange groves near ZHPP or Excalibur?

Patrick
My trees are Indian which I assume is Thai Giant? All the trees I have seen at Florida nurserys are thornless and look and act the same. I have around 5 chinese jujubes but so far they haven't grown much. They put out new leaves in the spring but they don't grow much. I pumped them with liquid 20-20-20 last year and they got real dark green but still didn't grow much. I cut a few back to almost nothing above the graft line and they basically flushed but didn't take off. I should dig them up and replace with something productive. This has been going on for 3-4 years. I have a tree called a So
that I bought from England's nursery in Kentucky. The first year I had it I was dragging a hose to water and pulled the hose over the tree and snapped it. It was only two feet tall. I taped it with grafting tape and figured it was a gonner. Instead it had a growth spurt and put out good sturdy new branches. Today the tree is pushing 5 feet and had good growth again this year. I prune it every spring. It flowered and set a couple fruit but they dropped off. According to Englands it's a dwarf variety. It has really cool contorted branches and maybe next year I will taste a genuine Chinese jujube?

My brother sells citrus and other fruit trees and one of his growers told him he doesn't have ANY orders this year from the groves?  Shouldn't he be a millionaire?

Mike

I bought a grafted tree from Echo and was told it was grafted on seedlings from the mother tree. The man from Echo said they have planted this jujube tree throughout parts of Africa because it is drought tolerant and produces heavy crops year after year.
 Years ago my brother bought out a nursery and ended up with hundreds of jujube seedlings. He planted about 25 around his front yard. He ended up with very thorny trees that produced marble size fruit about 60%seed and 40% flesh. His wife is Chinese and said they were crap compared to what she ate in China and dug them all up except the best two. These two have fruit 1/3 of the size of my grafted tree. His wife said in China the farmers prune every year and the fruit is on the new growth each year.
 I bought another airlayered tree last year from a small nursery in Loxahatchee http://www.gmgtropicalfruits.com/
The parent tree looks exactly like like the tree from Echo. The tree is so prolific I will try to girdle one branch next July and hopefully get rewarded like last year with a summer crop?

Mike

I have a couple indian jujube also. Last year I had one very large branch which was growing sideways and causing one tree to lean.  On July 8th (one of my son's birthday) I attempted to airlayer the branch instead of whacking it. After about 6 weeks I checked the airlayer and the tin foil had ripped and
the spagnum was dried. It caused the area to have a bulbous callus but no roots. Anyway the huge branch did a death bloom and I kid you not I got about 250 wonderful fruit about the size of a golfball.
The rest of the tree had less then 10 fruit.

They were green and turned light yellow and tasted like a granny smith apple. As you know if they get
ripe they turn nasty and I won't eat them. Then last winter the whole tree bloomed and fruited around
january Most of the fruit turned from green to brown and fell off the tree. Thousands of fruit that never turned yellow. I watered the tree allot and attributed it to over watering? This year I got the normal summer bloom but less then 5 fruit.

Last February I also whacked off the huge branch and I pruned the tree down to nothing. I staked it to correct the lean. That tree is now 15-20 feet tall and 15-20 feet wide. Don't be afraid to prune a jujube. I am not sure what the tree will do this winter but I won't water it if I get the fruit set like last year. I plan to prune heavy in the early spring and next July I will girdle one large branch. The fruit was delicious and I gave away allot. Everyone liked it but you know how people are. My neighbor said it tasted like plums???

Mike











em allot and I wasn't sure if it was th