Hi Dan:

What variety of white sapote did you order?

Harry

Harry,

I ended up ordering Redland. It seems lots of people grow Suebelle, but PI doesn't carry that variety.

Dan

Dan:

I'll be very interested to hear how the Redland White Sapote tastes when it is container grown. Here's my experience with that cultivar as was posted by me in another thread sometime ago:

With regard to the Redland white sapote, when I first tried it, Chris Rollins at the Fruit and Spice Park was calling it "Not SES 1". Obviously, alluding to originally thinking it was SES 1 and learning later that it was very different. Anyway, I tried the fruit and thought it was great. It was soft ball sized and very creamy and sweet without any bitter after taste. I took budwood and grafted it at home. That was 15 years ago and I now have a 20 foot tree that blooms regularly, set fruits sporadically and matures fruit infrequently. And, when the fruit has matured, it always has a strong bitter after taste. I don't know why this is. Perhaps it has something to do with the soil conditions or the rootstock. I posed this issue on Yahoo Rarefruit and the best anyone could tell me was to mulch heavily and consider some minor elements. I recently had to hack the tree back considerably since it was blocking TV reception. I will give it one more year to show me something worth while or it will be time for the White Sapote Chain Saw Masacre.

Good luck growing yours!

Harry

Harry,

Thanks for the interesting reply. I'm still doing research to determine the best mix to pot the tree in..you said the bitterness might be due to your soil conditions, what type of soil do you have? Hopefully my Redland doesn't turn out the same way!

Do you know anything about Homestead, Smathers or Younghans white sapotes? These are the other varieties PI has. I haven't been able to find much info on any of them.

Dan

Dan:

My soil is a sandy base, just at and above the shallow water table....with lots of limestone rock everywhere, but not a solid layer of it like there is further south of me here in Florida. Above the water, sand and limestone is a thick layer of very organic muck. This muck is a mixture of Everglades swamp left overs mixed with several years of horse farm reside. I doubt you could recreate my conditions...not that you'd even want to.

On the other varieties, I have had Homestead and Younghan's Gold. Homestead was good, but not as good as the original Redlands fruit I tasted at the Fruit and Spice Park. I had one Younghan's Gold fruit in my Sub Tropical Fruit Culture class one year. It was simply the best White Sapote I have ever had. I have tried to grow it, but the two prior attempts ended in failure. I have a newly grafted tree that is growing now, but it keeps having die back and hasn't gained any appreciable height in the three years that I have it in the ground. The new growth flushes out nicely....matures, then starts to turn yellow and then falls off. So, I am beginning to feel a bit jinxed when it comes to White Sapote.

Harry

Harry,

This is just an educated guess, but could the bitterness of the sapotes be caused by the abundance of limestone? Alkaline substances tend to taste bitter, perhaps Redland is sensitive to this. Or perhaps my chemistry knowledge can't be applied directly to sapote trees ;-)

On another note, I got a reply from Jene's about their shipping price, and although it did take a few days for her reply, she seemed nice enough. I may have spoken too soon about their customer service. I'll be placing an order with them as well tomorrow.

Dan

Dan:

Not sure about the chemistry, but the soil at the Fruit and Spice Park, where I first tasted the Redland, has got to be more alkaline than my soil.....so I am thinking the answer lies elsewhere.

Harry

Harry,

I'd say that rules out my theory. Hopefully my PI tree will bear fruit this season, I'm anxious to sample it.

Dan