The Tropical Fruit Forum

Way to go, very inspiring. 

A lot of my avocados like Sharwil have flower buds and the citrus is loaded.  How do you like the RootBuilder?  Is it bottomless?

Arctic cold front kicks us from the 70's down to 19F Sunday!

Stay warm....

Hey Mark, this was from earlier in the year or did it happen again?

Feb. 2021

Merry Christmas from Texas.

Wow!

impressive plant there mark, how was the fruit?

brix?

Fruit was delicious.  Didn't check the brix.

Mark,
I'm glad your trees made it through that ordeal! Must have been pretty scary.
I switched over to the rootmaker pots because of you and I have been impressed with the results!

Thanks, it was very scary, trapped for 6 days. No cell, no internet....no communication.   My wife and I ran out of stories to tell each other covered up.   I also slipped on ice, splitting my head open resulting in a concussion, ending up more goofy than I already am for weeks.  Have a friend few miles from me.  He had so many trees down you couldn't see his house from the road.  Had 2" of solid ice in front of the greenhouse door, had to bust it up with a pick ax.  Feel for those folks who lost it during the tornado outbreak. 

Hard to beat the rootmaker system.  One lady living in SoCal treats her conventional pots with MicroKote.   She has a lot of very good looking avocados and citrus trees that are loaded, even Hass.

Mark, I have a question for you on bud grafting. I have never used it for any of my fruit trees and not on my citrus. Do you know which grafting method would result in the grafted branch to grow faster/larger? To me it seems the bud grafts would take longer for the new bud/branch to grow out so in 2 yrs after you graft, the cleft/veneer grafted branch would be larger (and have fruits earlier). My goal in grafting most of my fruit trees is to have fruits on the new variety to eat or taste so I can determine if I want to to keep or not. If I can't get much scion wood of a particular variety then I can see doing the bud grafts (citrus, figs, persimmons, white sapote).

Have found that the type of graft makes no difference.  There's way too many other factors at play that drive vigor.

I have several large diameter avocado rootstock, some as big as my thumb and 4-5 feet tall. What is the best grafting method for this size of rootstock? I have seen veneer grafts recommended, but I am open to suggestions.

Thanks in advance!

Veneer or stub, wait for shoots to push and when they get to the girth size you want, cleft graft.  You could also try t-bud.  Just make sure the bark is slipping.  I use a Schick single injector blade on all of my cuts.  Slice your T stopping at the cambium and with your thumbnail flick the top corner open.  If it opens cleanly, you're good to go.   Here's citrus t-bud.









Wrap with Buddy Tape.

doubtful its cold hardy it seems to be mostly guatemalan. 

i have only mexican avocados in season now Mark and they suck.  Mex grande and Stewart.  Not even wirth eating, Im going to top work both trees and ardith and holiday maybe a few others.  this is the consolidate and replace phase here.  Been removing and top working tons of plants that aren't worthwhile this year.

If you want some good avocados Ill have some for sale in April.

I bet your Mex avocados can beat up our grocer sourced avocados. 

Will hit you up in April, thanks.

Change gears - the scions I got from you that I top worked to 2 freeze damaged trees are doing really good - Jan Boyce and Nabal.  Now, the weird thing - the stump that was top worked was an Ardith and the branches are very vigorous, now about 6' tall with good branching.  Left one Ardith branch that pushed from the stump which is growing about as tall as the JB and Nabal.

Here's the weird thing - JB and Nabal grafts were done on a Bacon seedling stump too. They went dormant about a month ago.  Don't look near as big and vigorous as the ones on Ardith.

Both stumps are rather "old", at least 4 years and a good 2" or so in girth.

yes it has black skin when ripe.  its not really like hass though.  I just have 1 small tree going of this type, its a long way off from really having a good idea how it will do here.  It came from a guy in northern CA.  He may be a member here, not sure.

Yep, beautiful fruit, great project.   Being from N. Cali is it cold hardy?

I just wish there was a way to buy Cali avocados mail order.  Used to buy from Morro Creek Ranch Avocados many years ago but got a shipment of some really nasty fruit one year and quit. 

The avocados we get here in Texas suck.  Most are bland or don't ripen properly, meat turns rancid upon a few days in the crisper, etc.

Have a nice holiday season........

Nice rig!  Got the lights thingie going on too.

Quote from: Mark in Texas on September 17, 2021, 04:44:10 PM

I gave up the high P teat long ago.  Most of my foods are low P like a Peters 25-5-15.  Also high P foods contribute to long internodes, legginess.  Most blame it on too much N.  Not so.

Thanks Mark, but do you think a low P will work for me with that kind of pH and 90% calcium. I'm still currently at the stage of getting seedlings established.

High P foods can induce micros deficiencies.  Seedlings need plenty of N, not P.

Hey Guys,

Was hoping if anyone can help me out, have a few oro negro’s on the tree and not sure when to pick them, do they turn black on the tree before you pick them?

Thanks, here are some pics below,

Joe

Black

I have to 10ft up you on that 50ft... lol... A row of oaks near my trees have roots 20 yards from their drip line. It is very easy to tell in the summer as the oaks take every bid of water and kill all the grass above them from the trunk to drip line and then 20 yards further... I do my best to deter them their roots... lol.

I hear ya.  At least you folks get plenty of rain especially during hurricane season.  We haven't had a good rain in over a month.  BUT, we never had a summer either with highs in the mid to upper 80's until recently.  Normal highs are around 100F.