The Tropical Fruit Forum

I have a path in my backyard with three lilly pillies on each side forming a small hedge (about 4ft tall) along the path.

They haven't borne fruit yet, so I don't even know whether I'll like it (it's not a fruit you could buy around here), but in any case, I think six are actually a lot of them.

I'm considering replacing some of them with something else, keeping a low height profile, 4-5ft max. The path is about 8ft long.

Before the lilly pillies, I had blueberries. It's too hot for them. My backyard gets quite hot even with a mild temperature (it's like a greenhouse). In fact, I moved the blueberries (they are in pots) next to a wall where they don't get morning sun, but still they struggle and one even dried up.

I think a possible choice here would be pomegranate. But what other choices do I have? I would expect to have four varieties here, lilly pilly, pomegranate, and two others. There is no trellis, so vines are discarded.

I have two possible spots where put these guavas.

The first one is in full-sun all year round, but the tree needs to be espailered.

The other one has plenty of afternoon sun from February to November, but the other months is in full-shade. On this side of the backyard I also have a lime/lemon planted together and a red atemoya. The problem is that guava season here is from October to January, so I assume the lack of sun will impact the harvest, right?.

There is a third spot where I have right now a beach cherry which I could dig out and move to a pot or something, as it's a small low growth plant. In this spot, the tree is somewhat limited in space but it's not necessary to espalier it. Also, it gets morning to afternoon sunlight, but with some shade from papayas planted nearby. For reference, I have a lychee here too.

My feijoa has these black things all over the place. It's not an insect, but I have seen ants gathering around.

What are these things?

Last fall I bought a nectarine tree with a nice but very high branching, so I cut it down to knee high and it became a whip.

It has pushed growth for a while already. The problem is that the stubborn want to push growth on the lower buds, no matter how many times I stop it.

It has only pushed growth in one of the high buds, which is already a branch pushing more branches.

How could I encourage the other buds to start growing? Should I prune back this new branch that it's already pushing too far?

These papayas have had all these fruits for many months already, since September if I recall correctly.





Still there is no sign of ripening. In fact, they're starting to develop those white stains.

What might be happening?

Last year I planted an espailered pomegranate and so far I've been randomly attaching branches to the wall with no specific shape.

I installed now a proper trellis with three tier of wires along the wall, picked the most convenient branches and pruned the rest.



As you can see, the lowest tier is more than double of the other tiers. Should I trim those branches back so that all three tiers are leveled?

Also,  does it make sense to leave that second branch at the bottom left? The one that is between both tiers.

Many of the Australian Syzygium species are shaped as hedges or standards. Also they are often kept as permanent large container plants. As rainforest plants they are adapted to sit and wait for a canopy opening to take off. How much are you fertilising them. If you don't want them to rapidly out grow the pots, maybe hold back on the fert.

0 fertilization, but they just grow grow and grow. The vendor at the local nursery had told me that these beast grew very fast, but I just wasn't expecting them to be that fast

so the dark stuff is normal?

Spring just started a few days ago.

what is going on with this red atemoya? It started with the dark stuff, but at least the leaves were green. But now it's getting worse, with the leaves actually becoming quite yellow-ish and drying up.

still all my papayas are very green. Any ideas about why is it taking so long? According to information I have found, it should be 5-6 months max from flower to harvest, and I'm already on the 7-8th month.

I think I will do something like this:



The kiwi I bought is branching very low, so I'll try to let the cordons grow on either side, and tie the fruitful wood in the horizontal canes.