The Tropical Fruit Forum

Looking for some Sestronka scions. Let me know if you have them or some one who does.

I saw this video. I never seen a mango tree trimmed like this before. It is super low to the ground. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m37TWMhAU_8

I have been looking for this for a while. I heard Excalibut used to have it but they have been super unreliable on the phone and rude in the past so I don't want to spend my money with them. Anyone able to help me track one down?

As you may know from my past posts, I will periodically travel to nurseries and review my purchases. I also order quite a bit online. My last purchases were from Bob Wells at Sorelle Farms in Texas, Logees, and Peaceful Heritage.

Logees
If you are familiar with Logees, you know they sell what they say and their plants are generally healthy but they charge an arm and leg for shipping and they sell LITTLE plants. Logees strength is the variety of plants they sell. That said, they clearly state the size of the plants they sell. At one time Logees was the only place I knew of that had a variety mail order tropical fruit trees. Logee's does ship fast and Logees has a great website. Unless it's a plant that's available no where else  I would say Logees should never be the first choice simply because their plants are so small.

Bob Wells at Sorelle Farms in Texas
To be honest I have never had a bad purchase from Bob Wells. Whether in store or not their product is always good. If they say they are shipping a 5 gal size tree, that's what you are getting. I like that what they ship is not bare rooted and the root systems are well developed. All trees Blenheim Apricot, Reliance Peach, and Sweet Treat Pluerry.They all calipered more than an inch all of them 4 footers.  Bob Wells ships everything to most states except citrus. The website is great and easy to navigate.

Peaceful Heritage
Peaceful Heritage is a newer vendor to me.   You can tell they are small operation and not very well developed in terms of their web operation.  According to their website they sell a wide variety of fruits and vegetables some of which you will not commonly on other websites. If you look at some of their YouTube videos you can see that they promote their operation in a way that makes you think that they are knowledgeable about what they sell. I actually found out about them searching for pawpaw videos. A poster on another website said they were a source for Horn's White Pawpaw and I decided to see what they had to offer. They sell the standard pawpaw cultivars you see on on there websites: the KSU's, the Petersens' and the old cultivars like Pennsylvania Golden. They also sell some of their own cultivars with names like Sri Vishnu and some of Lehman's cultivars.

My experience is that they are a little sketchy. This year I was late on my purchases and I decided to give them a try since they had some cultivars of pawpaw that I could not find anywhere else. I went to their website and they were sold out. They were selling a $50 VIP list that was supposed to allow you to buy trees when they were ready. Once it came out  I ordered the trees that I wanted and was promptly informed that they only had what they called "supreme" sizes left. For $150 a tree I was expecting something special. This is what I got after a grand total of $400( two trees $40 for shipping. No the VIP did not apply to the purchase).

The Package with two trees.

This is high graft done with what looks like graft wax.

Both trees out of the box

Youcan see the length of the tree.

You can see this is quite a small diameter.

These are not $150 trees. No way in the world the word supreme applies to these trees. It's like he's grafting high to make it look like it's an older tree.  A one year old graft on a 3 year old seedling is not a 4 yr old tree. I would not recommend Peaceful Heritage for pawpaw purchases. Their confusing sizing and their VIP sale tactic put them in the same category for me as some of the other internet operations that have not the best reputation. I am going to have to mark them off my list like I did Seamus O'Leary.

I have some grafts that I wanted try to protect with foil. They are now pushing. When should I remove the foil?

A few months to a year ago someone posted some YouTube links and they showed mango grafting in South East Asia. Basically they were using unripe bananas as a grafting adjutant. I watched some where they would just smear the cut ends of the graft union andnI saw some where they used banana past to cover the union. After this the union was wrapped in some sort of grafting film. This took me down the rabbit hole until I found some research about auxins and cytokinins. If I am correct these are used in rooting hormone powders. Has anyone here tried using  these for grafting?

I Killed mine this year in an outdoor zone 7 experiment. I need to get some more trees. Thanks for any help.

Last year i had a lot of success with my fungus susceptible plants by using a system fungicide. Even my blighted quince trees seem to be making a comeback. Btw Karps sweet is not that sweet but it does resist pine rust. My plan is to proactively douse the quinces, apples, pears and the mangos and probably the persimmons too. I had some kinda nasty on my sugar apples but neem knocked it out.

I'm trying to figure out what the discoloration is on the skin of my Vernon Sapote tree purchased at Home Depot in Indio California about 2 years ago. It started as 3 gal and was upsized to a 7 gal. Flowered in Early Spring. It tasted sweet with a sugarcane like flavor. There was no caramel undertone like the one I tasted from the tree at Clausens in Vista. The texture and flavor  is very similar to a pawpaw but with a little graininess like a pear.  The level of sweetness was like a just ripe cavandish banana. Not at all cloying. The skin was much like a pear with no bitterness. One half had a slight citrus flavor more like orange or tangerine than lemon or lime or grapefruit. Zero sourness. There is a slight tannin aftertaste that may be from the pieces of skin I ate. It had two large well developled seeds and two that were not developed. I would say it was 50% pulp.

I was just about to snag some wax apple plants online when I saw the bad reviews for www.chfruittreenursery.com. Kinda disturbing how many members have taken a loss with these people or been dissatisfied. I rolled the dice and decided to buy from Mimosa LA's website but when I clicked on purchase online I was redirected to Vườn cây ăn trái - California Tropical Fruit Trees. I bought it Paypal but not I'm thinking it might be sketchy too. Anybody else bought from Mimosa online and had this experience?

I bought a few of these on a whim. Does anybody have any information on these? Less than a decade or not?

Are there any official varieties? One of mine is like tree and it is sending out buds. The other two are "bushy" and super spiny but no buds. What gives?