re: Louisiana Tropical Fruit Gardening - Experiences and Updates

How's the majesty doing inside? I hear horror stories.

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Lol, boy have I been through that. Hear me when I say this: just wait. Wait and wait and wait. Probably wait until late summer. Citrus, despite having extremely resilient roots, love to act like they are dying after container to ground or ground to container transplants. I have had them drop every single leaf and stress bloom before turning into green twigs. Then, months later, they shoot out new leaves like nothing ever happened. In fact, they almost always recover the very second that I give up and spend money on a replacement. That's why I have two meiwa kumquats and two cara cara oranges. Don't believe their bullshite. It's fake news.

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lol. I figure as long as they scratch green and I don’t need the pots I’ll let them ride. I’m almost tempted to put them in the ground in a spot where my Satsumas seem to be thriving, but I don’t know if I want to deal with the protection again with the way winters have been going.

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Uhhhh yeah that looks incredible.

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Local Lowes.


Ive really been monitoring the water. Honestly that is all that I have done to it. I sprayed the soil a few times for gnats, water it with the foliage pro and that is about it. It had some other kind of small plants in the bottom but they died in a week. The soil it is in is not sandy. It looks like some kind of sponge or moss or something. makes a mess. I am going to repot it.


My worry about repoting it with the sand mix you recommend is that I keep it inside and need a drainage tray under it. With the way you say the water is just going to run through the new soil, that could be a issue for me. A 15 gal will be heavy as shite to pick up and empty the drain pan.

Maybe I need to move it outside. I really hate to because it looks good in that corner and is doing so well

Been away for a bit. Did some international travel with the family for spring break.

Variegated Musa Pink Nono apparently more cold hardy than expected. Looked like hell two months ago. Namwah is bouncing back already. Most mango trees have died. Only surviving are CAC, Lemon Zest, Dwarf Hawaiian and P-22 which actually has flowered after a hard prune to remove freeze damage. The reverse zone pushers are doing okay. Golden Dorsett and Anna apples both have fruit set. The Florida Grande and Tropic Prince peach trees have some fruit left; however, the local squirrels have virtually cleared them out.

Found a nice Minneola Tangelo tree at Costco today. Need to figure out what I’m going to do with it.

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Why did you choose shenandoah (I’ll need to choose some cultivars for mine). I’ll have five hopefully to graft on to.

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Shenandoah is the most well-known and proven select cultivar available. It takes hot weather and it is late season. All pawpaws selected for the south should be late season cultivars because that means they already prefer to be growing and developing fruit over the hottest months of the year. For that reason I also grow the cultivars Susquehanna, Collins select, and mango. These are either naturally late season or were selected from the wild in the deep south (zones 8-9). Northern pawpaws won't fruit here and often won't survive. Shenandoah is also allegedly delicious and the first ever cultivar released by pawpaw legend Neal Peterson. Pawpaw nerds from up north will scoff at a "basic" variety like Shenandoah in favor of the new KSU hybrid cultivars, but growing named variety pawpaws in South Louisiana is very much an experiment in reverse zone pushing. If I can first actually succeed, I'll graft some riskier cultivars down the road.

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Also, I’ve read when top working like that some people leave some lower branches of the rootstock with leaves to help keep the plant alive while the graft takes…is that not needed?

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It's a calculus depending on time of year, type of plant, and the vigor of the rootstock and scion. The drawback to leaving on "nurse branches" is that they can out compete the graft. The rootstock would much rather just keep doing what it was naturally doing than accept the foreign tissue. Removing the native branches forces it to push through the graft.

Also, deciduous trees like pawpaws save up carbohydrates over the winter in order to push growth in the spring. All the sugars are stored in the roots and woody tissue until it can flush new leaves and make more sugars. This tree has only had leaves for about 2 weeks. When you graft early like this, there should be enough stored energy in the plant to bind with the graft and push new foliage. If I were grafting later in the year when all that energy is used up or if I was working with very low vigor varities I probably would leave on a nurse branch. Lastly, this rootstock is planted in the ground and will be able to push more strongly than one in a pot.

I say all this like I know what I'm doing but I've never grafted a pawpaw before and this may utterly fail. Just using general fruit tree knowledge and trying to apply it to pawpaws.

I dont know what kind of voodoo shite that is but I want pictures later.

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The avacado tree that my wife bought is looking worse and worse. I put it in the Gary's mix recipe soil. Its been in partial sunlight. Leaves are curling and yellowing. Soil feels like it had a little moisture but it isn't bone dry. Is this transplant shock?

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This is an avocado.

I cleft grafted several Pakistan mulberry scions on red mulberry stock this past weekend. Very enjoyable task. Hopefully they will take. I bought a Pakistan tree to plant and it needed a hard prune anyways, so might as well practice. Next year I’ll be attempting loquat, mulberry, and white sapote. Do you have a trustworthy source for scion wood?

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Should I repot in a smaller pot or just wait ut out?

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I would wait it out. If your stuff is full of sand and minerals it shouldn't be root rot. Should just be stress.