re: Louisiana Tropical Fruit Gardening - Experiences and Updates

Went to the Florida Mango Festival in West Palm Beach yesterday and snagged a few to work through. The Kathy/K3 I nabbed there was stellar. Coconut Crème and Venus too. The Sweet Tart mangos they had were pretty small and overripe.

My Pickering’s have been a bit finicky. Good color break on the tops but the bottoms are still a shade of olive green. So I’m giving them more time. Flavor wise; this one was a bit washed out. We’ve had a lot of rain lately and that’s a known contributor.

So my soil temp in my pots were 91 today. What can I do to fix that?

That makes sense.

I think it’s a goner.



I’ll add more sand to the mix for the next one

I’m not finding that anywhere

My papaya tree perked up a little bit after I trimmed off the dying leaves. I did some reading this morning and it might be getting too much sun. The soil in the pot is pretty close to the mix I've seen recommended in this thread. It seems to be draining well. I'm going to move it to where it doesn't get beat by the afternoon sun and see what happens.



It has a few female flowers on it, hopefully they get fertilized.



I really like how this tree looks and the speed of growth makes it fun to watch. I don't think that I'll keep this one alive over winter since they grow so fast and can fruit year 1. I'm going to order a Hawaiian variety next year. From what I've read they don't have the strong flavors that a lot of folks dislike.


My guava tree is about 5' tall now. It's looking really healthy. Lots of new growth budding out on it.

Update on my mangos.
Flushed again. How tall do I let this group go before clipping to cause further division ?

Any idea the right spot to do that ?
Pickering

DH

Got my first sapodilla fruit set!



Pickering mangos coming along. I could pick this now but it's going to improve greatly if left on the tree. Smells like coconut.

I do not get ants because I grow them up on my patio away from the yard. Honestly I should have mentioned that in the OP. A great strategy for container gardening is getting your potted trees the hell away from nature.

I have about a million insecticides and fungicides, but no answer for this. Just haven't done the research. But for ants, I'd go with a systemic insecticide like once per year imidacloprid. You'll never kill them all with a contact spray and I have no idea what big box ant poison will do to soil pH, etc. Be careful with imidacloprid because it absolutely destroys pollinators too. It will disrupt the nervous system of almost any insect and even some non-insects like arachnids. As far as I know it's not effective against spider mites or nematodes.

Noticed that some of the pieces I'd pruned from my dragonfruit and threw in the compost bin had sent up sprouts and put out roots. Now I have two in the same pot.

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