re: Louisiana Tropical Fruit Gardening - Experiences and Updates

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Straight to the advanced class

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Awe hell

Tigerlaff is a madman. Don’t be surprised if southern living does a cover story on that dude.

Thanks for the plants brother!

it’s funny how you look at things differently after all the knowledge dispensed in this thread. I went by Lowe’s today to get marigolds for the tomato garden and looked thru all the fruit trees they have…hardly anything they sell is suitable for south LA. Lowe’s had a whole rack of apricot trees for example

I did pick up a Barbados cherry which along with the guava and pineapple from yesterday will likely be my only contribution to the cause

Ok sports fans I am officially tropically gardening

Pineapple



Guava



Barbados cherry



I may make myself a boat drink and put on some don ho

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I am waiting on him to host the first Louisiana Mango Festival

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once we hit a critical mass of, say, 3 people harvesting mangos I'll get it organized. Gotta start somewhere!

Remember, the only reason you don't see it here is because no one is really trying. They'll grow extremely troublesome and tropical exotic plants like orchids and plumeria and desert roses but no one is really spending any time on things like mangos. We are gonna fix that.

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Remember, the only reason you don't see it here is because no one is really trying. They'll grow extremely troublesome and tropical exotic plants like orchids and plumeria and desert roses but no one is really spending any time on things like mangos. We are gonna fix that.

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Yeah i was kind of in that boat. I was getting bored growing shite that could be bought at the store. You made this thread at the perfect time for me.

OK y'all. This is the single best fruit tree pruning video I have ever seen. I do about 80% of what is documented here already, but this guy is fantastic at explaining the underlying philosophy of it all. The knowledge dropped here is incredibly useful and not easy to find. If you follow this advice, you can keep almost any fruit tree productive and short enough to freeze protect or keep in a container. Just look at the amazing results he is achieving on these avocado trees. These are not dwarf cultivars. This is exactly what I do with my Jamaican cherry tree, which is insanely vigorous and wants to be 75 feet tall in nature.

LINK

Keep in mind that this is about height pruning only. Some trees only fruit on new growth (guava), some on last season's growth (citrus, stone fruit), and some on old wood (starfruit, jaboticaba). Take that into account before you start hacking away.

For the guys who were thinking about in ground white sapote or mango: this is your video.

I keep telling people they are actually tough trees with regard to everything but freezing. They take pruning well, graft easily, don't need much fertilizer or water, and don't even get much insect pressure. As long as you can keep them from freezing, the only real concern is powdery mildew and anthracnose during cool/dry and warm/wet weather respectively on the blooms and fruit. And even that can be mostly avoided by choosing the right cultivars. Sure, if you try to grow lemon zest in south LA you will need to constantly spray it to ever hope to harvest fruit. But Pickering? Almost no fungal pressure. My Meyer lemon for example is way more work than my mango to keep pruned and disease/pest free.

One of the hidden benefits of zone pushing these trees is that we don't have to deal with many of the worst pests and diseases:

Citrus: very little HLB documented in LA
Guava: no carribean fruit fly in LA so no worms in fruit
Mango: no mango bacterial black spot in LA
Lychee: no lychee erinose mite in LA
Banana: no Panama disease in LA
All trees: no Sri Lankan weevil in LA (so far) and no sandy soil nematodes

It's nice to know that, at least in one respect, we have it easier than those in south Florida. I may have to run a greenhouse for 3 months but I can also pick fully ripened guava from my tree, which is impossible in south Florida without bagging every single fruit.

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Is there an ideal time and not good time to do this?
I feel like doing this while they are just starting to bloom wouldn't be the most ideal time to do this.

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Depends. A few factors to consider. The ideal time is usually February right as weather is warming and before bloom/flush. But in my experience most tropical trees don't really care that much, especially if the tree is already rooted into good soil in the current pot. If you have to get rid of bad soil by bare rooting the plant with a hose, then yes repotting is going to cause some stress (although a lot less than people claim) and it will need to sit in the shade for a few days. But if you are already in good soil just pop it out and put it in the bigger pot with more good soil. There is almost no interruption to flowering/fruiting if you are going from good soil to good soil and don't really disturb the roots too much. So you can really do this anytime you want. If you see any roots circling the root ball where it was following the pot wall, loosen those so that they grow outwards into the new pot. Don't leave them in the circling trajectory.