re: Louisiana Tropical Fruit Gardening - Experiences and Updates

Going to be over in the Ocean Springs area this week. Any tropical nurseries in that area worth checking out?

What about Nam Doc Mai #4?

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Is it normal for new mango growth to have more of a pale yellow leaves then they transition to that darker green?

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Yes. Totally normal. Mine start out a reddish color then turn to light green then finally dark green.

Had the Fruit Punch tonight. That might be my favorite so far.

Beautiful trees, Where did you get those planters? I just bought a Lychee tree and need some containers

New to any kind of fruit trees. Last summer we bought a small Meyer Lemon tree at a local nursery. I planted it in a planter on my pool deck. It had about 5 small lemons on it when we bought it. They never turned yellow last season, just stayed green. During the winter here, it dropped all the leaves and I cut the small lemons off.

This year it has looked fantastic. The leaves have been clean and lots of new growth. I have been keeping it watered about once a week or every 5 days or so and spray it with neem oil every so often to make sure the bugs stay away

No fruit and no blooms. Can I expect to see anything this year or will it skip a year? Should I be doing something else to promote growth?

TIA

Lemon trees (and limes) will fruit year round if conditions are favorable. If you give it what it needs, including warm weather, it will flower and set fruit. They are heavy feeders and need fertilizer. For container citrus, the gold standard is osmocote plus granular time release fertilizer and weekly watering with foliage pro.

When temps are consistently in the 90s like right now, I find they do not want to flower. Mine frequently attempt to flower in the fall when the hottest temps recede.

Very welcome man. Just make sure to come back and post pics when the tree takes off and starts blooming!

That's your underfed tree trying to take off. Meyer lemons are VIGOROUS growers. They want to get huge fast. I prune like 4-5 times per year (in ground tree).

Kari starfruit is about to bloom. The fruit mature in about 60-75 days, so I should get a few fruits in late summer if the fruit set holds.


Makok sapodilla has a few immature fruit setting and more blooms on the way.


Mexican cream guava is loaded with fruit and continues to flower and set more. Probably 30-35 guavas on a 7gal lanky tree so far. I had planned to thin the fruit severely but it is growing and lignifying at a rapid rate so I don't think allowing the fruit set is really impeding the structural growth. Very vigorous tree and I'm impressed at its ability to both put on tons of new growth and set/develop fruit at the same time. Those lower branches will be pruned off after harvest to facilitate a better tree shape. It just set so much fruit that I couldn't bring myself to lop it all off. Central leader is looking good and about 7 feet tall.



The ruby supreme and cattley lemon guavas are also loaded.



My emperor lychee is flushing new growth yet again and continues to perform much better than anticipated. I'm using sulfur to fight the lychee erinose mite so it's sitting under my covered garage for a few days out of the sun. You should never spray sulfur when temperatures are this hot, but the mite is a more pressing issue than some leaf burn.