The Tropical Fruit Forum

Those are some neat ideas, I have seen some palms work well. The trouble seems to be keeping the dragonfruit from climbing out of reach. They seem to keep climbing until they get to the top of whatever they are growing on (and thus into full sun for fruiting). I think the ideal solution for Dragonfruit support is to graft it as a crown on a columnar cactus. I got it to take on a Peruvian Apple Cactus, but the freeze we had back in February killed the dragonfruit and I have not re-grafted.

Quote from: Plantinyum on August 12, 2022, 10:38:38 AM

Hi, What are the ways, ive read before u can prune the older hanging branches/ tip them, and this forces the same branch to flower, true?
Ive read about drought stress resulting in blooming?

I have about a 5 ft. dead oak of over 5 years with many dragon fruit growing up it. This has been the least rain in the summer that I remember at this location. The dragon fruit have responded with the most flowers and fruit of any year in the past.... Interesting that you brought drought up. Also I have not thrown any fertilizer on mine since at least last December. Could be by chance or could be what you mentioned drought as a possibility... I'm sure the big growers would have a much better idea than I and would like to hear from someone growing 12 or more pole plantings etc. to chime in with what do they do to increase blooming odds and fruit production

We had a whole row at one point. We had no trouble getting blooms. Fruit set was the issue. Whenever it rained no fruits set--even with hand pollination. When the weather was dry, tons of fruit set even without hand pollination. I'm not sure if the rain washes the pollen off or if high humidity makes it less viable or both. That is actually why I started studying the lights to see if we could get them to bloom about a month earlier before the rainy season started.

Move to Georgia and plant pecans in your front yard (grow everything else in the back yard). It is against the law to pick pecans off the ground or shake a tree that has roots on private property--even if the nut are laying in a public road way.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://georgiapecans.org/you-can-be-fined-for-picking-pecans-in-georgia/%23:~:text%3D%25E2%2580%259CIn%2520Georgia%252C%2520taking%2520pecans%2520from,re%2520on%2520a%2520public%2520road.%25E2%2580%259D&ved=2ahUKEwj58uj9-MP5AhUUQzABHeZjDKQQFnoECAQQBQ&usg=AOvVaw30wnH94mj8uzrOiLBZejC6

Now, maybe we could get a similar law passed for Florida mangoes...

I am given credit for this prop method but really did see others using it before me. Always put the fork in bamboo underneath the crook of the flower stem. The goal is to create a tripod with the two bamboo legs and the leaning banana stem. A tripod is the most stable shape and can withstand wind. If you need bamboo check around and find people with a large clump. Quite often they are happy to let you help control it, just pledge to remove the "top trash" from their property.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFMjDn_FSEg&t

Simple but effective. Very nice!

I'm guessing one factor is sour or semi sour are more hardy than sweet. So the stuff that survived on its own tend to be lower quality.

Some of these wild oranges I saw may be hybrids. Some of them are oranges others look and taste similar to ugly fruit but less sweet. Like edible grapefruit sweet but not that great. I think that's how most hybrids come out all weird like ugly fruit but I do love ugly fruit.

If you don't know what that is it's a natural hybrid they found growing wild but tastes much like a tangerine on the inside but ugly and disfigured looking.

Yes, I think sour citrus does tend to be tougher. The one exception that I know to that was what I mentioned about tristezia and sour orange. Tristezia will infect sweet orange but it won't kill it. It will kill sour orange. I have eaten Ugli Fruit, but I have never grown one. I believe that it is considered a tangelo and is mono embryonic so it would be unusual for it to grow true from seed.

Citrus is kindof unique among plants because some cultivars are polyembryonic and others are monoembryonic. Poly seeds will put up multiple sprouts. Some of those sprouts will be genetic clones of the mother tree (regardless of what pollinated the seed). The rate for clones varies by variety but can be as high as 98%. If you plant a mono seed, you can probably reverse that percentage (2% or less will be like the parent). I worked for a friend in his citrus nursery for a few months and one of my jobs was to remove off type seedlings or those that had "J" roots. It was rare to find off types and mostly I pulled "J" roots. However, one qualification for a good rootstock is that it grows true from seed. Even though fruit quality among rootstocks is poor, many of them are actually hybrids (Swingle, Carrizo, and X639 come to mind) but still grow true from seed. Rough Lemon, Cleopatra tangerine, and Smooth Flat Sevile sour orange are wild type (or close to it) citrus that are still used as rootstock and that we grew in the nursery as well. While I am not familiar with all citrus rootstocks, only two come to mind that produce a sweet scion quality fruit. One is the Duncan grapefruit (which was once used as a rootstock on flatwoods soils but fell out of favor due to susceptibility to foot rot). The other is Ridge Pineapple, a sweet orange cultivar which saw a brief surge in popularity after people lost whole groves on sour orange to tristezia (the sweet orange scions were resistant to tristezia but the sour orange roots they were on were not). It produces a fruit of excellent quality with a beautiful peel (although it is seedy). I have seen whole seedling groves of this variety in the wild (50 or more trees) that exibited very few differences in characteristics even though rough lemon, grapefruit, and a few tangerines were scattered through the same hammock and would surely have cross pollinated with the oranges. Out of the hunderds of citrus trees in that hammock (and many others), I have never found a hybrid tree. Ridge Pineapple is not used much as a rootstock anymore because it was water needy and better options for tristezia that still produced high brix fruit became more common (ie Swingle). In the nursery, we did no genetic testing and probably missed many seedlings that looked similar but were not true clones. This accounts for some of the variation in the growth and survival of trees that can be seen in a grove in my opinion. I have heard some reports that nurseries are having issues with some of the new USDA rootstocks not being reliable from seed. Other scion quality fruits that we have grown from seed include Orlando Tangelo and Meiwa kumquat. About half a dozen Orlando seedlings and a dozen meiwa kumquats all produced sweet fruit virtually indistiguishable from the parent tree. Persian lime was a miserable failure from seed--the fruits were dry and insipid nothing like the parent tree. Unlike older breeders who used a lot of polyembryonic varieties in their work, modern breeding programs typically use monoembryonic stock for breeding. This saves a lot of time sifting through the clones, but as a result many cultivars of recent development will not come true from seed.

This article should prove very interesting to those who have participated in the discussion about seedling orange trees. It is a historical and first hand account. For those of literary bent, the Orange Lake region mentioned was made famous by author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (who wrote Cross Creek and a number of other Florida themed books). The article also hold interest for the original topic because it points out that sweet oranges budded to sour stock still produce sweet fruit.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://journals.flvc.org/fshs/article/download/103359/99287&ved=2ahUKEwizsPGY37D5AhUFVjABHQRcAdUQFnoECBYQAQ&usg=AOvVaw21I42R80f8L36P6wPqp7wP

I think there are a lot of good ideas for new discussion threads here. There is a good thread about growing mangoes in California already. I have not commented on it, but I have read much of it with interest--sometimes there are items of interest even in unexpected places.

While hardwood cuttings don't work, and softwood cuttings require a mist bed, Muscadines are easily propagated by simple layering. Take a portion of the vine and bury it in damp sand. It will root naturally durring the growing season without any special set up or equipment. When the vine goes dormant, cut it off and pot or plant. I have done this on numerous occations with the only failures resulting from the soil being too dry. Actually, I have even seen wild muscadines in damp hammocks put out aerial roots. Maybe the wild vine you were trying to propagate was a different species of grape?

One difficulty that I see is that the lines of distinction are not clearly defined in all cases. Avocados for example are both tropical and sub-tropical in origin. Mexican/Guatemalan (Sub-tropical) vs West Indian (Tropical). Thus the avocado thread would need to be split into two separate folders. This would make a meaningful discussion about quality cultivars difficult. Then, there would be a question about where information about hybrids should be stored. Actually, I would propose that dual origins tend to be the rule rather than the exception. For example, Annonas, Eugenias, plinias, psidiums, even mangos all have some species with tropical origins and others with sub-tropical or even warm temperate origins. Maybe the simplest solution would be to start a thread about tropical fruts that do well in your climate? Then, you could interact with people with similar interests.

I was just at Truly Tropical in Delray buying mangos and they are apparently contemplating removing all of their lychee trees. They said it was a pain to continually spray sulfur after every flush and you still get the mite. What the heck is the FL Dept of Ag doing about this?

Not a whole lot. Actually, it is too late to do anything at this point--the mite has spread beyond our ability to control. Based on what I have seen, they appear to be focusing their resources on hemp production.

I think people need to know the taste of Butia eriosphata. I still do not know Butia capitata so I do not know if it is better, but I can say that Butia eriosphata is completely fantastic, very juicy, sweet, slightly acidic. I need to take pictures of open fruit.
Native from south Brazil, Rio Grande do Sul state (common name: Butiá-da-serra)

I was recently given some palm fruits with a red blush that looked exactly like those in the picture. Most Butia capitata fruits I have seen did not have a red blush. I wonder if they were actually B. Eriosphata. They were ok raw, but cooking really improved the flavor. They made absolutely fantastic jelley (once the fibers were strained out).