re: Louisiana Tropical Fruit Gardening - Experiences and Updates

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Mandeville, zone 9a. Don't let 'em tell you it can't be done!

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that is truly impressive i cant say ive ever seen a healthier looking plant of any kind

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Thank you, gents. Hear me when I say this: it is all about the inorganic soil. No bark, no wood chips, no sawdust, no wood shavings, no leaf mulch, no manure, no compost, none of that stuff. Just a compost layer on top, fertilizer, and surface mulch. Then whatever supplements you like. I like azomite and mycorrhizae when planting and k-mag before flowering.

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That is interesting. All I have been doing is taking miracle grow potting soil and adding some pearlite to it and thats it. I put that in almost all of my potted plants. I have not been adding any surface mulch. I assume that is good to keep the moisture in?

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All I have been doing is taking miracle grow potting soil and adding some pearlite to it and thats it. I put that in almost all of my potted plants.

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This will work for a while, but the bark in the miracle gro is eventually going to rot and start killing roots. If you do this, I would repot with totally new soil every 2 years. That's about how long mine lasted before the bottoms of the root balls were sitting in liquified bark muck. You can extend the life of bark soil by adding more minerals besides the perlite like decomposed granite or sand from home depot. Best thing you could do is switch to something where either peat moss or coco coir are the only organics in the mix.

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I have not been adding any surface mulch. I assume that is good to keep the moisture in?

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Mulch keeps moisture in, makes the root ball more uniformly moist, insulates the roots from both hot and cold temperature swings, provides nutrients as it slowly decomposes, and serves as a substrate for beneficial fungi and bacteria. Best you can possibly get is redwood mulch but that's almost impossible now. Cypress seems to be the best available to us. Always natural mulch, no dyes.

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You’re Pickering is further along than mine. LOL..

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Welcome to my farm, (Sub)tropical Acres.

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So you are buying this? Sorry for the questions. Id like to understand what you are doing. I have a nursery that sells a bunch of different soils but its pretty confusing.

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Ask away, baw. That's why we have this thread. I buy almost exclusively Gary's Top Pot soil from California. It is stupid expensive to ship it to me but it has led to wild success with container trees and ornamentals. You do not have to use Gary's, but you should ideally be striving for something like it. Gary's consists of the following:

35% peat
30% pumice
20% perlite
10% sand
5% biochar

You can buy all of these and mix it yourself. Or you can substitute things like decomposed granite instead of pumice or skip the biochar. The reason this is ideal is because it drains extremely well and it does not break down over time. Two thirds of this mix is rocks/sand. The peat breaks down very slowly and does not lead to the anoxic sludge that bark based soil eventually does. Almost anything from a nursery is going to be made out of bark creatively labeled as "recycled forest products."

For plants I don't really care about or that I will only have for one season, I do miracle gro cactus mix with a ton of additional perlite and sand added.

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Plus, all my things seem to flourish once I plant them in the ground here. I believe I have very good soil in my area.

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It's because you do have very good soil. Florida is sand and it drains very well. Roots love it. The only issue in Florida is that if you are on limestone, you are probably too alkaline for most things to thrive. That is easily fixed by adding sulfur to your soil regularly. This is mostly a problem in southeast Florida.

when is the best time to order a mango tree? I'm guessing it's soon. Plan on replacing my papaya tree with one.