First cherimoya flowers, what to do..

[Plantinyum]

Hi , the first of 3 flowers opened today as a female, the two other ones i think have a few days to go before they bloom, so i dont really think its worth it to collect the pollen from this one. I shut it tight with a rubber band, to keep it humid and prolly a better chance this way to self pollinate , i think ive red somewhere that keeping the flower shut helps with self pollination, dunno.. 


I just saw my other cherimoya plant ,which has some branching on the new growth and a t a closer inspection i saw flower buds on the small branchlets. Almost all of them have tiny round flower buds, is this a weard behaviour?









Heres a double leaf from the second plant

[cbss_daviefl]

I don't think a single cherimoya flower cannot pollinate itself. It will be female for a few hours and stop being female during its transition to being male. By the time it produces pollen, it will no longer accept pollen for fruit production. Self-pollination for cherimoya would mean producing fruit without hand pollination or pollination from flowers of the same tree, not a single flower.  For the rubber band to have an effect, the rubber band would need to be applied after pollination.

[brian]

My cherimoya has been flowering almost constantly for a year or more but I have yet to get any fruit past the pea size stage despite occasionally trying to hand-pollinate.  I understand the timing must be very careful to have success.   I am starting to think about replacing it with an Atemoya because I am finding myself too busy to keep up with it.

[Plantinyum]

Bad news... i,ll try my best anyway and try ro hand pollinate, but since now i have just this lone flower i cant do anything....i hope as the plants age and start getting more flowers, i will have something to work with. 

[brian]

I expect you'll have many more flowers soon, once I saw my first one they never stopped coming. 

[johnnyv]

Yes, you will need more than one flower to successfully pollinate with cherimoya.
But don't worry usually the first flowering is small but ramps up rapidly in successive seasons.

Pollen keeps in the fridge for a while but when you have a few larger trees you basically have unlimited flowers at all times during pollinating time.
Last season was crazy for the number of flowers(NZ so opposite seasons).
In fact just picked a ripe fruit today way earlier than normal as I saw it had split as I was walking past. Normally that type is ripe around late July to early August in NZ.

We used to have bad citrus white fly issues in Auckland until a small beetle got introduced and funnily enough that little beetle seems to pollinate cherimoyas.
They don't do it in early spring but once they have eaten all the white fly and their population has exploded they move on to pollen. I have two cherimoyas next to lime trees and they get pollinated without hand pollination now but a tree on the other side of the section does not.

[Plantinyum]

Interesting about the beetle story, i'll have to be the beetle for my plants though.  The plant that flowered had two more flowers, well seems like they will open in the same day, maybe today, so i again wont be able to collect pollen....the flower that bloomed several days ago has dropped.

[Oolie]

How large will you let the tree get in its space? I wouldn't imagine a small tree would do well trying to hold a several-pound fruit.

[Plantinyum]

How large will you let the tree get in its space? I wouldn't imagine a small tree would do well trying to hold a several-pound fruit.

well the gh is 2.8 m high but i may need to raise it a little in the future ,so a 2.5 tree is what i want. I am severely pruning both of them every year, letting them grow and pruning in spring while leaving around 10 cm from the las years growth.
I'd imagine they would have bloomed harder if i didnt prune them this hard but i really need them small.
I want just a few fruit each plant each year, i mean i wont remove them if they set lol . I will make slings or whatever for a few pound fruit, the hard part will be having those few pound fruits on my trees first.

[Plantinyum]

The two buds bloomed today together, what a pita. The best scenario would be for them to have bloomed a day apart, well i guess its still good that the tree started flowering....

[Oolie]

You can always strip the leaves from nodes you want blooms from. You should allow blooms only on the branch portions that can support a several pound fruit without snapping, as many cherimoya varieties are several pounds, with some like sabor being notable exceptions.

[Plantinyum]

You can always strip the leaves from nodes you want blooms from. You should allow blooms only on the branch portions that can support a several pound fruit without snapping, as many cherimoya varieties are several pounds, with some like sabor being notable exceptions.

for the stripping u mean when the new growth has hardened ,wright ? I may try this sometime in July,  thats when the stemms start getting woody ....

[Oolie]

You can earlier, but I don't see much of a point, you really don't want a semi-mature fruit hanging from a branch that isn't fully hardened off. I think they can take around 6 months from set to finish depending on cultivar, so you have to allow some time for fruit maturation. I think early ones may take less time like Pierce.

[DanielMunroe]

Spammer

[Plantinyum]

I'm not a huge fan of dealing with live plants myself, so I prefer artificial flowers. Thankfully, there are lots of great options out there that aren't inferior in quality and beauty to real ones but don't require so much time for care.

I know thats a spam but i just wanted to say, i hate artificial flowers and plants with a passion + this forum is not the place to discuss artificial flowers or plants! Peace ✌