The Tropical Fruit Forum

I have not cut out the infected wood. While I was at it, I noticed a girdling root on the chempedak. I guess this should be cut off as soon as possible? The tree was dug out on a couple occasions by scrub fowls so to say the roots were disturbed after planting would be an understatement.

Thanks 0hip. That's one I might look at getting. Golden Queen comes from southern Taiwan I believe and they have a similar climate to here. I think we have seen Trina selling Golden Queen before but we didn't know that Golden Queen is Jin Huang (the mandarin name for the cultivar) at the time.

Thanks Oolie, Sweet Tart could be worth a try .

Thanks for the suggestion JR561. Also, thanks for the information David. Might have to avoid the monoembryonic cultivars then.

Thanks for the information Mike. The description of Pinks disease matches what I'm seeing. I also have a mulberry with fungus growing on a branch but there is no die back. Will cut off the infected parts tomorrow and see if I can light a fire. Don't want this spreading.

Without regular pruning, a lot of tropical fruit trees will get too large. This can make harvesting the fruit very difficult, if not impossible. An exception would be fruits like durian that fall to the ground when ripe. Also, the canopies of fruit trees would merge which presumably would reduce yields.

Unfortunately, our chempedak is looking pretty bad at the moment. I've been noticing a bit of dieback recently but I just noticed yesterday that one whole lateral branch has died. As can be seen, it looks like fungus is growing around the top of the trunk. For a bit of background, I chopped the top of the chempdak out in mid-March last year to minimise wind damage from a cyclone. We have since had ~4m of rain with about 1m falling so far this March.

What do you think I should do? I am thinking of cutting off the diseased wood and potentially spraying the trunk with copper/wettable sulfur. Also, what is the disease? I'd like to do some research into the issue.

Thanks

Thanks for the information. Yeah, that's what I'm planning on doing. Regular maintenance pruning is MUCH easier than hard pruning where you are cutting through thick mature wood. I wonder what the best time of year to do the drastic pruning is? I was thinking about May but I wonder if cold weather could be a problem after such a heavy prune.

We have 3 very large rambutans, 2 red and 1 yellow. Fruit quality is excellent and the flesh comes of the seed easily. The problem is though, the trees are absolutely massive. This means I can only harvest fruit is the lowest ~4m and the rest goes to the local wild life. At the moment, I've lost most of our fruit to lorikeets (native bird) and fruit piercing moths. They also take up a lot of space and I want to plant more trees.

Now to my question, what's the best way to tackle this? I want to bring the trees back to a manageable size. You can see they have been pruned back very hard years ago. In my opinion though, the height wasn't brought down enough. I'm thinking of pruning back to ~ 2m. Would it be best to cut back to the stump or cut at the branches? Also, one rambutan tree has a fair wound on it. Not sure if that's something to worry about.

Thanks!

I have a couple of young tree in FNQ, Australia. So far, very easy to grow. I don't water or fertilise ours and they grow very quickly.

I use deep pots and will cut the tap root where they hit the bottom of the pot. I've pulled a few durian out with root problems (bought, not grown myself). Planting durian with a curled up tap root is a bad idea I think. I wonder sometimes if people up pot durian which are root bound which masks the problem.

Is Meadowcroft Farms in a cyclone prone area?

Yes, they are very much in a cyclone prone area. I think you are right about the vase shape, but keeping the trees short helps counteracts that I suppose. We were hit by a cyclone last year and our jackfruits were fine. I did give them a heavy prune beforehand and we have a good windbreak. It was only a Category 2 though, any stronger and it might have been a different story.

Yes, I know what you mean. The tree I didn't shape early is basically a thick trunk with small lateral branches. It has flowered but not set fruit. The modification that I did on the second was to have two levels of branches. I has already fruited off one of the lower branches.

No experience planting trees anywhere near that size for me. They are huge . What you say makes sense to me but I'd be interested if anyone has experience planting something like these.