The Tropical Fruit Forum

Has someone used the crushed seeds of cherimoya to make an insecticide? Can you share the recipe on how you did it?
Does it have any worthwhile effect and on what pests is it most effective against?
My cherimoya started fruiting and i have a load of seeds that i dont know what to do with, i would like to try to make this insecticide but not without first consulting the tropical fruit gang haha 

Found this interesting branch the other day, it is a top branch where 2 oposite buds have sprouted with variegation, both the leaves and the stem have the variegation. It is only on this one branch, none of this on the rest of the plant.
There is a flower bud which also seems to be white.
I will monitor the new growth of this branch and if it keeps the variegation will try to air layer it.
Just noticed on the pic that the underside of the leaves are also white, compared to the regular one in the photos.

I have 2 monteras ,inground in my greenhouse. They are wanting to grow up wright but due to space limitations i would rather train them to grow along the ground. Do they fruit better when grown vertically, towards where theres more light, or do they fruit as well when creeping along the soil?
I would ultimately want to have them as creepers, but if most of you suggest that they fruit better when vertical in the sun, i will have to make some space and trim my other plants so i can fit the monsteras vertically.
Please share your experiences and observation on the species, thanks!

As i dont really have space for much inground trees, but i do have one nectarine that has the best nectarines that ive ate, i want to propagate it and grow a few plants as potted specimens. Didnt find much info regarding potted culture of peach so i post here as i value the first hand experience much more anyways. I already have 2 grafted plants that i did last spring, grafted onto wild plum rootstock. Dont really know if this graft combination will be ok in subsequent years.
I plan on having them in bigger and bigger pots as they grow, finally planting them into gigantic 100+ liter pots, which will stay outside trough winter.
Please share your experience, thank you !

I did this so fast, usually i plan for such things for like at leas a month, pondering about..... this time i just had the idea in the evening and next day i was already doing it.
This trellis will be perfect for the summer growth of my passion fruit plants, i have 1 purple edulis and 1 decaisneana in the greenhouse, they are growing vertically on the wall of the greenhouse, fixed to a aluminium fence. This growing possition is not optimal in any way, but i am forsed to grow them like this due to space limmitations. They cast alot of shade on the other plants that way.
Anyway, with this new setup i will guide the new growth trough a hole at the top of the greenhouse, i will remove a piece of the pollicarbonate in spring/may and let them roam outside.
The purple edulis i'm sure will really apreciate the new space, ive grown the purples outside in pots and in ground trought summer with no problems, the decaisneana may not grow as good there, since i think it likes a little more shade and a lot more humidity . In fall i will have a problem thought ,i will have to prune and take the rest of the plant inside the greenhouse, i just hope that whatever fruit sets it ripens before that point, as messing with such long and tender vines, carying fruit will be a nevre braking job.
Here are the plants:





This is the trellis :










The pics are not too clear, but thats the best i could do ..

So ive been enjoying theese several fruit that this plant in particular had, i am still experimenting with the harvest time, but this fruit in particular i think  is at an optimal ripeness.
Weights 250 grams, guite a big one, all of them were as big or bigger, around 8 fruits this year on the plant.
Smells very floral and sweet, almost like a perfume on the outside. When cut open the smell is somewhat different, cant really describe it.
The flavour is very good, not very sweet but alot of complexity to it, tastes like a fruit salad, i'm terrible at this lol, sorry! The inside part has the texture of soft butter, its sweeter, compared to the rind, which has the benefit of being juicier and more flavourfull. Overall, i really like this particular seedlings's fruit, i just hope for more sweetness in future's crops.

Hi, my avocado in the greenhouse is having some of its leavs drying in 2 different ways.




Some of the leaves are getting brown from the base/ center of the leaves out.











Others are having necrotic spots spread on the leaves, they appear at random places on the leaf, thought usually from the edje towards the center. First theres a green dead spot, then becomes brown and turns to a crisp, after that the spot just gets bigger via the principle.


And then i also have those leaves that just turn a light yellow/green colour and fall off.




Could it be from too much heat? I have radiators working in there BUT the damage started before they were put into use. Soil is slightly moist to moist. I  recently sprayed with fungicide and pesticide, but that was also after tha occurrence of the problem.
Last year i didnt had such a problem on it, rhought the greenhouse stayed alot cooler.

Forgot to add the overall pic off the tree, doesnt look so bad...

I aquired a few quails last month, i am keeping them in my greenhouse. I havent had sprayed the plants in there for like 2-3 months, so i sprayed two consecutive days with fungicide and a pesticide becouse i found some aphids on the plants, there are also some sighns of mites.
The birds i relocated into a cardboard box before the spray, everything is dry inside the gh now, i plan on releasing them back in this evening which will mean that the gh had solid  days after the final spray ,to dry out.
The soil of course got moist from the chemicals and that is what worries me thw most.
Does anyone else that keeps animals/birds in their greenhouses spray their plants from time to time? How do you proceed ,in order to not poison the livestock?
I find that i have to spray at least periodically, in order to not have a pest infestation, which if happens is a nightmare to erradicate, especially mites.
Will i be ok with releasing them back today, or should i wait a bit longer ? I should say that the greenhouse does still have a bit of a smell from the chemicals....

Hi ! Thought to do an update on the tropicals ...we are having a mild winter so far.
The wood stove which was the heating system from last winter is a hystory, the new radiator based heating system is working fine for now, keeping things warmish at 15 to 20 C at night.
Plants look way better atm ,compared to the same time last year.


Heres a view of the gh along with the last snow we had.


Regular grafted pomello




Red pomello, starting to wake up


A general view




Passiflora decaisneana













Regular guava plants






Red catley and lemon guavas, those are continuesly growing and flowering, the visible fruits will be the second wave, also alot of new flower buds forming...






Mango seedling, having some kind of a fungal desease i quess, just sprayed today...






Mandarin and lemon




A random potted tamarind and an orange gasmine
 



Cavendish banana and a very sad lemon grass




Some pineapples ,carissa and aloe vera






Surinam cherry, just discovered today that i have the first flower buds on it.






Coffee arabica along with the quails that i keep in the greenhouse




Made a hiding spot for the quails, as other people said here in the forum, they dont really like hiding in such structures, mine also didnt use it so i removed it.






Having some problems with my avocado, some of the leaves are drying up as shown, also having leaves yellowing and dropping



Cinnamon










Cherimoya plants, one of them is carying alot of fruit, the other has only 2 that left. Should have thinned the proliffic one...




Yellow megalanthus dragon fruit, coffee and a pineapple next to it


Feijoa jemini


Monstera deliciosa




My unknown dragon fruits


Purple edulis passion fruit

Thanks for stopping by !

I have this cross between a plum and an apricot, its a grafted tree from a nursery. Last year it started to form theese bumps on the trunk and along the main scaffold branches. I cut one of them ,there wasnt a worm or other insect in there. They are also not full of resin, ive seen resin pockets just under the bark on most stone fruit species, those are definitely not that
When cut they are firm and look like they're not just a bark formation, but rather have a hardwood core.
It's interesting that the rootstock part doesnt have any of this, they are forming at the graft line and above.
Anyone know what this might be ? Thanks !

Well ,from one problem to another....i was wondering why my apricot trunk is all cracked and full of deep crevices ,well a week ago hapenned to look a bit closer and found the remaing/discarded shredded wood  piles all over the trunk of the tree. I assume that i have bark borers in there ,probably the same ones that i found on my cherries.
I do have them in way smaller amount than in the apricot and i actually extracted almost all of the ones that i found on the cherries, they are like little caterpillars that bore into the cambium, just below the bark. They are actively eating the live  bark/cambium layer.
What can i use to control such pests, i could spend several days extracting the ones from the apricot manually but i will damage all of the living bark thats left, its that bad!
How do i deal with those ?
Thanks alot !

Hello, one fellow fruit geek is interested in which ones are the latest blooming loguat varieties. The goal is to grow the variety/ ies here in BG, so a cooler climate asks for a plant that will flower at the end of winter and begginning of spring, which is end of march trought april. If theres one that blooms even later, like may, that would be great.
He first wants to know the names of the varieties in question and will do his research on them, later he said he would be looking for plants or cuttings for grafting, once he's sure about the varieties.
Thanks for helping out !

So, prepare for this one! I found a bunch of very old bags with bones in the forrest. The nylon bags they were dumped into have pretty much degraded or are degrading so this should have happened at least 4-5 years ago.
The bones themselves also look old, they are all the same and look like the bones u get in chicken legs, i can quess they are from chickens.
I wonder if i could or should take the bones and hammer them and use them as a bone meal fertilizer. Are there any risks with deseases with old bones? Again ,they are all the same tipe, no spines and other nasties, they just look like someone just cooked a bunch of chicken limbs and discarded the remains.
Is this a good opportunity ?