re: Louisiana Tropical Fruit Gardening - Experiences and Updates

I just got a 10 pack last week and they seem nice enough. Don’t have a local $25 one to compare to

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I have bought single and 10 pack 15g pots from Amazon of many different brands and they are all about the same. Much more cost effective to get 10. Just has to be injection molded

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Thanks, ordering now.

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Also, get a farm dolly to move pots. Don't destroy your back for exotic fruits lol.

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I have one but I always forget about it and up manhandling them. I put to put signs on the pots that say "do not lift"

It's worth it. It results in a better root system.

Alright fruit nerds, time for some thrilling developments.

After watering my emperor lychee with only rain and distilled water for a year, meticulous pest control via sulfur spray and miticides, and foliar micronutirent feedings, I was rewarded with thousands of flowers. The little tree bloomed so aggressively I couldn't believe it. Also, for whatever reason, pollinators preferred the lychee nectar to every other plant/flower on my property. The bees were ignoring citrus blooms to stay on the lychee. There were 50+ bees on this 3 foot tall tree at times. It was nuts and I've never seen anything like it. After all that care, blooming, and pollination the final result was... one single lychee fruit set. In all seriousness, this tree is too small to hold fruit yet so I was not really expecting anything. Lychee is by far the hardest thing I grow and dammit I am proud of my single fruit. If I get this thing to maturity in a pot in my first year and eat it I'll be amazed.



Next, after collecting pollen for weeks to store in the fridge overnight and apply in the mornings with a small paintbrush, I managed to achieve some hand pollination of my Geffner atemoya. They tell you this thing is self fertile but I have not seen any evidence of that yet. Only the things I've hand pollinated are developing. The flowers start the day as female and end the day as male. You harvest male pollen in the early evening and apply it to open female stage flowers the next morning. I also discovered that these weird flowers have one of the best and most unique fragrances ever. They smell like tropical fruit ice cream. There are berry notes, vanilla, etc. It's very strange and enjoyable. Hoping these stick on the tree and mature.



Finally, it is time to start hand thinning mangos. I hate doing it but it's necessary. You can tell which fruits the tree is going to abort anyway because they start turning a bright yellow/green color. You just pop those off to prevent any more resources being used on them. They smell great.

Yeah man. If you don't have mangos by now you probably aren't getting them. Bloom started in December. This is Pickering. Really cool thing this year is I have a staggered bloom. Will make for a very long mango season this summer.

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Tigerlaff

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dude, you're on a whole notha level!

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It's probably autism but thanks

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yeah my wife says the same thing about me

Oh, it's blooming. You're fine. It must not have got enough cold weather early in the winter to bloom then. If you're letting it fruit this year then they should set absent disease. If it's Pickering it will set.

I should have said "if you don't have blooms or fruits yet, you probably aren't getting mangos this year."

I've still got blooms on my tree too. Setting new fruit every day.

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I guess my green house was too warm

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Some varieties bloom more easily than others but, generally speaking, sustained temperatures below 60F will trigger a bloom cycle.

The yellow is definitely the best. Different species from the white/red ones. Show us your setup. Dragonfruit is one of the toughest things to grow from a hardware standpoint.