The Tropical Fruit Forum

Kaz has offered to send us a loquat tasting selection which is awesome of him. I'll try to grab some from what I consider the best loquat in town, but I am not sure if they'll be overripe by now. This cool weather is frustrating because it's slowing down ripening of a lot of stuff. My white mulberry is absolutely loaded with fruit but it's not quite as good as it can be. The pakistani has mottled green and purple half ripe due to this as well.

Still think we'll get a good feed. Don't forget to bring dough and toppings! Got tons of sauce though.

Instead, I doubled up on Dr. Earth Bud and bloom since it contains a bit of nitrogen.

I kind of go wacko with fertilizer for DF as they're pretty much impossible to burn. Last year there was so much slow release in some pots you couldn't see soil anymore. The chicken manure seems to do really positive things overall so I start the season with that and then move onto synthetics. Once it's warm, I'll switch to KoolBloom which is 2-45-28 and I'll use about 1tbsp per gallon and water that in from watering cans. There's not much point in throwing P at them till it's consistently hot, but they seem to grow vegetatively nicely when cooler and have lots of food.

essentially killing about 40% of the vines

Was this due to our cold and rainy winter? Or you just hacked them back for space / weight concerns?

I have a Cosmic Charlie that must be nearing 1000lb on the trellis and I know it's going to break it one day.

I had some lychee last weekend in Redlands and they were amazing, but all the trees had signs of mites. It's very sad to hear the state will slowly slip out of lychee productivity and all your hard work will get chainsawed up.

Nice idea, been wanting to do the same for awhile. At the moment I just have 25 traps around the seedling area and catch mice every few days.

I PM'd, please let me know if you got my message Eric

For me, Sharwil was a stand out and the best avo I've had. It wasn't just a single fruit, they were both that good. I'll definitely need some scion from you next year of that Brad, my Brokaw Hass is actually kicking ass even though it got snowed on pretty bad. Is Sir Prize really that bad? If so, I could top work that tree too. I am super surprised with how well avos are doing at my house.

What’s the going rate in Florida ?

Serendib has them for $7.50/lb

Another reminder for June 3rd meet-up. Looks like it'll be mostly mulberries here, but I'll swoop up a bunch of stuff at the Farmer's market to make sure we got some options.

@Epiphyte

I thnk the issue is not the cold, as in the tree's ability to survive but to get it to fruit well.
So not sure if thats achievable with grafting

Not even sure there are varieties that bloom in spring, allegedly there are but it smells fishy if I really look into it, almost as if it was anecdotal lol

It doesn't matter what you graft it to, the scion and beyond will remain cold sensitive and die back to the graft union. It's cool to see loquat on such weird stuff though. I ponder the long term survivability. Often you can get a push just from the scion itself.

There are definitely *later* blooming varieties, but the difference is weeks not months. This can still put you in the frost danger zone. I mean hell, I can get frost in late April in my 9b climate. A standard loquat flowers and starts to set fruit around December here, a late one may start flowering in January or early Feb.

After I moved them close to each other.  I am getting some fruits now.  Thanks K-Rimes...

Wonderful news!!!! My flowers are just opening up now, I am looking forward to the season!

There are later flowering varieties already, like kanko and a few others. Being here in 9b, it's kinda hit or miss if we get fruit. If there is a late frost ciao fruit sets and flowers! Even if you have a late variety, you're still at risk for this.

How cold did you get?

It wasn't as stabbingly cold as previous years, but we had weeks on weeks on weeks of weather in the low 30s with rain every time it was cold. The plant was already declining from being outdoors down to 26f (briefly). It was just a test honestly to see if they could survive uncovered in 9b. The answer is a big NOPE!

Are they actually honey bees? Or yellow jackets or wasps?

Yellow jackets / wasps usually have underground or paper nests and don't swarm like honeybees.

This sounds like a classic honeybee swarm which is how they reproduce. When a hive outgrows its space it creates queen cups which the queen lays eggs in and the workers tend to them as the current queen thins up and eventually flys off with 30-70% of the hive. They land somewhere (like this bbq) and start setting up a new hive. The old hive will hatch the new queens and they will battle to the death with the winner going off to mate with drones. She then returns to the old hive (as a new queen) and the process starts all over again.

A beekeeper will scoop up this swarm in the bbq and dump it into a hive and voila, new colony, more honey!