Gardening with Tropical Fruit

August 2006

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

This month many people are noticing increased problems due to the effects of our long rainy season. Some people have been getting excessive amounts of moisture and this is causing problems in poorly drained sites. Fruit splitting is on the increase, too, in many tropical fruits that are approaching maturity this time of year. Next month unfortunately will be even wetter as September is our wettest month during the entire year because of the close passage of many tropical storms.

If you have trees that haven’t been fertilized in a while, this month you should apply a light fertilization to get them through to our fall feeding at the end of October. This is a good time for any type of propagation such as rooting cuttings, doing budding and grafting, or air layering and, of course, seeds planted now generally have very favorable conditions for rapid germination.

If you want to add plants to the landscape, there’s no reason not to do all types of landscape installation of additional trees. Just make sure if you’re not getting regular rain that they are watered faithfully for the first two or three weeks until they become established.

Some disease problems may be on the increase due to our high temperatures and frequent moisture, but most affecting tropical fruits are not life threatening and the plant will make a recovery.

Next month when we start to have a more serious risk of hurricanes you’ll have to be careful about making sure trees have been properly pruned earlier and if you still have pruning to be done complete that as soon as possible.