The Tropical Fruit Forum

Elemental sulfur is best applied when you mix it into a thin slurry with some water. Its easy to apply, makes it more bio-available and thus will give you its benefits quicker.

As a powder, it's messy and you're liable to breathe in some and smell stinky for a while. Also can be blown away by the wind if you don't water it in right after.

Pellets are easy to apply and avoid those shortfalls, but they also take quite a bit longer to break down. There's been more than a few times where I've dug around the soil and months later the pellets are still mostly intact.

Personally I get the pellets and put a good amount into a gallon jug, fill it with water, shake it until it's mixed up, and apply it.

Tiger 90cr is a great brand for it.

Do you ever get banana fruit from the temps getting that cold?

Most are cold hardy to the high 20s/early 30s if you protect them and hold off on watering, but the winters always seem to put the kibosh on any kind of proper fruit development since they love to grow their flower stalks in mid/late fall.

Quote from: spaugh on July 10, 2024, 12:08:34 PM

Quote from: gnappi on July 10, 2024, 11:43:55 AM

Y'know, I've said this before but it seems as if some parts of the country have a huge surplus of rainwater at times, most notably the southeast and it's either dumped in the ocean or gulf of Mexico.

Given the enormous public works projects in the past I would think that another one for recovering and piping this water for agricultural uses to the west would be a desirable way to put folks to work and save ground and other clear water for potable uses.

Yeah filtering debris, fish etc. would be an issue but C'mon the west has desperate need of water and dumping it makes no sense. 

Thoughts?

Probably cheaper to do desalination.  Or just drill some wells under the sierras.

Desal isn't cheap. It is power hungry. If we could get over it and build up some nuclear facilities, especially seawater cooled, we could be cooking though. Another issue that arises is where do you put all the salt after you've separated it.

"For example, the Carlsbad desalination plant in San Diego, California requires about 35 megawatts of electricity to operate. (By comparison, 1 megawatt is enough energy to operate a small town and 1,000 megawatts is enough to power a midsize city). The plant produces an average daily flow of 50 million gallons, only about 10% of the total drinking water needed by San Diego."

Wells are a finite resource. Once they're done, they're done, so I don't think siphoning off the Sierras will do it for us long term, decades sure, centuries no chance. A common issue is that as soon as we DO have or find water, we find new ways to use it. Case in point, all the lawn watering bans were lifted here in SB cause Cachuma got water and consumption is on the rise.

Agree with others in the thread though, army corp. of engineers and public projects should have been tackling this over the last few decades. It's amazing seeing the state irrigation channels from the 60's... What have we done on that scale since?

Solar, wind, and/or hydro power could help supplement power requirements perhaps? May not completely compensate, but would put a decent enough dent into it.

Nuclear is just too risky IMO. All it takes is one bad natural disaster or (god forbid) an attack from terrorists or another nation's military and the whole area is irradiated hundreds if not thousands of years. Yeah that risk is very small, but the consequences are very permanent as Chernobyl and Fukushima have shown us.

As for what to do with all the salt, sell it to consumers. There will never not be a need for sea salt, be it for food, roads where it snows in the winter, and water softeners. Supply it to companies that already sell it, or form a new company and sell it fairly cheap to make up for some of the cost.

Elemental soil sulfur is still the best long term solution so there's a constant supply of sulfuric acid as the microbes slowly break it down. Since you're in a climate with warmer winters it should work year round for you. Just gotta apply twice or thrice a year.

EDDHA iron and foliar feeding also works wonders in countering high pH soil/water conditions, which we have here in spades in Las Vegas. To my surprise it's even worked really well with my experimental blueberries, even with the pH being higher than what they normally tolerate.

I'm definitely interested, but alas it's too hot here to have trees shipped for now. If any of these with the 4 or more grafts are still available once summer calms down, I'd definitely be down to purchase.

I'm interested in a multgraft with as many as you can attach to it. Can't purchase until after the summer heat dies down though. Wouldn't want it to die in transit.

Consider me extremely intrigued.

There has been some very rare success with mangoes here in Vegas, primarily due to the high alkaline soil, winter temps that can dip into the high 20s, and of course our stupidly hot and dry heat.

I may have to pick one of these up and give it a try.

They're very cold sensitive so they will definitely require protection in Zone 7 during the winter. They die from the cold here in zone 9a.

A greenhouse, or keeping it in a pot and bringing it indoors may be your only option.

Das bump.

I see the short bus must have made a stop at this thread. It's a shame the weather can't be remarked on without someone's vitriolic political commentary derailing it.

hehe, I know all about what passes as "science". I've worked in the field.

I find it interesting that once I asked the question about solar activity it was immediately mocked and dismissed, your kind isn't interested in truth, only in power and holding over others, the past few years have been clear evidence of that.

I mean...maybe don't complain about "vitriolic political commentary" and then proceed to spout it?

The fact that climate change (which is very real) is a political thing is absurd to begin with.

Anyways, Vegas hit a record for the quickest day in the year we hit 110 degrees. Do not want. Thankfully I haven't lost any plants and trees, including some tropical experiments, but there's been a fair bit of triage to keep them going.

I did lose two loquat grafts that seemed to be doing well though. :\

Personally I use Osmocote and Foxfarm's GrowBig with good results. I've also read about fish emulsion producing really good results as well from a decent number of people on OurFigs, YT videos, and local growers.

Quote from: Fygee on May 31, 2024, 12:57:36 PM

Figs are best transplanted when they're dormant. If you transplant them when it's warm, they tend to get stunted for a year or two, particularly if they're fairly mature as they're going to heavily refocus on re-rooting.

DavidBYE is correct that if mulched, watered, and fertilized they will grow very quickly (though there is some variance depending on the variety and it's vigor). Do you know what variety yours is?

Also, I highly recommend not planting it in that raised planter. It's going to make it pretty difficult to harvest the fruit and keep the tree trimmed without having to climb up there. Personally I'm a very big fan of keeping the roots at ground level, and keeping their overall height no taller than 10 feet for those two reasons. The larger pot is your better option of the two.

@Fygee - thanks for your input.  I forgot to mention that i have a stair case to climb up.  I am also planning to keep the tree less than 7 ft.  Another thing i am planning to do is to plant it a bit deeper and will try to plant in a way that most of the main branches are facing the house .  Do you see any issues with this?  Do u still feel that it’s better to plant it in a container ?  I hv the big 30g pot pictured above.

That should work fine though, though it'll still be pretty tricky to harvest on an elevated planter. Keeping it at 7ft is a good idea. I usually keep mine around 10 so that all the figs are reachable.

Figs tolerate deeper planting much better than other trees, so that should be fine as long as it's not super deep. Best practice though is to keep the main root-ball near the soil line.

Something else to keep in mind, fig roots can get very long and sprawling. They will intertwine with nearby plants. Usually not an issue, but FYI.

On it for those Skinner and DMOR9 cuttings.

Funnily enough, her website is blocked at my work as "adult content". Lol.