Sunworshipper - Nice Clean Yard! Love the 'scaping you did all around the property, and the fruit trees all look so healthy.

I had a Florida Prince peach tree that gave me a few small NON-free stone peaches this year - what kind do you have?

mangodog

amazing job- very rare to see a fruit yard that also looks pretty- your yoard is really beautiful. great job.

Beautiful Yard SunW!! Your yard is so neat and manicured! The memories of the "freeze" is a distant memory now,lol...but we know its just lurking around the corner, darn it!

Your fruit trees all looks so healthy and growing very nicely...the rest of the plants are doing nicely as well. Thanks for posting! Great job!

Sunworshiper

Nice big yard with beautiful fruit trees. You've done a great job of landscaping, enjoy!

JF

Your yard is a stunner and it is amazing how much it has filled in, esp with all the under planting.

congrats,
-Ethan

Beautiful yard! Great job.

Thanks everyone for the compliments=) I put a lot of thought into trying to make my yard both fruitful & beautiful. It is so fun to see it growing in.

Nancy, I'm definitely trying to get everything to grow as much as possible this year before having to think about cold again...I've learned a lot about different kinds of fertilizer this year and am pushing for maximum growth this season=)

Mangodog - My peach is a Tropic Sweet. Haven't tasted the fruit yet, but so far it is a great tree. I initially bought a Flordabelle, which I have since chucked. The Flordabelle got shothole & defoliated early last season (link below) & this spring it only sent out 4 leaves, which immediately got diseased. The Tropic Sweet in comparison is very vigorous & much healthier. Also its flowers are prettier - big and pink rather than small & white. None of the low chill peaches are freestone, but Tropic Sweet is supposed to be a semi-cling. I'm hoping that it can mature one or two fruits next year for tasting=) How did your Florida Prince fruits taste? And did your really mean "had"? Did you get rid of your tree?

Here is a link that might be useful: Sad Flordabelle Peach

Sun,

Love your lychee tree, looks incredibly healthy!

Sun W - you must have done your research on the peachy predicament. I didn't know all the low chill were "clingy" types....otherwise I'm not sure i would have wasted the space.....

No, I still have the florida Prince - 1 1/2 years old now, 8 little golf ball peaches - yes, they were tasty but BLAAAAAAH what a mess trying to cut or eat them.....

My 5-n-1 low chill grafted peach procuced exactly 2 peaches that are still ripening - golf balls too....my 4-n-1 apple, only the Einsheimer (sp) has 4 small ones and the 4-n-1 pear NO fruit.....I think I planted them too close to the house, but I had this bare area in the front courtyard....I still may put mangos there and move these to god knows where in the crowded landscape......

sigh...mangoGrrrrrrr

Angela, your gardens are just stunning. Gratz for all your successful work & playing in the sun! Sure beats staring at a computer screen, eh?

~dianne

Thanks nullzero. It's an emperor lychee. Can't wait until it is big enough to support fruit! It bloomed like crazy this year, but I didn't let it set. I'm very impressed with it. Have heard that lychees can be sensitive. I'm going easy on the fertilizer - 1 handful per month of Don's "Going Bananas" banana fertilizer as he recommended. And it is in a spot that gets quite a lot of wind. Didn't really know to protect it from wind, so I just let it be to see what happened. So far, doesn't seem at all sensitive to the wind. Fingers crossed it will continue on being nice and healthy=)

MangoDog - Yep, I do very few things spur of the moment. I'm all about researching stuff first. There are some nice charts that show disease resistance, fruit size & pit clingyness.
IFAS Chart
Info on Tropic Sweet
Tropic Sweet is listed as freestone. I bought mine from Mickey at Plant-o-gram. He recommended it as a healthy variety with tasty fruit, but said that while the pit was "freeish" in his opinion it was more of a semi-cling. Like you, I wanted freestone too, but decided I'd accept clingstone in exchange for excellent flavor. For a 1 1/2 year old tree 8 peaches seems pretty good. I bet when your tree gets a bit bigger you'll get bigger fruit, especially if you thin them when they are small. How do you like the 4 & 5 in one type trees? I considered multi-graft trees, but decided it sounded like too much work to keep all the varieties balanced. How old are your trees? I'm curious if the low production is because they are still young trees, or if it has to do with the multi-grafting?

Dianne - sure are right about that! I love wandering about my garden after a long work day of staring at a monitor=)

SunW - all my multi-graft pear, apple and peach are less thatn 2 years old. We'll see if the peach production improves with age...I mean, things should get better all around with a more mature tree, but I am worried we're not getting enough cold for ALL the grafted varieties on each tree to set fruit. If that turns out to be the case, I'll cut completely off any branches that haven't flowered or fruited say by the 3rd year, and just let the one(s) that have grow.....

we'll see...we'll see.....

but right now, we be waitin' on the mangos to fatten....

manGOGreyhound

Wow, Sunworshipper! Awesome job you've done! Are those agapanthus is the first few pictures? How many plants did you start with? Love the lush, repeating feel of them. Also, in the picture of the hong kong orchid tree, is that perennial peanut too (the yellow mass)...I love the effect (and the color!). I really love the way you designed the garden incorporating the edibles while still maintaining a manicured landscape! Did you do it all yourself? It really is beautiful :)

Helen

Mangodog, hard to be patient isn't it? I can't comment on the chill hours, but I'd give your trees 4 years to fruit. With peaches for instance the commercial growers train primary branches the first year, secondary branches the 2nd year, then start allowing limited quantities of fruit the 3rd year. So really if you get any fruit at all on a tree that is less than 3 years old, then that's doing pretty good. Enjoy the mangos!

Thanks Helen. Yes, the big blue globes are Agapanthus. The house I bought had 3 large and neglected clumps that were probably 5-10 years old. I dug them up, divided, and replanted in my borders. Didn't do a count, but I think I have around 50 plants now. Thanks for noticing the repeating feel. That was very intentional. In addition to fruit, I chose all the flowering plants to fit into a blue/orange color scheme. Helps lend coherence to the look. If you look carefully, you can see that the society garlic blooms look very similar to the agapanthus, just smaller. That sort of subtle variety and repeating themes helps to make the space feel peaceful. The orange flowers in front of the Hong Kong Orchid are Bulbine. It is a great plant. Blooms nearly year round, and is very tough. Bees love it - it draws in lots of pollinators. Plants get a lot wider than I thought though - around 4'. The perennial peanut is the green carpet with tiny yellow flowers in the picture of the Manalita mango (picture with a mailbox in the background). Also a great plant, but it is more of a green mass than a yellow flower mass. And yes, with the exception of the concrete curbing, my husband and I did it all ourselves. Here is what we started with:

Hi again Sun-worshipper, now after seeing the before pictures--I'm even more impressed! Are you a Gator (orange and blue)? :) (my repeating colors are pink, pink and some yellow but I'm trying to diversify!)

Thanks Helen! I'm definitely in Gator territory here, but I'm not one. I went to school in Seattle (so I suppose that makes me a Husky), but I'm pretty far from being a sports fan. I'm unlikely to have any idea who's playing who or what sporting season it is at any given time=) I arrived at my color scheme based on expanding what I had - I love bird of paradise flowers, so started there. And the house already had the agapanthus & orange flowered cannas - so it was easy to just expand. Interesting that you are trying to diversify. I had to work to narrow my color palette. It was hard not to want one of everything!