re: Louisiana Tropical Fruit Gardening - Experiences and Updates

Looks great. Sometimes when I'm feeling squeamish about necessary pruning I Google photos of trees that haven't been properly pruned.

Thats in a trailer park baw.

Local mango pickups today. This is what $43 gets you in Tampa nowadays. We’ve hit the $8.50lb mark for Florida mangoes. These all would have been $5-6lb this time last year.

Florigon, Sweet Tart and Orange Sherbet along with a trio of Lemon Meringue mangoes. Lucky to have got these as the market owner set some aside for me. They sold out some 15 minutes after opening today. The Florida Mango Festival is some three weeks away. Will be interesting to see how it plays out. Can already sense some tension about price escalation this year; worry that it all may come to ahead at the event.

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About to lose my bottom frond on my flamethrower. This will be the first one that Ive lost since I bought it in January.

On the other hand, the new spike is already over 18" and growing like crazy. That thing has done well since I got it.

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When the bottom frond gets to that point I remove it as long as the tree is healthy. That tree looks great so I wouldn't hesitate to prune the old ones.

Welcome on the 0-10-10. I have learned a lot about nitrogen in the past couple of years and I think most fertilizers use far too much. Abundant nitrogen essentially tells some plants that they have everything they need to grow huge and that they shouldn't even worry about reproducing. There is also some evidence that larger trees of some species have a harder time flowering because there is simply too much nitrogen in the leafy and woody tissue. When you keep them small, the hormonal signals to flower and develop fruit are easier for the tree to respond to and you do not need extremely heavy doses of potassium and phosphorus to induce flowering. This is all kind of counterintuitive. Bigger tree with more leaves and branches would seem to be a happy tree and more likely to bear fruit. Just not always true.

Yeah miracle grow is fine on stuff like that. Potted fruit trees can be a little trickier but even those do fine with basic osmocote.

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Welcome on the 0-10-10. I have learned a lot about nitrogen in the past couple of years and I think most fertilizers use far too much. Abundant nitrogen essentially tells some plants that they have everything they need to grow huge and that they shouldn't even worry about reproducing. There is also some evidence that larger trees of some species have a harder time flowering because there is simply too much nitrogen in the leafy and woody tissue. When you keep them small, the hormonal signals to flower and develop fruit are easier for the tree to respond to and you do not need extremely heavy doses of potassium and phosphorus to induce flowering. This is all kind of counterintuitive. Bigger tree with more leaves and branches would seem to be a happy tree and more likely to bear fruit. Just not always true.

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you might be onto something here. My lisbon lemon in the ground that's 7 years old has no fruit and few flowers and my small potted lisbon lemon has a bunch of lemons and keeps wanting to put out more flowers and more fruit, which I keep plucking off.

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you might be onto something here. My lisbon lemon in the ground that's 7 years old has no fruit and few flowers and my small potted lisbon lemon has a bunch of lemons and keeps wanting to put out more flowers and more fruit, which I keep plucking off.

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The very best way to induce a tree to fruit is not to feed it a bunch of nitrogen. It's to stress it out a bit. Pruning, withholding water, cold, even girdling in some cases. The ideal situation is to have a perfectly healthy tree then push it a bit and make it uncomfortable. Boom time to reproduce.

thanks i appreciate it. and thanks for the suggestion of the native hibiscus' for the surrounding bed...i planted 4 Hibiscus moscheutos, 1 Hibiscus coccineus, and 2 Hibiscus aculeatus. the swamp mallow i got from a place called "mail order natives" and they are best looking shipped plants i think ive ever seen.

LINK

healthy 24" 1 gallon plants for ten bucks

you could plant a sativa next to it and no one would know the difference

A few pics of my potted stuff right now. Sorry for the long post...


My pothos. My very first thing I actually "made". I grew this plant from 4 little one inch long cutting from my wifes 10 year old plant. Ive had it outside the entire time and have had to cut it off from touching the ground atleast 5 times. I propagated it about a 15 months ago and its been crazy. One of the first things Ive ever done gardening. Im very new at this







A friend gave me one of the "pups" off his spider plant. It layed in the floorboard of my wifes bronco for about a week before she remembered to tell me it was back there. I thought it was dead but I put it in some dirt and now its busting out of this plastic pot and has 10 pups of its own. I honestly dont know what to do with it from here. LOL





Soon this thing will take over the pool, the house and maybe Sarasota county. I just cant control it. Bought this at Home Depot and Ive had it a few years. I cut it down to the damn dirt about three times a year and it just keeps getting bigger.





Desert Roses are by far one of my favorite plants I have Bloom all the time and are easy to take care of. Repotted in the Gary mix this spring.




Some Lillys that I planted a few months back. Asiatic and dwarf Cana. They are doing well. The Canas are abot to bloom again..




My wife made me plant this about a month ago. It was her moms favorite plant who died about 15 years ago. We planted this on her birthday. Brown eyed susan I believe





My new plant. Dwarf Plumeria. ONly had it a week.





My Alocasia. I always wanted one of these so I bought one this spring. It is doing very well and probably will need to be repotted again soon. Its in a 7 gallon with Garys mix. Probably go to a 10 or maybe to a 15 and just be done with it in a few months. I was nervous about trying one of these as Ive heard they are hard but so far so good.





My flamethrow that I babble on and on about. So far so good.




My Christmas palm that was suppose to be planted in the yard but the day I was going to plan it, I broke half of it off, trying to move it around. It was a double but now it's a single. I cut the other side off at the dirt line and it has been doing great ever since. At this point, it may just stay in the pot for a while.




A couple more desert roses. Something happened to these a few months back. I thought they were going to die. Look like some kind of bug got on them so I treated them with Captain Jack's a couple of times and now they're coming back good. Both also in the Gary soil.




More lilies. We change whats in this pot every year.




Some of my variegated sun rose. Very easy to deal with and grows everywhere. It is a succulent, but we still water it pretty heavily since we keep it out in the sun. I have some of this growing in some small pots from cuttings that I'm going to give my mom to take back to Georgia. I have another pot exactly like this on the other side of my waterfall in my pool.




My wifes 10 year old pothos. It's been inside since we moved here six years ago, but I convinced her to let me put it outside for a while and now it's doing great.





My lipstick palm. Tigerlaff made me do that one





Some new cuttings Im working on to give to my neighbor. Plus a orchid that lost all its flowers a few weeks back. I cut it then brought it outside to get some light




My cat palm that I have had since I lived in Georgia. It actually looks pretty good right now but I just cannot get this thing to thrive. I think I may have put it in too big of a pot when I replanted it. I may take it out and put it in a smaller container and see if it does better. I've been watering it small amounts but more often recently and that seems to be doing better. When I drove to Florida to move here, this thing was sitting in the front seat of the truck next to me. LOL






My majestic palm. 15 gal pot with Gary mix this spring. This thing is taking over inside. But he is doing very well. I take it outside every once in a while and saturated with Captain Jack's and then bring it back inside. I don't particularly like the Gary soil for this one inside. It is making it hard to get the watering down Pat. I have a tray under it, but I either put too much water in it and it overflows or I'm scared to water it because of that. I may end up taking it outside or putting a bigger tray under it. Not sure yet, but it is doing very well in the corner where I have it and my wife likes it there.





My wifes new project. Herbs in her hydroponic system. We will see how she does with that. Just started a few days ago






My wife’s fiddle leaf fig. A friend of hers gave it to her. About a month ago it was not looking great so her friend cut it down, stuck the cuttings back in the dirt. The leaves are falling off the cuttings now. I don’t have any clue how to care for this thing. I honestly do not think it’s getting enough light where it is. I am watering is sparely. I am afraid it may be a casualty of us having no clue how to take care of it