Sounds good. I left mine up to the bees this year and gout ZERO fruit set on the sweetheart even with a mauritius flowering right next to it at the same time. There were probably 50 bees at a time on the tree so it is not due to a lack of pollinators. The Mauritius does have about ten flowers per panicle that are holding fruit so far.

So far, I am rather unimpressed with sweetheart as a fruit bearer. Two trees that I have, one barely bloomed and set no fruit. The other bloomed lightly and set a few fruits. Let's see how they hold on. I have yet to taste the darned things.

Harry

Unfortunate things to hear about this variety, I can only hope to somehow be the exception, I'll let you know in 10years.

-Ethan

jsvand5 and Harry, I'm surprised at the lack of fruiting on your Sweethearts. How large and how long have you had it now? Isn't Lycheesonline located in Florida? Phase and I ordered Sweethearts from Lycheesonline, I think it was last year and they were excellent. I would think that Sweethearts may perhaps do better in California than in Florida but that doesn't explain the success of Lycheesonline's Sweetheart growers.

Phase definitely had a good harvest last year, I think he said he ended up harvesting about 50 or more fruits from his tree and his tree is in bloom again this year. My tree is just finishing up its bloom cycle and so far so good.

jsvand5, with so many bees and the Mauritius Lychee next to your Sweetheart, I'm very surprised that no fruit is holding. Did you notice any ovaries developing at all?

Harry, you said you had small blooms on both trees. Was there perhaps not enough drought stress due to early/late rains? Both Phase and I innoculated our trees with mycorrhizal fungi, I wonder if this helped?

No, nothing at all developed on the sweetheart. My tree is about 6' tall and 6' wide.

The problem with my sweetheart lychee, this year, was that the cold came late. The sweetheart had already begun to push new vegetative flushes. Some turned into blooms mid-way in the process on one of the trees. The other tree just kept pushing out leaves. But prior years have not been much better. And this while other lychee trees in my yard bloomed more profusely than any other year ever. So, that's why I say I am disappointed in it thus far. The trees are still small...relatively speaking, so I am not passing final judgement on it. My fruiting tree is abour 6 feet tall and about 5 feet wide.

Harry

Both of your trees are much larger than mine. My tree is about 4 ft tall and 4 ft wide. The late cold must have been it since the tree was already veging out. Perhaps the previous years, it was still establishing itself. Harry, your Sweetheart tree is awesome and is about triple the volume of my tree. Well, the longer you wait, the sweeter it will be when you finally get to taste them.

simon, great update and cant wait to see your pics. you have great patience and eyesight. i just cant see detail of the pollen sacs releasing pollens.

Simon, i had some triplets and twins last year. but eventually all triplets dropped and the twins either dropped or one of the twins dried up. Only a few twins made it to the final harvest and the fruit quality of twins is generally not as good.

my sweetheart is at the peak of bloom now, and i have left the pollination job totally to the bees. not sure how it will turn out. have not seen many swollen up yet. this year i also have much more males than females which is not the case last year. lets see how it goes.

sweetheart seems to be productive here in CA. last year i got little over 50.

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?

On the twin ovary lychee issue, there seems to be some that start off with two swollen ovaries and only one develops. Others, they both develop, but one begins to out grow and eventually dwarfs the other. Then there are some that get to be full grown twins. I have not noticed any difference in taste or quality between these twin fruits and non-twin fruits. Of course, the dwarf, underdeveloped fruit is not eaten....not at least by me. The size obviously is affected when you have two full grown fruits attached.

Harry

Here are some pics of my Sweetheart lychee in full bloom, many of the ovaries started to grow in size but all of them eventually fell off.

Here is a pic of the triple ovary lychee

Sorry about the small pics, let me try again

Very NICE Simon!! Congrats...hope you get to taste some real soon! Nice bougainvilleas in the background also!

Thanks puglvr1, I didn't even know what those red plants were called! I'm going to be pulling most of those out to make room for all the Mango trees and Lychee trees I plan on putting into the ground. These pics are from several months ago and this Sweetheart has since dropped all of its fruit, perhaps because of the very strange weather we have been having, the coldest July in 40 years I think. Here is another pic of the entire tree.

those bougs are really nice, if youre going to get rid of them dont even bother doing the work yourself, i find almost anything alive i post free on craigslist is dug up and gone in an hour.

if i were you i would at least dig up and keep one nice one, they are nice for trellising if you ever want to make an arbor or a trellised side or trellised accent on that overhang.

That is a very NICE Lychee tree Simon! Love the shape...short and wide,lol... Sorry you didn't get to taste any of the fruits...I lost both my Lychee trees to freeze this year :o) thought one of them would make it...but the new growths on them died as well. I bet you have better luck next year! Sorry to hear you're getting rid of your bougainvillea's...they do have some wicked thorns!! But if its a choice of them or Mango...I choose mangoes too!

I have a nice bonsai one that I love!