The Tropical Fruit Forum

I have several 15 year-old fruit trees on my property that have been neglected over the years for several reasons. Now that my health and finances have been somewhat restored, I'd like to try to rehabilitate some of these old trees I've been shamefully been neglecting lately. These are macadamias, starfruit, loquat, and jujube. These trees are still alive, but showing a lot of dead wood and are not producing fruit anymore. Would aggressive pruning, watering, and fertilizing help? At the age of 72, I'd rather not start over with baby trees.

A retired arborist friend of mine stopped by, and when I complained about some of my oldest fruit trees looking poorly, he recommended "root feeding" with sort of a giant hypodermic needle that forces fertilizer and water deep underground. He said he used this technique up north and it quickly rejuvenates fading old trees. We rode around town to various stores and nurseries, looking for a root feeder, but to no avail. Before I go to the trouble of ordering one online, I thought I'd seek opinions here.

I've got two large "Thai Giant" Indian jujube trees that produce a lot of fruit every winter. I just wish they weren't so small! Most of them are somewhere between a large olive and a grape tomato in size. A small handful reach the size of a small apple.
    Why are most so small and why do some get much larger? These trees are at least ten years old and seem healthy.
     Is there anything I can do to produce bigger jujubes?

Across the street from me is an overgrown lot. I never took any interest in it until I saw a county worker go in and put up fruit fly traps. This guy informed me that back in the thicket there were several old fruit trees. I never bothered investigating because the thicket is pretty much impenetrable.
    This morning I saw these fruit hanging from a rather large tree. Are they Surinam Cherries or something?

My lychees are beginning to show some pink. I'm rather surprised because it seems too early, but hey, everything in nature seems to be starting early this year! The Chuck-Will's-Widows in the nearby woods started calling in February, as did the Bobwhite Quail. These birds usually don't start until May. Global Warming?

Does anyone know if the annual October fruit tree sale is going to take place at the Nokomis Community Center this year?

My persimmons are showing nice color, but are still as hard as baseballs. Usually the birds end up hollowing them out, but this year the tree is netted, so the birds are stymied.
    Should I wait until the fruit gets soft?

I should have asked this question days ago. Now I'm sitting here looking at a big bucket of lychees I harvested this morning.
  What is the best way to preserve lychees? I'd like to be able to offer some to my snowbird friends and neighbors when they return to the 'hood in November.
    Any special trick to freezing them? Skins on or off? Seeds?
    I also have a food dehydrator. Can lychees be dried?
    All advice will be appreciated.

My "Thai Giant" Indian jujube trees are producing very small fruit this year. They are not much bigger than large olives. While my jujubes typically aren't huge, this year's crop is very disappointing. The trees seem healthy and are aggressively pruned back every summer.
    Is there anything that can be done to encourage these trees to produce larger fruit?

My atemoya fruit have reached a certain size and then simply stopped growing or ripening. They are well-shaped and healthy-looking and I was very excited when they first appeared... five months ago! 
   This tree was quite large when I bought it from Fruitscapes a couple of years ago. Paid $250 for it. It seems healthy. The first year it was in the ground I picked all the fruitlets off of it so it would develop good roots.
    When this second crop appeared, I picked off everything except a handful of fruit, not wanting to overtax the tree.
     This tree gets full sun all day and plenty of rain. The fruit have more or less reached the size of a tennis ball and have remained rock-hard for months now. None of them are misshapen in any way.
    Is it normal for atemoyas to take such a long time to reach full size and ripen?

I'm planning to take a chainsaw to several bottom branches of my large mulberry tree so I can mow under it more easily. I usually prune this tree while it is dormant in winter to avoid all that milky, sticky white sap that gets all over everything if a limb is cut in summertime.
     However, I don't know if I'm patient enough to wait till winter. We've still got a long summer ahead of us here in Southwest Florida with many more lawn mowings yet to go.
     Will it hurt the tree to severely prune it now?
     

Over the years I've noticed that Sri Lankan Weevils are easily shaken out of my lychee trees. Hurricane Irma passed right through here and my lychee trees survived just fine. I sorta wonder if the weevils did. Those trees, and everything else was really whipping around!  Do you think the weevils were blown away?