The Tropical Fruit Forum

I've started reading just the part about planting in the first link and saw so much wrong advice that I stopped reading.

Does anyone happen to have any Flavor Grenade scion wood stored? A friend is coming over from the US in a couple of weeks, so it would be an ideal opportunity to have him bring me the scion.

I can't sell you any, but I can tell you that I know a guy from Orlando who grows plums and pluots successfully, and most of them are rated as high chill varieties. He grows Flavor King, Flavor Queen, Dapple Dandy, Flavor Supreme (700-800 chill hours) and Emerald Beaut (600-700 chill hours).

So maybe you don't have to stick to low-chill varieties at all.

Email sent.

Thanks for the answers guys. The only reason I would want to do this is to protect the rootstock from cold, because it might turn our to be more sensitive than the scion. So it really isn't important for me that the scion also roots. I'm only concerned about the trunk rotting after being planted below soil level. I assume this didn't happen to you? As long as the tree doesn't suffer, I really don't need the scion part to root.

The link "Show new replies to your posts" in the top left region of every page is helpful.

I'm not sure how that's related to the topic.

I can confirm that the problem is back. I received more than one PM here, without any email notifications.

It is very far from frost-tender, so you're in the right spot.

How rare is self-fertility in pawpaws? I've got two seedlings of either Sunflower or Prima 1216 (the seller couldn't tell me which was which) and one of them flowered this spring for the first time (at 6 years old, I believe). I did some hand-pollination on itself, as the other tree didn't flower and voila, I had 12 fruits this year. There isn't a single pawpaw tree anywhere near, so I'm totally positive that it's self-fertile. So have I hit jackpot, or is this more common than I think?

Judging buy the leaves and the fact that the fruit isn't lobed, I'd say you've got a Eugenia Pitanga (Pitanga-peba, Creeping Pitanga) rather than Eugenia Uniflora which would be your regular Pitanga. Does this one have any of that diesel flavor that Pitangas are notorious for?

Did you verify?

Avocado flowers first open as female then close and open up again as male. This is why what your friend said is a bit strange because I would think that it isn't possible for an avocado flower to just skip the female stage. When it comes to when exactly these flowers open and close, there are 2 types - A and B. With the A types, the flowers open up as female in the morning, then close in the afternoon and then open up again as males in the afternoon of the next day. The B type flowers open up as female in the afternoon, then close down and open up as male the following morning. This means that in their natural habitat, you will have an overlap between type A and type B trees, where one type will have male flowers and the other female which essentially allows for cross pollination.

According to a source I found, this dynamic is a bit disrupted outside of the native range and it can happen that there's overlap of male and female flowers on the same tree, essentially making it self-pollinating, but apparently this can only be the case with type A while type B can never be self-pollinating. Now I haven't confirmed this so please take it with a grain of salt.

I can tell you that I found a Mexican avocado tree in my hometown of Bar, Montenegro that looks like it's at least 10 years old and that blooms every year heavily but never sets fruit. When I went to check the flowers out one morning, they appeared to be male which would indicate it's a type B. Close to it there's another, much younger tree (I don't know if it's Mexican because its leaves didn't smell like licorice) which actually had two fruits last year, but I haven't confirmed its type.

So maybe your friend simply has a type B and that's why he's not getting any fruit.

So from now on, we just won't be able to send PMs, and that's it?