Its alive! My peanut butter fruit sprouting from the roots. That made my day, I thought I had lost both of them. I’ll remember to root somd cuttings before next winter to keep in the green house. Shame my two producing trees are being reset. My Wax Jambu also seems to be coming back from its roots.
Some more good news, my Sugar Belles are going to flower this year. Not sure if they will set fruit this year, but flowering is a good sign. Also planted my papaya backup, my manila tamarind and 4 Kona Sugarloaf pineapple pups.
My Kari starfruit has been very temperamental since receiving it last fall. It grew branches/leaves and dropped them constantly all winter along with random profuse flowering and drop. I finally up potted it mid/late winter (received as 3g) and realized the entire rootball was dried out and it was potted in what had to be 75% sand. Water had simply be running off and around it. I broke it up a lot and maybe 2 weeks later it finally started to keep and color up leaves. Was doing great for a month. A big rain a few weeks ago made it super droopy. Started to yellow again this week…fertilized today and really poked holes around to get the water/fertilizer to absorb in. I think it’s going to take until another up potting winter to really recover and grow some decent roots.
They drop leaves constantly and are pretty weepy and scraggly. At least in pots, in ground they become monsters. Starfruit are very large trees that fruit at 2 feet tall to make you think they stay small.
Planted some new trees out. 4 Ice Cream Beans densely packed, 2 Mamey Sapotes (potentially Canistels), some White Indigo Berries (native relative to Blackberry Jam) to replace my Rouge Berry, a replacement moringa and papaya, and a UF 1-9-42 Lemon. Everything but the lemon is from seed. I also planted some Himalayan Honeysuckle where my Giant Granadilla was. Working on deciding where some guava seedlings and some tamarind might go.
My cutting of my Giant Granadilla died when I transplanted it to a different pot, not sure if I accidently damaged the roots or if the sun was too harsh where I put it. My peanut butter fruit are coming back, as is my wax jambu, 1 ackee and 1 Barbados cherry. Also started some seeds to replace all my Cranberry Hibisicus, Pigeon Pea and West African Sorrel.
Starfruit? I work at a nursery, so we sell the trees. I don’t have one myself, not a fan of the taste, texture or nuerotoxins. I know people make juice or jam with them. They are a high in pectin fruit, so they set really well on their own.
Oh, I love my peanut butter fruit. I don’t get so much fruit where I would do anything other than just eat it fresh. I just eat it, skin and all, and spit the seeds out. They are so good when they are fully ripe and creamy.
OOH, she’s so pretty! Mine is like half that size, or shorter. I’ll up-pot mine this weekend, and we’ll just have to see how she does, lol. Temps are still dipping just below 40, so I’m hesitant to stick her outside just yet, but may throw her in with my potted mango plants in my unheated poly tunnel, since I’ll be moving my citrus and “possibly” my avocados outside.
I wasn’t able to protect my avocados this winter very well, and I assumed they died. But they are coming back with vigor, albeit much limb damage, and near 100% defoliation.
What sized container did you up-pot yours to from the 3gal? I can’t tell from the pic. Looks like 7 or 10, maybe? Mine’s in a 1gal container, but I was thinking of going with 5gal, since I still wanted it portable.
7g. That was because of space issues indoors where it was for winter and because the roots looked horrible, totally dried out, and I figured larger would only divert more water/nutrients from them.
My Catalina did that–completely defoliated, but she’s put on new growth as well! The only one that bit the dust, so to speak, was my Mexicola Grande which was left outside as a test. But the trunk is still green-ish, so maybe it’ll bounce back? I’m gonna wait and see, lol. My others, Catalina, Sharwil, Bacon, Gem, and Ooh LaLa Super Hass, are all fine in my thrown together winter tent–except for the caterpillar who apparently over-wintered in there as well. I swear I go caterpillar hunting every weekend, and each time I think it’s the last one, but then I see leaves that look like they were machinegunned.
Guabiju is stem hardy to around 10 F or potentially lower, though with dieback and probably not much lower or for more than one or two nights. This was with some snow cover as well. Still, pretty impressive.
I did a mix of pine nugget, pine fines, sand, coconut coir and a little compost for the soil. Maybe some perlite. I added more sand since it was sent in such a sand-heavy soil but a lot less than what it was in since it wasn’t doing well. I bought it from Everglades and bought their fertilizer to use- it’s synthetic, maybe 8-3-6? To simplify things (and bc the Everglades fertilizer smells horrid), I plan to feed it either weekly or bimonthly with dilute jacks citrus fertilizer as I plan to start up soon with my citrus and organic maybe once a month or longer. All an experiment. I don’t know that I would emulate anything I’ve done…I still have no idea what I’m doing with it, slowly figuring it out. It really only started to keep branches when I broke up the dead, condensed root ball and got it hydrated and fed.
Thanks for sharing your mix! I’ve used many different combinations for my potting mix over the years.
I’m not a fan of coco coir, simply because I used it in my early years and lost a few citrus to root rot because it eventually turns to mushy sludge. So I prefer peat moss. I’m also not big on sand, because it makes my pots super heavy. I tend to use peat moss, perlite, pumice/and or Leca. All much lighter weight for me. Then I top dress with a layer of compost (mixture of worm castings, cow manure, mushroom compost, azomite) and finish with some kind of mulch.
Pic 1 - This is my Kari when I received her on Tuesday, from Lara Farms. She looked kinda raggedy.
Pic 2 - The yicky leaves I pruned off, because I worry about diseases and junk, and because, ya know, aesthetics.
Cool, yeah I took one of mine and put it in an exposed location with zero protection. Kinda looks like it might be root hardy what with the spec of green there:
Mine is like half that size, or shorter. 
I’ll up-pot mine this weekend, and we’ll just have to see how she does, lol. Temps are still dipping just below 40, so I’m hesitant to stick her outside just yet, but may throw her in with my potted mango plants in my unheated poly tunnel, since I’ll be moving my citrus and “possibly” my avocados outside. 
But the trunk is still green-ish, so maybe it’ll bounce back? I’m gonna wait and see, lol. My others, Catalina, Sharwil, Bacon, Gem, and Ooh LaLa Super Hass, are all fine in my thrown together winter tent–except for the caterpillar who apparently over-wintered in there as well. I swear I go caterpillar hunting every weekend, and each time I think it’s the last one, but then I see leaves that look like they were machinegunned. 
She’s just hanging out in my office until I up-pot her and take her outside this weekend.
