Aloha Chris, that’s great! Have a good visit.
Hope your vanilla orchid is doing well. Have you ever gone to the Merry Monarch fest in Hilo? Maybe next year I will go. (It is a large cultural hula festival).
My efforts growing here have been fairly challenging. My mango attempts have failed. I can start seeds, the plants do well for a bit but then drop all the leaves. My graft attempts all failed and the wonderful polyembric Florida seedlings died. My pomegranates never flowered so poof, done. Plus huge disease magnets. My citrus that I bought are surviving but nothing exciting. Using DE helped vs the aphid herding ants. I’m going to try neem and spinosad to see if I can get a grip on things. My figs are growing fine so far but they are getting rust this wet winter. The bugs never take time off here lol. Luckily the lemon and lime are happy. Maybe I will try for mangoes again in the future.
Is the drop in temps of only a few degrees below freezing likely to damage my early plum/cot/pluots that haven’t opened yet, but are on their way. Several days of just slightly below freezing are forecast.
Should I be worried about the recent drop in temps?
@Quill
It’s a steep learning curve where HI insects and diseases are ready to pounce! The fact that lemons and limes are easy is great - that’s a huge family of plants! My son’s neighbor has a huge 10’x10’ finger lime - a beautiful landscape specimen.
I’ll send you some pics of my son’s menagerie of plants, granted that his hot Puna location is very different than your mild Maui uplands. I think he said that the vanilla vine has taken off and is climbing up into the forest. Will need to bring it back to ground level so that it can be hand pollinated. I want to time one of my visits for that effort!
There’s a Master Gardener and Ohia fest in Hilo so I’ll be happy. Great to hear from you!
Chris
Overnight low dropped to 27.
My loquats are covered. I saw hummingbirds this morning try hard to get at the flowers. I hope this means they are not damaged
Do you have any kind of a spray schedule for your stone fruit? I read that Bordeaux treatment is effective at preventing canker on apricots. I also read that an even better prophylactic for canker is to mix copper with the ziram. I realize that ziram is not popular amongst organic gardeners, but Bordeaux treatment is considered fairly tame since it’s just lime and copper. I spray my puget gold with rotating applications of Bordeaux treatment, ziram and dormant oil. Some nice fruit spurs emerged last summer so hopefully I’ll see blooms and fruitlets this season.
I don’t think there is any treatment for bacterial canker once it inside the tree. Last week I removed 2yr a peach (Oregon Curl Free) which had canker at the graft union when I bought it as a 1 gallon sapling in the next two years it spread along the trunk and two scaffolds.
I don’t doubt it. That’s why I focus on prophylactic treatments.
As the great Benjamin Franklin ‘supposedly’ once said: “one once of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
Of course, spraying doesn’t necessarily guarantee you’ll avoid infection in the orchard. But what else is to be done? It’s at least worth a shot. Thus far I haven’t heard or a better option.
I am vigilante these days, and since I began, I haven’t seen anything too radical. Plus aphids once, scale in the greenhouse, and mites on the outdoor citrus. Spraying cleared up everything, and preventive follow up has kept them from reoccurring.
Cool, was wondering cause you keep saying the cali varieties are better. Thinking about lining my driveway with feijoa, but i also want good tasting fruit
Maybe the New Zealand varieties do better in the heat. I was reading Marta’s blog before ordering some scion wood and in one of the tastings I think it was Kaiteri picked at the top and I think it included at least one of your winners in the tasting.
I am 8A, mediterranean climate, 4200 elevation, short season with acidic soil.
I thought I would try here, but I am looking for what y’all think is the best chestnut by eating quality?
Is it Chinese, American or European hybrid?
I’m talking about eating quality and the only other thing I would want is easy to peel.
I am not sure if I have to worry about blight or not, which is holding me up.
I DM’d a chestnut expert earlier this week before posting on main page and now here. Maybe they left or are simply not checking the forum.
Any opinions on which I should look at?
I am not even sure if I should focus on Chinese, American or European hybrids……
I’ve seen a lot of recommendations, but when I would look, they wouldn’t have the same location or climate as I do and I just want to make sure I get the best possible tasting one for my location because I only want to get 2-4 trees max.