The Tropical Fruit Forum

I see a lot of potential problems.

The most obvious is the dryness. Water, mulch heavily with quality wood chips and then plant ground covers and pollinators to help retain moisture and bring in more beneficial insect life that could help fight those pests on your leaves. Some flowering shrubs like blue porterweed, firespike and blue spur flower.

Soil issues? Definitely get it tested. Mangoes need calcium (add pelletized gypsum), chelated iron, and micronutrients. Those light green leaves suggest an iron deficiency, you can get an iron solution at the garden center and apply it with a watering can.

Are the trees planted at or above grade? If they are below grade you might have issues with covering the uppermost roots with dirt. Plant them on a little mound slightly above the ground level. Make sure your mulch is pulled back from around the trunk for the same reason.

Pests. I can see white scale on your leaves. I get it too and use the Spinosad spray to control it. Clip off the badly affected leaves and dispose of them away from the trees. The brown scale I'm not as familiar with. You might have some other insect issues like thrips? More experienced eyes will be able to diagnose that better.

For a tree that mature to not be carrying fruit, there is a problem.

He's also grafting and selling an avocado from Puerto Rico called Tito.  It's supposed to have a rich flavor along the lines of Hass or Oro Negro, but I don't think we know how well it grows and produces in SoFlo as it's a new introduction.

Is Tito the same as the Bumpy Avocado "Bumpycado" that got hyped up this year? I got a 3g Bumpy tree from Julian and on the pot, written in chalk, was "Tito".

CC's graft died, presumably due to old grafting tape not being removed. Can blame whoever.

I agree, well healed grafts with several flushes are ideal for buyers, but maybe not for sellers with limited stock of varieties in high demand. Lots of things can go wrong with grafts in the first months and year or so. Realize there are risks involved.

I don't mind taking the blame. I am not ashamed to admit that I have killed a lot of plants. I'm not an expert gardener and growing Mamey has proven challenging for me. Maybe whatever I'm doing wrong can be figured out so more people can be successful with their trees where I have failed. My goal in raising these issues is to warn others well in advance what they are getting into so they can be prepared for potential problems and address them. Or maybe a loss rate of 30 - 50% in the first year is normal for certain species in the nursery trade? I can't say.

I also agree very much with you that these new genetics are important and I'm glad some nurseries, including Julian, are trying to bring new and better stuff to market. I don't mind waiting. I don't mind paying more for something rare. I have kept buying 1g trees from Lara Farms even with the problems I have experienced. I want better results but I have to accept the trees as they are currently available or wait years until they are commonly propagated by nurseries that sell more mature trees. I would be willing to wait longer and pay more to get a more mature and bigger tree from Lara Farms, but that's just not an option right now.

Despite the losses, overall I have had very positive experiences buying thousands of dollars worth of fruit and trees from Lara Farms. Thanks to Julian I have gotten to experience a lot of new stuff. I don't want to discourage anybody from ordering trees from Lara Farms. Maybe there are some adjustments at the nursery or for the customer that could improve the survival of these trees for less skilled growers like me. Knowing there could be a problem is the first step toward fixing it. Expectations have been raised so high for these new trees that there is potential for disappointment for the people who waited and waited for their "best variety ever" Mamey trees.

Coconut cream, do you have personal experience with Nishikawa? It seems uncommon but in high demand in the florida nursery trade.

Limited experience. I have eaten several of them and found it to be my favorite tasting locally grown Avocado. I like the clean, classic flavor, the creamy texture, the small seed and just the right intensity of avocado taste. For me, it was a revelation.

I ran out and bought a 7 gallon tree after tasting it, but it has only been a few months so I don't have any data on production. It's growing ok, actually better than the Brogden next to it. I got the tree from Incredible Edible Landscapes and last time I was there they had Nishikawa trees in various sizes.

Wow, that looks just like a legit cherry.

Your tree needs some water. A lot of it. I would clip off all the fruit because they are going to drop anyway.

Get some mulch on the ground around the tree, some gypsum and some fertilizer. Let if flush and start tipping for next season.

We're back to dragging the hose. Was hand watering the young avocado and Jaboticaba only, now everything could use a good spritzing. Observing some mango drop.

Yep, my neighbor who doesn't water has 2 adolescent mango trees that dropped their fruit after profuse flowering.

I was out driving around the local neighborhoods in Port St. Lucie today and saw many mango trees but most of them had no visible fruit. There is a neglected Nom Doc Mai tree across the street from my house that is loaded, but that was really the only tree I saw dripping with mangoes.

Many people in Port St. Lucie do not water their lawns because the city water is fairly expensive here. I wonder if the drought conditions are causing fruit to drop? Most of the lawns are brown and crispy.

Pace fruits around the same time as Magana, so I ordered a 5 pound box from Lara Farms. Julian delivered 5 Pace Mamey Sapote, each weighing well over 2lbs, for a total of about 12.5lbs of fruit.

General Notes: Pace is a cross between Tazumal and Magana. The result fruits at the same time as Magana but with the sweetness and smaller size of Tazumal. All the fruit had a single seed.



Skin & Texture: Pace maintains its structure when ripe better than other Mamey Sapote without breaking down. The downside of this is more stringy fiber present in the fruit, I spit out a few threads of fiber while eating. The flesh around the stem and seed has more fibrous debris than other Mamey, to the point that I preemptively trimmed those areas away before eating.

Sweetness: Intense candy sweetness throughout with a honey-like quality and complexity. I rate it a 9 out of 10 on the sweetness scale. The sweetest Mamey I have tried so far.

Flavor: I taste the yellow butterscotch candies you would get out of a crystal bowl in your grandmother's house. The flavor is intense, and the sweetness is almost overwhelming. The sugars taste like honey at times, and at other times I am reminded of raisins soaked in rum.

Verdict: Pace is sweeter, richer, denser with more concentrated flavor than any Mamey Sapote I have tried. Such powerful sweetness should give it wide appeal as a dessert fruit. For my own palate, it's too much of a good thing. I prefer less sugar so the flavor gets more of the spotlight, and I also find the texture less appealing. For most people, I think Pace would be regarded as a superior variety for Springtime.

Orange Sherbet grows in a funky way, the branches look wonky and mine is more like a shrub than a tree. You might just want to shorten your pruning intervals, a couple of the branches look a little long. But otherwise, it looks like you have a few good scaffolding branches that will get pulled down under the weight of next year's fruit.

Green sapote, same thing, anyone know where to get one?

Xain's World might have them.

I would say Malay apple, Luc's Garcinia, Rose apple (superior selections), Coconuts (if you can find a selection that handles light frost.

Good call. With 5 acres there is definitely space for Rose Apple and a whole collection of garcinias.

Don't forget about Mammea Americana.

And then the coconuts, I would have fields of coconut trees of all types. Dwarf Samoan, pink coconuts, Jamaican tall, Malaysian dwarf, I would try to figure out some way to get Macapuno coconuts into this country. Coconut mania!

Was the Super Hass uniformly ripe? That was a big problem with my last crop.

The thought of putting up with HOA's makes me giddy.  Between that and property taxes (and FL HO Insurance cost to boot) on a paid off property, it's equivalent to a lifetime mortgage payment in your budget just to allow a group of unhappy people with legal power (funded by you) to dictate how you live on your property.  Makes me want to find one of those picture-perfect corporate-built neighborhoods and start living that dream today!

Recent state legislation supersedes HOA authority to regulate landscaping. As long as you can show you are following the guidelines of a "Florida Friendly Landscaping" plan, which includes almost every fruit tree we want to grow, the HOA can't legally keep you from xeriscaping your entire lawn with mulch and planting a jungle of Florida native plants. Or whatever else you want from the long list of Florida Friendly plants, which includes loquat, avocado, mulberry, etc. Pretty much everything except mango.

https://ffl.ifas.ufl.edu/media/fflifasufledu/docs/FFL-Plant-Guide_v030624_web.pdf