Gardening with Tropical Fruit

APRIL 2005

By Gene Joyner, Extension Agent
Palm Beach County Cooperative Extension Service

A number of tropical fruits that are blooming this time of year have set a surprisingly large amount of new fruit which people didn’t expect since the trees had a lot of damage from the fall hurricanes. Mango crops on a lot of trees look great and in some cases lychee and longans are setting well, too.

In any case if you forgot to fertilize last month make sure that the trees are fertilized so that they develop the fruit and don’t abort it due to the trees being undernourished. This time of year many people are doing grafting or air layering and this is a great time of year for any type of propagation practices. If you’re planting seeds, make sure you have well drained potting media since if the media is kept too wet often seeds will rot or you will get very low germination.

Check new growth on some plants for signs of insect activity. There seems to be a lot more weevil activity now chewing new growth of many types of tropical fruits as well as ornamental plants. There’s not a good control for that at present and it never kills trees, but it does give the trees an undesirable appearance in the landscape.

If you want to add trees to the landscape, many nurseries have good inventories this time of year of your favorites and by planting them now they can have the full benefit of our long growing season to establish well before the next winter. Make sure on trees when they’re planted that they’re in well drained locations since we may have a wet summer and trees often if they’re in standing water can suffer root damage.