The Tropical Fruit Forum

Man I was just telling the guy helping with our foundation how insanely jealous I am of Joe

I'm 5/5 GPF's Cuban No Grit sugar apple seeds. I just used a metal file (like $3 from the hardware store) to scrape the ends a bit, soaked them in water overnight and then stuck them in some soil and placed the pot on my screened porch. It's been about a month and all five seedlings are a few inches tall.

I usually just scrape them on some concrete. Seems less fiddly than a file or sandpaper.

I germinated black walnut easy just moist potting mix. Might be as easy but can't say, good luck! Oscar at fruitlovers might have some insight

Oscar said the shell on Juglans Neotropica is substantially harder than Juglans Nigra

Make some "mosquito bits" tea and water with it, it'll get rid of your fungus gnat issue 100%! Your set up looks great! Itll be cool to see what happens with the grafted mangosteen indoors.

I tried mosquito bits and neem cake and spinosad and they always ended up coming back. Not sure if they came back in from outside since they are ubiquitous here. The only thing that really helped was getting rid of all my mother plants.

Looks like a normal height stake to me   

I got to go to one of my favorite places on the island yesterday after serving some papers in Hilo. Here's some pictures:

Xanthorrhoea sp: This grass tree is one of my favorite plants here. I was finally able to collect some seed off the ground after shaking the stalks. I hope it germinates, the internet said they do pretty easily but are often killed by overwatering. Also if anyone could please help with a specific ID that would be greatly appreciated!


Tabernaemontana Pachysiphon: This one was in bloom for the first time I noticed. I actually hadn't looked at this plant on my many trips here before but I am glad it caught my eye this time! I couldn't get a picture but most of the flowers had small wasps or flies on them. They kind of looked like tiny yellowjackets but a lot less angry. The flowers do smell somewhat of cinnamon.




Gmelina fasciculiflora: My jaw dropped upon seeing the fruit hanging in the tree. The fruit is not edible but I touched some of the juice to my tongue and it is similar in taste to Gmelina Arborea. There is a large Gmelina Arborea tree about 100 yards away from this tree, but the color of the fruits on Gmelina fasciculiflora is stunning. The pulp smells strange but not entirely offputting like wikipedia lead me to believe. It definitely did stain my fingers brown and for hours after it felt similar to having dried superglue all over my fingers, kind of a rough sensation. The smell stuck to my hands for hours so that wasn't very nice. Next time I'll use gloves and maybe a cherry pitter to speed up seed extraction.





A group of several Garcinia Mangostana trees. I have only tasted one immature but somehow ripe fruit we found on the ground since these ones are extremely popular. Last time we came the Garcinia Dulcis tree was exploding with fruit but not this time. My mom wanted me to take a picture of the purple mangosteen trees so she could get a sense for how large they get. Apparently they weren't as large as she thought, but then again they did seem a lot larger to me at first.



The abiu and jaboticaba trees were producing as well. I am still looking for E-4 Abiu if anyone has some for sale. I also got to try better fruit off the wampee I took seed from before and it was amazing, like sugar water with citrus flavor. I did find another wampee that they had misnumbered and the fruit wasn't as good. They didnt have seeds either and you had to suck the flesh out and it was much less juicy compared to the other wampee fruit that just explodes into your mouth. They also have a breadfruit tree called "rare autia" that I don't know anything about so if someone else does I would love to hear about it!

Also I got a couple alupag fruits. I havent had any success growing the two seedlings that sprouted and couldnt find much care instructions online... The taste is indescribable, in spite of the small amount of flesh vs giant seed.

Any idea how to remove the shell?

I use vise grips to get it started then the rest pull off by fingers (hurt fingers though)

The fibers kind of run longways across the seed and you can sort of peel it as you would a banana.

Most of the ones I've decorticated have a little tab kind of thing that makes it easier to get it started.

Quote from: brian on June 15, 2023, 04:01:39 PM

How long does imbe take to fruit from seed?  I have like five seedlings and they aren't exactly vigorous.

personally, any sizeable ones went to our repository so I don't know the growth rate off the top of my head. but i recently sold my last imbe seedling.  well over a year (granted, I'm not the best when it comes to growing out b/c i punish them with full sun outside).  but man this 10" seedling had beautiful root system as almost as long as the seedling itself!

We put three of your imbe in the ground a couple months ago 

There is a product called sea 90 that is basically sea salt.

I've used it at their recommended rates and never had a problem. Haven't experimented too much with it to say much more about it though.

On this guys channel he built a hydroponic system for his DF. In another video he shows his results and the DF look pretty good to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkLtiDZ-ZwY

Result Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAAB4bSiDpg

I'm offended on behalf of Mark Twain

Noni. Smells like yak hork. I don't know why some people grow it.

The leaves are supposed to be pretty nutritious 

Motion activated sprinkler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYGwHzpWZZk


You might also want to share with your neighbor some of the reasons it is important to keep cats indoors. https://humanesocietyofmacomb.org/keep-cats-indoors/

I tell my mom that they eat cats around here, they tried to pass something outlawing the eating of cats and dogs in Hawaii, but she just laughs it off.