The Tropical Fruit Forum

Since I'm in for a  cuppa, I'll add a funny story.  After importing, planting , growing the different cherimoya cultivars, we took one lot of fruit to Rusty's market in Cairns, in an excess of enthusiasm.   We didn't have a regular stall there, and  predictably we didn't sell a lot of Cherimoya fruit, as  no -one knew us , or Cherimoya fruit.  I don't know if the bloke waited until I went away from the stall for a while,, but he gave Jo a  five-minute telling off, accusing us of being liars and frauds, etc, because he was from Europe, knew all about Cherimoyas,  there were no cherimoyas grown in Australia,etc.   So I came back to the stall, Jo was upset about it all, and that was our last trip to Rusty's market.   Bit of a shame in the end. There
were some excellent flavoured fruit among them.

Thanks Mike and fruit nerd.    It's probably not necessary to add this, but Mike means Kamerunga Research Staion. , which was located at Kamerunga.  Kamerunga is a suburb of Cairns.

Gone Troppo,   Sure. I realise that. I'm just giving a bit of information , in case it is of any use. Woopen Creek would be among the highest rainfall areas, which is why I gave that bit of info.

 I should have mentioned Mallika. Ripens pretty late, we ate the last one a few days ago.  Bred in India, but  very clean fruit after all the rain. Fruits moderately most years here. Excellent mango, a different flavour category to other mangos here.  A dwarf tree here as well , as it is in India. Apparently gets a  bit larger tree in some regions.  I gave some fruit to some friends who hadn't grown up with mangos. I warned them that they might find the fruit flavour a bit too rich. They liked them a lot. I was surprised.

It's not a Zill mango, as the seed was collected in Vietnam by David Fairchild, but Fairchild is the most disease resistant for us.  We had over 900 mm rain  in Dec-Jan.   Picked a good crop of Fairchild in Feb.  All ripened without a blemish.  It's  a delicious mango , but small. Fibreless.   Dwarf tree here.  About  2.8 metres  high after about 40 years, never been pruned.     Cat Thom ( Cat means fibreless,  Thom means fragrant ) , also from Vietnam, is almost as disease resistant as Fairchild here.  Excellent mango.  Cat Chu  from Vietnam gets some  marking.  Doesn't bear as well as Fairchild and Cat Thom here.   Cedar Bay  marked badly this year.  Nam Dok Mai  # 4   had clean fruit, and is a small tree too.

Is it possible that some  F. coronata  set parthenocarpically ?   As far as I know, F. coronata is monoecious . We have fruit on now, so when some ripen, I'll plant some seeds ,if there are seeds  . Thanks for the information.

I'll keep that in mind, Epiphyte. No carica wasp here. F.opposita is dioecious. I haven't pollinated figs before, so I'll have to read up about it.  I just noticed that you were the person who posted the list of graft trials, with the coronata with a question mark after it.  Did the graft work, and is it still growing o.k. ?

Thanks for your reply,   Mike T.   I think coronata will probably work, but I haven't tried it yet.   One of the comments above gives a table where they have tried coronata, but the result wassn't known when they posted the comment.  I thought that maybe that person  or someone else might have some definite information.   Re. F. racemosa, I don't see how you can be so certain that it won't work.  As well as the info in the comments above, I have a couple of references here that state that itis used in India .  It is naturally deciduous in some regions
with a more severe dry season than Cairns.  Sure ,it can grow very large, but you need to remember that when you are in the world of rootstocks,and the cultural conditions given to  the species in question, it's a whole other can of worms.  F.racemosa bonsais well.  Potential for container culture in some nematode problem regions ?   How large would the species grow when it's grafted to F. carica ?   Would there be  severe problems with rootstock  overgrowth ?  The fact that F. racemosa has been used as a rootstock in India for so long makes me think that it can't be too problematic. The performance of rootstocks can be surprising.  For example,  Tamarillo here on S. mauritianum grows to about the same size as Tamarillo on it's own roots, with the mauritianum rootstock only slightly overgrowing, with no long-term incompatibility..  Eggplant on S. mauritianum here grows well, yet the plant and rootstock stays small, with little overgrowth.  Anyway, I might try a plant of it as well, so we'll see.   All the best to you.

Jose,  There should be some good books available  there on this topic,giving detailed information.   The best here are those by Kevin Handreck, a CSIRO scientist who did  decades of work on growing media.  A couple of critical points are the air-filled porosity of the mix, and the ratio between organic and inorganic, non-decomposable components.  His books give an explanation of how to test the air-filled porosity.  (It's not difficult. I haven't checked, but there probably are videos available on the procedure ).  For a long- term mix, you need a minimum of 20% . (The air- filled porosity decreases over time,and the rate of decrease is greatly affected by the ratio of organic to  inorganic components. )    Handreck's work showed
that  for a long-term mix, the inorganic components (sand, gravel, scoria, pumice,perlite  ) should be a minimum of 70% of the mix.

I'm not sure if the tree of M. odorata here is correctly a "kuini." According to Kostermans book, there are different selections of M.odorata with different names. (He spells the most common form "Kweni " )   The one here was brought back by David Chandlee, who spent some time looking for the best M.odorata he could find,and  this one was supposed to be the best that he found.  Also, I should be more specific with the flower description . The dominant colour of the inflorescence of this one is red,but I don't think the individual florets were red.   I did take a photo of it in flower,but I'd have to find it ,then try to figure out how to post it here. Too much  time.
         

Gone tropo,
                 Whatever you like. I wouldn't get too hung up about what species the tree is. Except when it's in flower,the  kuini tree is just like a mango tree with clean leaves.  No disease on the leaves here. If you have space for a mango tree, it's probably your best bet. A high chance that it would fruit there.  I could send a
couple of fruit when it fruits next if you like, to see if you like the fruit.  Certainly in the rich-flavoured category.   After durian, it could be a little odour-deficient, though. Probably better to graft on indica to reduce the tree size a bit.

The calcium oxalate crystals aren't a problem if you know how to eat them. (info above on that ).   Don't eat too much at one time,as it is a laxative.  They grow easily from cuttings, not really necessary to air layer.  I like them.  Also completely pest free here, and have had no problems with animals or birds
eating the fruit ,unless you let them ripen on the plant.   Best picked when the basal scales have some yellow visible between them ,easy to see with a bit of experience with the plant.