The Tropical Fruit Forum

Pluots do really well in my yard, which is mostly hot and dry zone 10A, and I like it better than my Burgundy plum, Emerald drop plum, and Santa Rosa Plum.
Pluots are as juicy as plums, but with more complex flavor, and their texture stays nice and crunchy even when they overripe, unlike plums that will turn soft and mushy.
Dapple Dandy and Flavor Queen fruit heavily just 2nd year in the ground, and I just bought another Flavor Grenade. Call or email Bay Laurel Nursery, they have a great selection of pluots, low prices, healthy trees, and good customer service.

Hi Mark, any cherilata scion stilk available?

Thanks

Sent a PM

I added a little of kaffir lime juice to salmon dish  without tasting it first. Big mistake... Its not like any other limes. Its strong and bitter. I am not sure how people like it but i am ready to cull my tree since i have no use of fruits.
Ana

Yes, you are right, Makrut lime is stronger than other citrus juice. The key to avoid biterness is, we cannot squeeze this lime too hard like lemon or other lime. Just squeeze it lightly. It is also a little more acidic than regular lemon, so a little goes a long way.
Another thing, we always let makrut limes turn yellow and ripe before pick it. This was they are less acidic and almost no bitterness.

In Indonesia, we use the juice for almost everything. We marinate meat and seafood in this juice with a little salt before cooking it. If you don't want the meat too sour, just rinse it before cooking. This juice washes away any fishy/ stench smell off.

I make beef salad with this juice. Like the one in a Thai restaurant. Just grill the beef as you prefer (medium rare is my preference) with a pinch of salt, then slice it as thin as you could, put it aside. Slice red onion and cherry tomato about 1/3 of the weight of the meat, I add some sliced Thai bird chili for a kick, mix everything with the meat, pour in the makrut juice, add a teaspoon of sugar and half teaspoon of salt per 2 lbs of meat (if you like it more salty, add more salt), mix well. You can serve it right away or keep it in the fridge for half an hour for the flavor to soak in.
The meat can be substituted with shrimp, squid, or fish fillet. add some cilantro if you like it.
We also like to mix a small amount of makrut juice with peanut sauce that we serve over blanched veggies.
I also always add some makrut juice when I serve a bowl of hot chicken soup.








 

If you have to dig it out, I would trim the cherimoya very hard, maybe down to at least 1/3 it's size today. Also, doing it on the growing season (Spring) might give it a better chance to survive.  I found cherimoyas survive nicely with little watering in SoCal.

As far as letting the fruits to mature on your presumably young mango, herm..., that's what I did few years ago; then it just stayed there for the next 3-4 years. I've been reading Simon's "How to grow mangos in SoCal" on this site, I wish I read that before I let my young mangos bear the few fruits.
Happy growing, palingkecil!

Thanks, Samu!
Yes, it was my bad to let the fruit stays on the tree.
I hope my tree is okay, after I picked all 3 fruits it flushed a lot of new growth. Fingers crossed.
My sweet tart is stunted because I let it hold 1 fruit this year.
Next year I will not let it hold any!

Quote from: UplanderCA on August 02, 2022, 07:26:35 PM

Speaking of which looks like my VP fruit are coming along well. Looking like late September I should be ready to harvest

This is a year for vegetative growth. My big 5" trunk PC has only ONE fruit -- not much flowers to begin with. Another big tree with cocktail graft has zero fruit that last years gave many wonderful fruits: ST Maui, Sweet tart, Okrungtong, Edward (I since topped it off and grafted Iman Passand but not took), Mahachanok; the biggest tree (HD rootstock) with LZ and Okrungtong only has 2 LZ and zero Okrung fruits. I thought this year I will have load of LZ, but all the green fruits splited with no seed. The 2 remained fruits are from late blooming in June I believe. Other trees near the house are doing better: some Alphonso the first time, and Maha as every year.

Sorry for the interuption, is ST Maui considered productive and disease free for you? I am debating to get a ST Maui or another Sugarloaf. Sugarloaf does really well in my yard and it is productive too. I remember you live in Burbank, not too far from my place.

Thanks!

Do you keep it inside the house? How many hours of sun does it get in a day? My guava won't turn yellow/sweet when it does not get enough sun.
The more sun it gets, the sweeter the fruit tastes.
Also usually most fruit trees do not produce good tasting fruits during the first few years, as the tree gets older the quality of the fruit will improve.

Thank you for your effort making this report. As a new mango grower I appreciate all the knowledge you share here.
I am curious about your Dot. What cause the infection?
I have a Sugarloaf too, and it grows quite well here in my dry hot yard. It even holds 3 big mangoes now(2.5 years in ground, bought it as a 3 gallon on 2019) and the fruits do not slow the growth.
Sugarloaf is not the most vigorous in my yard, but it has beautiful shape, disease free, and is holding big fruits while still growing, so I am considering to get one more tree if the mango is top tier.

Upping the difficulty here. Vegas desert.

Unlike avocados, mangoes have been proven to be able to fruit here. It's just really, really rare because barely anyone knows how to grow them in soil, humidity, and weather like ours. High pH, clay soil with rocks and awful drainage. Super hard water. Hot as hell in the summer more often than not. Temps get perilously close to, or occasionally a little under freezing. Every 7 or 8 years we'll get just enough snow to make life miserable for plants.

I have some polyembryonic seeds I started of Lemon Zest, Lemon Meringue, and Coco Cream and my experiment is to grow the cloned shoots without grafting so they have a better chance at being vigorous and more tolerant of our conditions.

Two questions:

When digging the hole, should I mostly stick to native soil? And if so, should I amend it with some organic matter at all, or other things like sand/sulfur? Or just leave it as is and top dress with sulfur and iron sulfate?

My understanding is that even if mangoes hate our dirt, digging a hole and putting good stuff it likes in there will just cause the roots to gird around where that good soil is, and also very negatively affect drainage.

Also, any good sources for manila seeds in case I want to use that as a rootstock later on?

I am not an expert at all, just want to share my own experience.
Native soil is way to go, but if you have clay muddy soil, I will use cactus/palm soil mix to fill up the hole. Mixing the native soil with sand could work, but my trees seem happier with cactus/palm soil mix from home depot. I usually do some prep first. Dig the hole about a week in prior and make sure to loosen up some soil around it so the hole has a good drainage. I've killed some mangoes because the clay soil around the hole was too dense.
Make sure that when you put the mango tree, it is higher than the ground level around it. Some varieties cannot stand wet feet at all. My Son Pari and Dwarf Hawaiian died just after one full day of rain in the winter.
You are smart by starting from seeds. Even Manila rootstocks cannot beat seed growing mango trees in my yard.
My yard received about 12 hours of direct sun in summer, and very dry heat with occassional Santa Ana wind.
I have about 8 mango seedlings from different varieties, and it all grow well. My Coconut Cream on Manila is actually struggling a little.
Some varieties are just a strong grower no matter what rootstock they are on. These are very strong grower on turpentine rootstock in my yard (i don't do much care on my trees):
- Orange Sherbet --> it grew 4 ft in height and 5 ft in width in 2 short years. Very drought tolerant.
- CAC ---> it only grow 2 ft in height but about 6-7 ft width in 2 years from a little stick in 3 gallon pot.
- Super Alphonso --> I just bought the grafted tree about 3 months ago, and it was only 2 ft without any branch. Now it is about 5 ft with 8 branches, I never even tip off the top.
- PPK --> this tree just want to grow and make new branches, it does not even bother to flower. Same, grew about 3 ft height and width in 2 years.
 Varieties that didn't survive in my yard on turpentine rootstocks (they all died in winter after rainy days):
- Venus
- Peach Cobbler
- Son Pari
- Dwarf Hawaiian
- Little Gem
- Triple Sec
 Just a little to add, Manila grown from seeds are also very variable. Some of my Manila rootstocks are strong, some are just weak.
I hope I can help just a litle bit. There are many very experienced mango growers here, and I learn from them.

Just a little update here, one of my OS' nubin was ripe. the skin turns yellowish orange and it smells like a ripe Kent, not citrussy. However when I eat it, it does have a citrus flavor with very creamy sweet fiberless flesh. It reminds me of an orange sherbet indeed!
The part that was still greenish has some chalkiness.
The only thing lacking from this mango is the juice, it is a little too dry. But it was probably because the fruit is a nubin. It is seedless.
I still have 2 normal size fruits on the tree. So I will see if the normal fruits are more juicy.
at least now I can confirm it is an Orange Sherbet .

Between my friend and me, we purchased total of 11 trees from him in the past. Only 1 is true to the variety, Malika mango. Either he is very confused, or he did deceive buyers.