Good for you - great time to visit!
I, too, am curious if loquats were seen in Kona, Hilo, or a higher elevation area of Big Island. When I was there in Jan, I couldn’t find loquat seedlings for sale at local outdoor markets.
Also I was looking for Poha seeds/starts but never found any ….although I think they grow all over.
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One loquat has a cluster of flower buds that have not opened. It hasn’t really started leafing out yet, but looks alive. I’m not sure if those flower buds are dead or not. I think the graft is still alive.
I’m in SoCal, but since I got my Shambala from Ram, I thought I would post the photo of my fruits.
Also have a Kanko grafts from Adam that has fruits on my trees. The loquat that is ripe now on my tree is the Big Jim, the others are still just starting to turn yellow or are still green.
Kanko
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Here’s my Big Jim fruits.
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Did you get to try one loquat fruit there? How does it taste?
So far I only tasted from a seedling tree. Not the best fruit.
I am hopefully visiting a fruit collector tomorrow who grows many varieties. I will have a better idea.
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Awesome to see Shambala fruiting for you. My fruits are still very small.
Yes, thanks. I should be able to taste the fruits soon. I’m making a table of brix for all the varieties I have that will be ripening this season. Last year my seedling trees had the highest brix (29).
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Is it feasible to keep a loquat under 10 feet tall? I have a covered patio with a polycarbonate roof that stays above freezing even when we drop into the teens. I believe a loquat would produce plenty of fruit if I plant it in the ground between the two buildings. I’m just concerned about the height. Most loquats where I grew up are very tall, above the roof of houses. And how are the roots for foundations?
Loquats don’t get large very fast in my experience. My trees are around 6 years old and are only my 6-8 feet. I like to keep them short.
There are very large trees around town. I too wonder how they got that tall.
I think how tall they get depends on climate, on soil, on sun, on nutrition, on if they are stressed, and so on. On the Islands of Malta and Gozo they seem to grow slow. A lot of them in Malta/Gozo are in places with limited light, in hard clay soil with sand, and with limited rain, I think that those things help to keep them smallish. I myself do not have much experience with loquats yet in a grow bag they grow slow for me.
I’ve seen posts where people say using quince as rootstock helps to control the size, but I’m not sure if that’s true. @ramv, are you growing some on both loquat roots and quince roots, and have you noticed any difference in growth between them?
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I’ve started training my named varieties to grow as a 3-tiered espaliers under cover. (I realized I would soon be out of vertical space!) Those long willowy upright branches can be easily bent to nearly horizontal. Loquats seem to be tip-bearers, so you need a wide expanse. For frost protection I thought I’d arrange lights along the horizontal wire and drape with reemay. That might be easier to assemble that stringing lights through upright branches.
Yesterday I grafted an Int’l Dist. top to a provence quince rootstock. Depending on its growth pattern, I’ll try to espalier that one too.
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Mine are mostly on loquat seedling rootstock. Some are on quince. I prefer seedling loquat but quince works fine and is easier to find around here. Seedling is a bit more vigorous which I prefer.
Regardless, loquats can be kept small with only occasional pruning. They are not rampant growers in our climate.
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I thought you had told me you prefer them on quince rootstock specifically for size control since they can get so large otherwise.
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I don’t remember. Maybe I misspoke then. Quince is still a good rootstock.
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Yes, you can keep the loquat tree about 10 ft in ground. I have my multi-grafted Big Jim tree that is over 30yrs old and I keep it trimmed at about 12 ft so I can have more branches to graft all my varieties on it. If you trim the top to a fixed height, it will stay around that height. I let my seedling trees (in ground) grow as tall as it wants until I get the first fruits, then I cut it back to around 10ft. If you don’t trim the top of the seedling tree, it is easy for it to get to 20 ft in ground in 7-10 yrs.
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Thanks for this example. Would you say loquat is a tip bearer?
Nop, loquats will flower on all new branches for the year, then the fruits hangs for the next 4-6 months until ripe. You will only get fruits inside the canopy if you have other smaller new branches that grew for that year. But the fruits do only grow on the tips of each new branch so maybe your statement is correct.
So, if you trim off the new branches inside your tree canopy then you will only have heavy fruits on the tip branches. Here’s how much fruit you can get if you let all the tip branches hold fruits like I do on my multi-grafted tree. I will need to remove some fruits now so my branches don’t break off.
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Looks so good! Thanks for explanation - that will make training easier to visualize!