bananafan, sorry to hear your Longan didn't do well. I guess somehow longan has more issues growing in Florida -- are you in FL? We in Southern Cal have an easy time with Longan -- i's so easy to grow beside being killed by the very cold below 29F winters. My longan is about 11 yrs old and was killed down to ground. I thought it was a goner and not even care to cut off the stump. Then one day in spring I saw a little thing -- looked like a seedling -- popped up. I opened up the soil to find out it's a seedling or from the death tree and sure enough it was from the deep root of the death tree. I dug up and moved it closer to the wall for protection and couple years later it was over 5 ft tall but skinny leg, then a very cold winter killed it down to ground level. This time I knew it would come back. Sure enough it did and the last 8 years we had no hard winter and now it reaches over 10 feet. Here is the top of the tree with flowers. The second photo is one of the horizontal branches.

Hey Phase, hope both your trees are doing good. This first year that my Sweetheart has bloomed, I noticed that the majority of the flowers were male. There were some females that were the first to open and then mainly males and at the end of the flowering cycle, there were quite a few females. From tasting the store bought lychees, I agree that the twins that make it to full maturity aren't quite as good as the singles. It is good that we are keeping track of how many lychees our trees produce so that people doing searches in the future can count their chickens before they hatch, LOL! My tree is much smaller than yours so I am going to try and count the total amount of lychees currently on the tree and compare this to how many are left, if any, at harvest. I have read somewhere that adding, I forgot, either P or K fertilizer when fruit are small may help fruit retention. I just fertilized with organic bone meal, a source of P and K. I also added some Kelp/Fish emulsion and also some organic sources of chelated Iron to help the leaves develope. I used half the recommended strength of these organic fertilizers but I am still worried I may have overfertilized. Well, if all my fruit drops, I will have definitely learned my lesson. For my Sweetheart, I pollinated most the females because there were no bees around before I moved it to my new house. There were so many males however that its hard to say if I actually did the pollination or if the fruit that is currently holding is from wind pollination. There were probably ~95% male and 5% females this year. Phase, I'm still kind of confused why your Sweetheart is about 1 month behind mine when we only live about 10 miles away. You are closer to the coast, I wonder if that is it?

thanks north tree and puglvr1! you guys are great. I think the wind is the cause then. I didn't know that the new leaves are SO delicate. my SoCal location doesn't get that windy, and I thought I don't need a wind guard here. But at least knowing it's the wind makes me feel better, than worrying about a disease or soil issue. My tree was infested by the scale insects on some branches, and I treated it with light dose of malathion, at around May 17. Many new sprouts were hurt and fell off shortly and it made me feel so bad. But shortly after, even more sprouts came out so I guess it didn't hurt the tree in the long term. puglvr1, from your wind guard, now I know what TLC stands for.

Hi Andi, Here are couple of pictures i just took. Just few weeks ago i was having growth spurt and now nothing at all. I gave them Fox Farm Comeback and Sledge Hammer as i was getting no new growth and was thinking i over feed them. I will try feeding FP once i get it and see how it does. I want it to get ready for next years season with new growth this year. Hi bananafan, Thanks for your reply. It is mostly protected from wind. I gave them Fox Farm trio formula earlier this year and it seems they it did not like it. Will try what Andi suggested and worm casting.