The Tropical Fruit Forum

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so on changyn.shop, it said all their plants are hermaphrodite grafted?  what does this mean?  I thought all the varieties on there are female.

On one of my friends test plots, we planted a row of Dongkui that I grafted with no males around and we got exactly 1 fruit last year. DongKui and perhaps some of the other varieties can produce fruit without a stand alone male/hermaphrodite but your yields may be significantly smaller and/or non existent until the tree gets larger. If you want a good crop, I highly recommend getting a male.

My White Honey which fruited last year and is blooming again this year has no visible male blooms last year. I will keep a close eye on it this year to see if male blooms show up.

Simon, thank for the update.  They look so healthy.

I bought a few myrica pensylvanica for rootstock. Almost a year now, and they still pencil size and about a foot tall.  Base on what you have right now, what is your ranking on the rootstocks?

Hey Seng, that’s a loaded question and the preferred rootstock greatly depends on if you’re growing for home orchards or commercial production. I have not tested Pennsylvanica but have a few friends that have used that rootstock. I currently like to use Cerifera for home orchards but Pennsylvanica may be easier to keep to a manageable size.

Your trees are looking great Luisport!

So far this year, my Rainbow male and Big Black Carbon are the earliest to open their blooms.
Rainbow male releasing pollen


Big Black Carbon open female blooms, started upending about three weeks ago




The Yangmei jungle



Most of my Yangmei trees are in pots and many are 10 feet tall after pruning off the dominant branches earlier in the year. If they were in ground, they would definitely be much larger.

After several years of growing Yangmei trees, I have learned a lot but I have a lot more learning to do.

I started off like most everyone on this forum and purchased a bunch of bare root trees from China through the group buys on this forum but most of the trees ended up dying, some survived but were extremely sickly and only a few thrived. Many people were extremely upset because of the high rate of Root Knot Nematodes that infested the roots of many of the imported trees and introducing RKN to your garden is one of the worst things you can do as a gardener.

I do appreciate the overseas nurseries that supplied us with all these great varieties because even though many of the shipments had RKN, I was still able to use the scions without having to worry about contaminating my soil with RKN.

If you do have an imported tree that is potentially carrying RKN, you should definitely quarantine your tree and consider all soil that contacted the roots of those trees as contaminated. You can look up the horrible damage that RKN can do to garden fruit trees and veggies.

Yangmei trees grafted onto the appropriate rootstocks that are not infested with RKN grow like weeds and bloom and fruit very well. They are one of the easiest trees to care for but they do require a lot of pruning to keep them manageable. On the appropriate rootstocks, they do quite well without having to worry too much about the pH of the soil. You just treat them like any other Citrus, Lychee or typical fruit trees and they will thrive.

I hope everyone’s trees are doing well, please post updates here if you get a chance. Happy Holidays everyone!

Simon

You should already start spraying. My trees are pushing blooms already. You can start with Copper or Potassium Bicarbonate. The more active fungus you get rid of now, the less spores they will produce.

Here’s what the flesh looks like on the Sweet Tart Seedling #2


Simon

I wouldn't graft until the spring, the weather needs to be a lot warmer at night, best at 60 degrees or higher. Also they need more light to grow.

I've never got my PPK to fruit here in southern San Diego. I would go for the Sweet tart. and Pickering.

I agree with Mark regarding waiting to graft. I also don’t get fruit on my PPK unless I spray.

When multigraft it trees, be careful with your selection of varieties. Putting a vigorous variety like Sweet Tart with a much less vigorous variety like Ice Cream or Julie is not a good idea. You could make it work but the more vigorous varieties can overtake the less vigorous varieties after several years and the shaded varieties can die off.

Sweet tart is an excellent choice.

Hey Brad, we planted so many mono and Polyembryonic seedling varieties at your place so that is likely a zygotic seedling. It could be a zygotic seedling from Valencia Pride.

Simon,

That ST#2 looks good.
ST is a great variety already. Now a Jumbo Sweet Tart? Yes, please.
If that seedling produces bigger fruits consistently, Jumbo Sweet Tart may be apt name.

Fruitfool

Agreed that would be a fitting name. I’ll continue tracking the size of the fruit to see if they are consistently large. I do get real Sweet Tart that approach this size but never on one panicle.

gozp, sounds like you’ve got a keeper!

Damn Brad, that’s one heck of a harvest!

FruitFool, I picked the Carina too early and also cut it too soon so unfortunately it was completely under ripe and almost white inside. I still have one fruit hanging on the tree so if animals don’t get to it first, I’ll report back with a description of the taste.

I did properly pick and ripen my Sweet Tart seedling#2 and these fruit are fantastic. This seedling seems to produce very large fruit that is shaped like Sweet Tart and also tastes just like Sweet Tart. I got two fruit from a panicle I grafted onto a multigraft tree and one fruit was 1 lbs 5 Oz and the other fruit was 1 lbs 6 Oz. The Brix was 27.5% and the fruit had orange colored flesh.
Here are some pictures of the Sweet Tart #2 seedling fruit









Simon

Thank you for the fogger ideas. I spoke to Petra tools last week and they discouraged me from using sulfur in any of their foggers. They said they get calls all of the time from people run into trouble using sulfur. Maybe the person who I talked to was being over cautious.

I had my eyes on this battery operated one because it's portable:

https://www.petratools.com/product/petratools-battery-backpack-fogger-2-6-gallon.

Maybe the corded 4 gal one that you use is more forgiving with sulfur. unfortunately, Most of my trees are over 100 ft away.

I saw the video from the manufacturer and the 2.6 gallon battery operated foggers looks underpowered for medium to large trees.

If you have a medium to large orchard, you may want to consider the gas powered foggers.

Animals are starting to eat my mangos so I decided to harvest this Orange Sherbet seedling (named Carina) as soon as it went from dark green to light green. I harvested it yesterday and I’ll report back once it has ripened. This Orange Sherbet seedling was selected from approximately 30 Orange Sherbet seedlings by crushing the leaves and selecting for the sap with the strongest citrus smell. This is the first year this variety has fruited and it held only two fruit.

I harvested the smaller of the two fruit and the fruit was 6.5 inches long and weighed just over 14 Oz. The larger fruit appears to be over 1 lbs. here’s a picture of the unripe fruit.





Simon