Looks like you are still loaded with lychees. Now I kind of wish I would have waited until Gerry was down to come down. I thought the lychees may be done by then. He is coming next weekend right? You have a lot more mangoes on some of your trees than I remember when I was there. How do you like the Gold nugget mangoes? I had a nursery ship me one by accident last year so I am curious how the fruit is.

Wow Harry,
as usual, incredible yard. Dont even know where to begin, kwai muk sizing up nicely, Ilama looking amazing, Falang would be hard to believe if you didn't have photos. Sooo many beautiful lychees. The plus side to your lack of mango fruits, the fruits you have will get all the tree's energy.

-Ethan

nice. i bet you watch that illama like a hawk.

Harry, any opinions on Golden Lippens and Hatcher?

jsvand5, I tried Gold Nugget last year and was relatively unimpressed, kind of a bland mango to me. They do appear to be productive trees though.

gold nugget is a late season mango and because of that usually gets alot of rain and is sometimes watery tasting

AWESOME Pictures Harry!! Of course my favorites are always the Mangoes and Lychees :o) Thanks for the update!

Looking good Harry. BTW my dragonfruit finally woke up and has about doubled in size over the last week or two.

Harry, as always, thanks for posting your pics. We get great delight from seeing your wonderful collection!

Best regards,
Bluepalm

Thanks, all for the kind words.

John.....haven't heard from Gerry, so not sure what his plans are. He's been back and forth trying to work something out. Solution.....come down again when he's here. You said you had to go to Miami to deliver some snakes. Fairchild's Mango Festival is this weekend coming.

John and Squam:

Gold Nuggett is a decent mango. It doesn't win any first place ribbons, but it is a nicely flavored mango with no fiber. With the rains in the later part of the season it can have some of its flavor washed out. I haven't had Hatcher yet, so I'll let you know when I do. It is supposed to be good.

Harry

HM-

Very nice..i like your updates...only reason i browse this forum (not that i hate everyone else, i just like your pics).

Did you see Miami had the warmest June on record? That has got to help, although i'm guessing its not good for the electricity bill :)

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/mfl/

Great pics Harry! I never tire of seeings photos of your mangoes and lychees! ( :

Happy 4th July Everyone!

Bo

Harry-

Do you recall the lowest temp at your house this winter? Asking about the Garcinia intermedia, did it receive any cold damage?

Great pics, of course!

FrankTank:

Yes, I saw that statistic and felt every last degree of the heat this past month. Junes's heat esclipsed the preious all time average high which I believe was for an August. Florida Power and Light was handsomely paid for June, for sure.

Tony:

Glad to hear the dragonfruit cutting is taking off for you. As I told you, once they get going, they grow like weeds. I have had some that put on about 8 feet in a year.........and once there are multiple leads, it grows geometrically.

jb fla:

Where my plant is, on one of the highest part of my otherwise very low property, I would say that the low was about 29. My truck was on about the same level in the yard and it had a fairly thick sheet of ice in the bed on two different mornings. There was absolutely no damage on the Garcinia...not even a dropped or yellowing leaf.

Great pictures Harry! Happy 4th of July Everyone! Tomorrow is going to be 102 F here in PA. I'm sweating like crazy. Lucky you for not having to shade your trees. I'm going to put up my shade cloth now. I don't know if my potted trees can survive the super hot sun or not. Only one day not watering and some trees including my lychee wilted.

hi harry,

great pics, as usual ;-)

i would like to know your opinion about these fruits:

-garcinia intermedia
-lychee bengal
-lychee bosworth 3
-illama

by the way, are you growing garcinia madruno? my girlfriend says it's very tasty, and as far as i know, the plant should do well in subtropical climate..

felipe

Felipe:

Thanks for the kind words. You asked about:

garcinia intermedia ......beautiful and easy to grow tree/bush. Very attractive and prolific in fruiting. The taste is too heavily skewed to the sour side for me...not enough sweetness and much too little flesh as the result of very large seeds.

-lychee bengal.....fairly large fruit, but has the largest seeds of all the lychees I grow. The flesh that is there is very nicely flavored. It bears in the mid to late lychee season which makes it worth growing for me.

-lychee bosworth 3.....a/k/a kwai mai pink.....I haven't had much success growing the tree....not sure why. I have one tree that is very small that gives me about 15 or so undersized fruits a year. The original air layer was from the tree at Bill Whitman's home. Unfortunately, my tree got run over by a truck when it was young and seems not to ever have recovered completely. But then again, I have 2 Kwai Mai Pinks from Fairchild and another source and those trees are even more stunted than the one that fruits. And, these oterh two never got hit by the truck. I love the flavor of it. And the best thing I can say about it is that Bill Whitman...who could have had anything in his collection, grew three cultivars of lychee (at least when I was last to his house about 15 years ago)......Bosworth 3, Kaimana and Emperor.

-illama.....very interesting fruit and tree with its diverse foliage. The ripe fruit is very good, but not very meaty. The fruits tend to split and get eaten by the bugs before we get to have them. They have a creamy raspberry flavor that is reminiscent of raspberry cheescake. Mine is growing on an incompatible rootstock (pond apple, a. glabra) and they may be having some negative effect on the tree overall.

Regarding garcinia madruno a/k/a charichuela....I tried it at Bill Whitman's. The fruit is more in balance between sweet and sour than intermedia, however it suffers the same lack of flesh and very large seeds and that makes it a marginal fruit for me. I think it may grow better at altitudes greater than my 6 feet above sea level as all of my attempts to grow it from seed were not successful. I think I even bought a fairly large seedling years ago from somewhere and promptly killed it. Again, interesting tree and fruit, but something I have given up on for the above reasons.

Harry

thank you very much, harry!

are you 100% sure that bosworth 3 is kwai mai pink? i don't want to buy the same plant twice :-))

i'm not a fan of tard fruits, neither. once i tried to germinate seeds of g. intermedia, without success. i don't think i will try again ;-)

felipe

pikorazi
yes Bosworth 3 is also called Kwai Mai Pink, its an Australian cultivar so it has mixed results here in South Florida from what i can tell.

from what i read, Mauritius was originally thought to be a Chinese cultivar Kwai mi but later was found to be Tai So.

i have tried many of Harrys varieties this weekend. Bengal was probably my least favorite because of the huge seed and scant flesh that sometimes clinged to it.

Kaimana is a large lychee normal size seed and is dry when cracked, not leaky. good flavor

Brewster flesh is less firm. flavor is excellent, superior to Mauritius and Hak Ip imo, which can have a lingering taste.

Garnet was another excellent flavored lychee

Harry
i didnt try the Emperor. how is the flavor compared to the other varieties? i hear it is inferior here. Bill Whitman may have explored growing emperor after trying the fruit in Asia. i hear lychees vary greatly according to their region and climates. reading his book it seems he has grown and replaced alot in his yard through the years and liked to experiment more than anything.

bryan,

thanks a lot for the information :-)

felipe