Gardening with Tropical Fruit

June 2006

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

This month everything in the landscape should be fertilized for the upcoming summer season. Use good quality complete fertilizers containing all micro nutrients and if you have newly planted trees you can fertilize every other month for the first 6 to 9 months to get them well established.

This month also officially begins our summer rainy season and we should get more regular rainfall now which would offset the very dry conditions we’ve had up till now. If the rains don’t start on schedule, make sure trees are irrigated at least once or twice a week to sustain normal growth.

This is a good time of year to install new trees into the landscape and if you want to do budding, grafting, air layering and other forms of propagation, this is an excellent time for those activities as well.

If you have seed from fruits that are maturing now, these can be planted as well to get new plants available for yourself or to share with friends.

New growth coming out on fruit trees at this time of year may also attract chewing or sucking pests so inspect trees on a weekly basis in the landscape to check for potential problems.

If you have questions about problems that can’t be answered easily, contact your local Cooperative Extension Service office.