The Tropical Fruit Forum

can anyone source some for me and ship a box to NY? I would be happy to pay above market price.

I have a client from Trinidad who was virtually in tears reminiscing about Julie mangoes.
If anyone is willing to ship a few to NY for me to pass on to her, I'd pay them very nicely.

Got to eat quite a few mangoes today in the South Florida area. In general, the standard was a little lower than last year, likely to do with massive amount of rain that has come down in the last month. There were a few real crackers though. Providence- a chance seedling from the Walter Zill orchard. Sweet Tart- another Zill mango was excellent. SOM  a Malika seedling from Harry was really good, as was a seedling mango Clint brought. Edgar was really good too. Some of the notable less flavorful than usual mangoes were pickering, duncan and malika.
great 10 hour trip and I came back with a suitcase full of mangoes including keit, orange sherbert, carrie, sinc, doloras, hatcher, sweet tarm, and SOM.

Floridian Mauritius lychees in the house. Aiiiiiiight!
Its funny, once lychee season ends, I miss it for a few weeks but then dont really think about lychees again till around march at which time low level pangs start to kick in. Once May hits, I go beserk and start harrasing the asian distributors on a daily basis. Apparently the fruit hit NYC yesterday afternoon. which is exactly five days earlier than last year, though the first fruit to hit last year were Mexican Brewsters. The Florida lychees did not hit NYC last year till around mid June.

so ive only eaten about 20 lychees so far- they are slightly under ripe but no problem for me as i like acidic lychees. im sure they will sweeten up a little as the season progress at which time they will be perfection itself.  right now the prices are sky high- $7 a pound which is higher than I have ever seen for lychees in NYC, but by peak season they are usual down to around $4 a pound. as you cans ee there are wax jambu, star fruit, longans (and jakfruit out the picture). but when lychees r in town, nothing else gets a look in. I shlepped a 20 pound box home from manhattan to brooklyn on the subway. thats some serious lychee dedication.

these first few pics are of "orangered" apricot. this was grafted onto a non-productive peach tree and it took off. this graft is only 3 years old and should produce about 30 apricots this year.









here is shot of the tree. the pink blossoms to the left are a peach graft added to the tree a couple of years ago. if you look carefully bang in the center of the picture, you can see a couple of white blooms which are plum. he rest of teh greenery is apricot. none of the original peach tree was left except for the trunk.



this a cox orange pippin apple tree- unfortunately it has bloomed very lightly this year- although i get about 15-20 fruit every year from the tree, it has never thrived. not sure why- though i think it gets the least sunlight of all my trees which may explain it. if you look carefully to the right of the pic, you can see a green ribbon which denotes a graft and you can see the graft is blooming.



this is a mystery lychee airlayer made by harry. unfortunately it got badly sunburnt when i took it out of the garage. it has produced a few fruit which can be seen in the next pic.





here are quite a few pics of my golden russet multi-graft apple tree because the blossoms are so breath taking.













and here is a pic looking back at the tree from the back of the yard.



this is a hardy kiwi growing uo a pergola followed by a bunch of blooms just about to open. the foliage is also stunning and the leave sturn shades of pink and white. you can just see the color change starting to happen in the next pic.





one of my mutli graft cherry trees starting to form little cherries





delicious pink gooseberry patch





this was a nectarine tree but i removed one of the 2 main trunks and added a peach graft. so now the right trunk is nectarine and the left trunk is peach. this is another graft that took off like a rocket. the graft is about 3-4 years old - i will likely get about 50 peaches from the graft this year.



petite negron fig showing little figlets forming for the first of the 2 crops. the major crop is formed in the summer.





looking nice a nice muscat grape crop this year. excellent fragrant sweet grape but i have a hard time keeping the bees out when the grapes ripen and once the bees get in, it causes a tremendous amount of rot to set in. i lose about 70% of the crop to the bees/rot.



a grape bloom about to open



this is a nectacrest nectarine that I added a plum too. thats why you can see pink and white blossoms on the same tree.

sorry for going off- topic but its rare that I get to show off an in-ground tree.
this is a golden russet apple tree with about 15 other grafts on it. the tree is in full bloom (probably most blooms ever) and many of the grafts have bloomed profusely for the first time so I should get a decent variety from this tree. its incredible to see the various different shades of pink and red, the different apples varieties bloom in.

unfortunately, they were not ripe so i couldnt sample. havent found any other wild fruit growing. at breakfast in the hotel, they serve some very nice small yellow guava every day, as well as some awful papaya that taste of smoked feet. some of the days they have decent atulfo mango and other days they have had awful tommys.

these were very large and appear to be of excellent quality but they are about 1-2 weeks away from being ripe. remind of the cherimoyas i bought from cherimoya.com. will post pics when they become ripe enough to open. my china town vendor has gotten this season off to an incredible start. longan, durian, jakfruit, mangosteen, cherimoya, and its only early april!

My local Asian grocery store has been selling Jakfruit in March. They don't speak English so I can't ask them where the fruit comes from? They also sell durian which I assume are brought in frozen as I believe unfrozen durian are not allowed in to the US? (I'm not brave enough to try the durian, and besides you have to buy them whole which would be an expensive taste test)
In any event, I know Jay has also found Jakfruit in Ohio in March and Ive seen other posters in CA mention having bought jakfruit in March.  Where are these fruit coming from. I know that in May/June Jakfruit is sold all over china town here that is brought in from Jamaica and Mexico but I would guess that March is too early for these fruit to be ripe  from Mex/Jam. Anyone know where the March jakfruit  are being imported from?
The fruit are not great but pretty good. I have purchased 4 large chunks, once a week during March, and all 4 occasions, the fruit was crunchy, appeared to be slightly under ripe, zero latex, and very small seeds.
I am not sure if the zero latex/small seeds was a function of the fruit being under ripe or if that is just how this variety of jakfruit is.

after spending the last 9 months working 14 hour days getting  my new law firm off the ground, my yearly pangs for all things fruit related have finally gotten the better of me. I am actually in court right now waiting to be seen by the judge and figured this would be an amazing way to kill time, catching up on the forum. I'm dismayed to see in my nine month absence, I've been knocked off all the forum top-10 lists. oh  well. what did I miss? has anyone come up with a rose apple or green sapote that are remotely flavorful in the interim?

I have purchased canistel on several occasions during the depths of the winter where its hearty rich sweetness was much appreciated by me- but i made the dumb mistake of buying 4 fruit from Robert is Here during mango season. right, like im going to even look at canistel when I have a dazzeling array of mangoes to eat every night.

I have read for several years how some people love Julie and some hate it due to its strong flavor. I have long wanted to try a Julie to see what all the fuss is about. I finally got my hands on 3 Julies. Thanks Kings Harry.
All 3 were virtually black on the outside (athracnose?) and looked like a potato that been left too long in the drawer.
Anyway, when I got back to NY, i ate two of them. I was blown away. Incredible flavor. And for me what really made the mango stand out was that its flesh was unusually dense (in a good way).
I dont understand how there is anyone that does not think this is a knockout mango.
Comments?

12pm is probably a good time as it gives us 2.5hours to walk around after the park opens and is an hour before the first lectures start.
anyone have a good place for us to meet.
who will be there on saturday at 12?