YaY!!!!!!!!!

I'm so excited! I love growing tropical fruits as well, and am growing the following:

Jackfruit
Coffee
Santol
Black Sapote
Zapote
Soursop
Tropical Guava
Rambutan
Lychee
Mangosteen
Mango
Starfruit
Starapple
Passionfruit
Banana
Key Lime
Calamansi
Yuzu
Mabolo
Loquat
And trying to germinate Pulasan.
These are of course in various stages of growth, and I'm going to try to post pictues when I can. :)

Tell me about your mangosteens. How grown, where obtained, size, age, care(soil, feeding, etc). I've done some experimenting with mine. Just want to see what others are doing. When I was paying attention...prior to trying to build a greenhouse, I was agressively feeding the seedlings to force growth. Foliar spraying twice a week along with liquid suppliments when watering. Seemed to be working some. I even used Super Thrive. I noticed that after using this, the new growth had much narrower leaves.

ohiojay"I noticed that after using this, the new growth had much narrower leaves."

Is this good or bad?

John

Beats me. I've read where increasing the percentage of sun can affect leaf size as well. I believe any growth out of a mangosteen is good. They are so agonizingly slow that any growth is cause for a beer or two to be opened! Once I finish all my projects, I can get back to seriously observing what I do.

Lol, it's definitely not in the "look how big it's getting, it should fruit next year" pile. I bought the seedling from a nursery in Puerto Rico through the net. My gosh, if you saw what people bid for a similar seedling on ebay you would go nuts. The 70 dollar range! Anywho, I've seen pictures of the more mature trees, and the leaves should be getting wider like Soursop leaves. I'd say it's about a year old and 8 inches? It put out a set of new leaves in/around June, and a few spots got burnt, but the rest eventually turned green. It started putting out newer leaves a couple weeks ago. I have it in almost full sun, and I water it heavily which I think they like as long as it all drains out. Also, I spray the leaves for extra humidity. I've been contemplating putting a plastic bag over it for extra humidity and moving it into partial shade. Oh, and I have it in a mix of mulch and Shultz potting mix, and I fertilize with 10-10-10 once in a while. :)

tropicaliste,I wonder which "zapote" you got?

Trop, since I'm here in the so sunny, so warm area of Ohio... yeah, right, I had all my plants in during the winter. The mangosteens had their own little greenhouse inside the plant room. I setup a humidifier for them! I even took the good one out of the bedroom and swapped out one I didn't think performed as well. My wife was a tad bent over that move. "You care more for those plants than you do me!". No... not really, they just need more care and pampering!! I just repotted mine the other night. There were some that I cut off a lot of the tap root a while back and they "seemed" to be putting out more roots than the others that continued to just grow a longer tap root. I cut them all back quite a bit this time, added fungi, bat guano, and worm casting to the spag peat mix...a little shredded pine bark mulch as well. I'll either fire the little bast#$ds up or kill them! I have to encourage roots that spread rather than going deep since they will most likely stay in containers. Once the greenhouse if finished, I can get them back into a high humidity environment. Our summer humidity has been up and down, but more on the down side lately.

Patusho: Manikara Zapota. We just call it "Chico".

Ohiojay: I gotta tell ya, that's a dedicated gardener! lol. I didn't know about trimming the tap root. I'm a bit worried now since I've planted my "bigger" seedlings in large bins, and didn't know to trim tap roots. I thought that that would kill the trees. I guess there's not much I can do now since they've been potted up. Maybe my very own conservatory will fall out of the sky and I can plant them in the ground? :)
BTW it's been breezy lately here, and humidity hasn't been such an issue.

Don't go cutting the tap roots just yet! I got away with it once. I was a little more aggressive this time. No guarantee that I just didn't sign their death sentence. I'm going to load them up with fertilizers that encourage root growth. We'll see. Surprisingly, they don't seem to mind being repotted at all. Just have to be careful of the roots...what little they have.

I actually potted it too high in the pot. About 1 1/2 inches of the tap root is exposed. I guess I thought that the dirt under the roots would sink down, but I think the dirt around it did. I guess i'll just put more on top for whatever room there is to fill up, then add some mulch. It's growing fine regardless.