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Messages - fyliu

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1
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Annona hand pollination
« on: June 29, 2022, 01:33:41 PM »
Geez. Some individuals were posting ridiculous misinformation this year in the Vietnamese and Cherimoya FB groups. I think they're not the originators but they're the victims of that information.

Here's my clarification for what I heard
1. A pollinated flower is not going to "disable" its own pollen so that you can't use it to pollinate other flowers.
2. Taking pollen from a pollinated flower will NOT make the fruit abort.

12Zodiac, if you hear something else, please feel free to post it and the experienced people here will tell you which one is right.

2
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Is this white sapote ripe in June?
« on: June 29, 2022, 01:24:47 PM »
WS could have alternate June or November crops. I don't remember which cultivar tends to do this. When I went to visit Bob Chamber's grove in 2011, one of the cultivars was dropping lots of ripe fruit in the summer. I was told that tree's not going to have a November crop that year. Most cultivars have a main November crop and maybe a small number of off season fruits, maybe a small June crop.

3
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Yangmei (Morella/Myrica rubra) thread
« on: June 29, 2022, 01:16:58 PM »
I hope everyone's plant is doing well. Now is the final test for them: SUMMER...

Since it takes so long for this plant to heal and grow new roots, I'd say that anything that pushes within a month of planting is pretty much going to die. I didn't want to jinx it back when people were so excited.

So slow push is good. Hopefully the plants took the off time to develop roots.

What seems to be the strongest and weakest varieties? "DongKui males" seem to do well. Wusu seems to be good. Black Carbon is the weakest?

Based on my grafting 1 scion each from my neighbor's 3 grafted plants, wusu is the strongest since it's the only one that made it. Honestly, I didn't expect any of them to take. The twigs were pretty far from the ideal size. Even fresh from my mom's tree, twigs of this size don't survive.

4
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Yangmei (Morella/Myrica rubra) thread
« on: March 23, 2022, 05:17:21 PM »
So here's my guess about how to make male DongKui plants. You take a lot of seedlings, graft DongKui onto all of them, wait a while to see which ones took. The ones that took are female DongKui, the ones that failed are male DongKui. Then you recommend growers buy 6 male plants per 100 females so they'll have actual males.

5
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Yangmei (Morella/Myrica rubra) thread
« on: March 18, 2022, 06:26:16 PM »
I don’t know much about males of named varieties. That’s why I was guessing they’re just rootstocks with failed grafts. But I’m not positive of this either, just guessing.

6
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Yangmei (Morella/Myrica rubra) thread
« on: March 15, 2022, 01:14:02 AM »
I thought the male trees were just grafted trees where the grafts died off. It’s standard nursery practice to call seedlings males. If you remember Marta’s germination numbers, it’s actually around 50% males. So your male trees could turn out to be female if my guess is correct.

7
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Yangmei (Morella/Myrica rubra) thread
« on: March 15, 2022, 01:09:54 AM »
Good to keep in mind for the future.

First paragraph of that Chinese page

The 5 reasons why plants don’t fruit:
1. Lack of light
2. Soil too rich
3. Weather
4. Age
5. Lack of males

The pruning stuff in that page is all about reducing the tree size and increasing sun exposure. It says things like remove large branches and keep small ones. Remove verticals and keep horizontals. Remove outers and keep inners. Girdle branches 4ft away from the growing tip for better fruits. Pretty much practices that won’t apply to your trees for the first several years until they’re pretty big.

It also says to spray the crown with Paclobutrazol to control the tree height, which wears off after a few years. Okay to reapply consecutively.


8
Thanks Bill! I just messaged Joe. I don’t want to contact him on the day of the distribution since I expect him to be busy then. I’ll have my neighbor call tomorrow too.

9
I’m asking again since the last time I asked it seemed to have been drowned out by other comments.

How will my neighbor know where and when to pick up her plants from the LA person?

Do the pickup point people have a list of emails of people who ordered in that area? If so, then my neighbor would be the one receiving the email when the time comes and I can stop monitoring this thread for updates.

Thank you!

10
Joe, How do I find out where and when to pick up for the LA area? I need to tell my neighbor this info so she can go get her trees. Thanks.

11
Sounds good!
Thanks Bill, Amy, Joe, and all others involved for adding more yangmei plants to the US.

12
Currently Jo is the drop off point for LA. I would say at this point everything is set for Amy and where she will be dropping off but if Jo decides that you make more sense to be the contact point then we should finalize that immediately.
Sure, I understand the fewer last minute changes the better. But it sounded like there might not be a SB drop off. Please disregard everything I write if there’s still a SB drop off.

I think taking the 5 could unset the both the SB and LAX drop offs, since the original plan was to take the 101->405->5 detour (adds only ~10mins to the route over taking the 101->5). If taking the 5, the 5->405->5 detour makes much less sense.

Anyway, I’m just offering an option IF there’s a route change. No pressure to take it. If it’s 50/50, please take the other option. Like I said, my neighbor’s trees, so the less work for me the better. :)

13
If Amy is taking the 5 all the way, I would like to offer my place as a pickup/distribution point.

I’m near downtown Burbank and a mile away from the 5 freeway exit (Burbank Blvd) where there’s a Costco if Amy wants to fill up on gas there. I or my neighbor Maria, who’s the one ordering the trees, can meet Amy at Costco for the drop off.

I’m located in between SFV and SGV. It’s pretty close to DTLA as well and not too bad for West LA. It’s only far for south LA people to come here. This matters because taking the 5 would have Amy miss the LAX drop off as well. So maybe only me, OC, and SD if this is the decision.

From SB just take the 101 in Ventura and change to the 134 and get off before you reach the 5. It’s pretty much a straight line freeway from Ventura to here.

14
Hi Bill,

Payment sent for #59 in 2 separate transactions with order number noted. Sorry for the complication.

15
Mistake. Will repost later

16
Hi Bill,

If the order is still open, my neighbor Maria would like to get the following:
1 - Black Diamond Female
1 - An Hai Female
1 - WuSu Female
1 - Dongkui Male(or any male)

4 - total

Thanks!!!

17
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: what to do if U.S. Customs has it ???
« on: December 01, 2021, 01:12:25 PM »
I think you'll have to contact the inspection station that has the package. If it's not using the APHIS label, I'm not sure there's anything you can do.

18
Hope everyone’s plants are doing well. It’s 107 at my place right now. I have dead corn stalks protecting my plant from Marta and a couple of M. ceriferas. Hope it turns out okay.

My grafted californica finally died though. I think it’s from my outdoor sink water pouring directly over the plant. I must have moved the pipe there by mistake recently.

19
I guess M. gale is not that promising, looking at the native range. https://fourthcornernurseries.com/plant/myrica-gale/

20
There’s actually a 4th Myrica that might work. A Taiwanese guy blogged about this in Chinese many years ago. I can never remember the name of it. Myrica gale. It’s not talked about at all in English.


21
I think the native rootstocks are not really good to use but usable with lower success rates. I haven’t done a good comparison of them. I do know that most of my yangmei on yangmei grafts worked but most of my yangmei on M. cerifera and M. californica grafts failed. But it’s much harder to grow yangmei for rootstocks than to get the native ones. So I think we have to settle with that as the best option for now.

22
From what I’ve heard and my brief experience with seedlings, many tend to die off in the first season for whatever reason. Those that survive into the 2nd season are pretty good survivors. The 2nd year ones I got from Marta were all pretty tough. Barerooting them for shipping didn’t seem to weaken them. One died but that was from not shading it during a bad heatwave.

There are some people in Chinese-language FB groups that want to join as well if there’s ever a future import, but they don’t want to handle the actual import. It takes a good deal of effort to pull it off and I’m glad people are able to revive a good number of them.

23
Wow, Simon, I think your plants are back to good health now that there’s roots and the shoot growth is longer. I did the same thing with the smallest containers and light potting mix so I could tell when to add water. It took 4-6 months for me though.

Oftentimes the grafts start to grow and then turn brown. Here’s a couple shots today of my grafts. The grafts were done in January.

You can see how there are many buds that pushed and turned brown right after. One of them did keep growing. The small green one is not out of the woods yet. This is why I say having the graft push too soon after grafting is not a good sign. They die once they run out of available buds if the graft union hasn’t bridged.

I did grafting during the cool season. You guys doing grafts this round can provide data on how well spring grafts work with the warmer weather. Who knows, it might help them heal faster. It’s not something I’ve tried before but I hope for a good outcome.





24
The literature says that Yangmei is diocious. But I believe someone mentioned that the grafted plants will eventually produce both male and female flowers. Does anyone have more information on this?

I still have the DongKui tree from the previous import in 2012 or so. It’s 5ft tall and wide now after I stopped trying to propagate it (which ended up slowing it down early on). It bloomed the 2nd year, then was weak and didn’t bloom until about 4 years ago. A little before that all I did to it was trim any side and downward growth to make it grow more upright.

Anyway, I haven’t seen any male flowers on that plant ever. This is consistent with what Yunfei said during the recent zoom talk for San Diego CRFG. He’s always said to just graft a pure male for pollen. This shouldn’t be a problem with all the sexed(by DNA markers) seedlings sold by Marta at reallygoodplants.com. She said that the ratio is roughly 50% males.

I got a couple of unsexed seedlings (early on from Marta) growing which I tried to graft this year but they didn’t work. Maybe they’re too young. The grafts from the same round on californica and cerifera are looking alive so far.

The native rootstocks I’ve seen sold are all males. They actually make a few berries. I don’t know if they germinate. I never was able to germinate the native Myrica seeds I bought online either. Maybe I didn’t do enough scarifying to the seeds. They have a wax covering that repels water.

I don’t know if I should say too much about what to do to the imported plants since we imported them when they were relatively dormant back then and this time it’s during the growing season. It’s probably all in the other thread. Humidity and shade are probably still relevant for treating the bareroot shock. I’m glad you guys are trying different things. What everybody’s doing all makes sense. I think you’re giving them the best chance at surviving.

One thing I noticed for grafting is they take a long time to heal. If it starts growing within a month of grafting, it’s not a good sign. I’ve had plenty of grafts that started growing early on that quickly turned brown at a couple mm long.

Potted rootstocks generally go into decline after 1 year is my experience with them. If any of them take for you guys, I recommend planting them as soon as feasible. I had a few previous grafted plants suddenly die on on me in pots. I planted all the remaining rootstocks last year so they’re healthier when I grafted them this year. I have some grafts this year that are still looking alive. I don’t want to say they’re good until they survive the summer heat.

Thicker scions also help grafting success. I think it’s just because there’s more reserve energy to last through the long healing time.

25
Tropical Fruit Discussion / Re: Myrica rubra
« on: May 02, 2021, 03:33:47 PM »
Exciting to see seedlings starting to produce. Pretty soon we’ll be able to trade these.

DongKui is the one that’s supposed to also produce male flowers, but I never see any on mine.
I’ve seen male cerifera and californica male fruits though.

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