WOA.. im envious, looks alot like heaven to me :o)

thanks for sharing :)

absolutely stunning lychee trees.

im most jealous of your imam pasand mango.

i have an Alano Sapodilla too, didnt realize it would get so big.

thanks for the pics.

Merry Christmas Harry!
I never realized the lychee gets so large! Quite impressive. I thought that maybe if I liked the fruit I might consider trying to grow one in the next 10 years. I don't know after seeing that pic! I don't know too much about sapodilla but the fruit description doesn't sound appetizing too me. How long before your Martinez mango is ripe? They seem to be progressing very fast. I know you said that this was the first to bloom. I didn't know Cogshall was that big! I do remember on my tag it says it can grow to twenty five feet. I guess it is like the Lancetilla. They are both supposed to be condo mango? Well I know they say that the reason is that they can be pruned to smaller size. I love your tropical fruit orchard. You must have a few ladders to pick the fruits!
Andrew

Harry,
Great pics. Any idea when any of those mammey apples will ready? Do you have a jujube tree?

oh btw murahilin, the jujube seeds i received from you have germinated, i'll post pictures when they get a bit bigger :o)

Merry Christmas everyone!

Harry, you are making me cry....are you going to share some of those fruits too....lol. :)

Just feel so sad all or a sudden since I will have to wait and wait for my trees to bear fruits. :(

wow Harry- amazing pics- didnt realize your lychee trees were so mammoth. how do you get the fruit from the upper portions of the tree. do u have a cherry picker?

i believed i spotted an airlayer with my name on it on one of your mango trees!. speaking of names, do you label your trees? if not, how do you keep track of which one is what?

happy holidays sir harry

Beautiful trees Harry. Stunning actually. The mango that was "pruned" back by Wilma really took off. The Thai's actually prune their older mango trees back...removing nearly all of the branches and what is left have been drastically cut back to within a few feet of the trunk. They do this on older trees that have started to slow down production. The insane prune rejuvenates the tree and they soon start producing as they did many years before. They've also shortened the tree making it easier to care for and pick the fruit. I saw this while in Suphattra Land. Couldn't understand what the heck they were doing! I then started noticing it just about everywhere we went.

Thanks for the picks and hope everyone has a great Christmas. J

Thanks everyone for the kind words and Merry Christmas to all!

Gerry:
I do not have a cherry picker, but I do have a 16' orchard ladder. That, and a pick and hold pruner/picker with a 10 foot extention allows me to reach fruit 20 or more feet high. Higher than that and the fruit is allocated to feeding the birds and any other creature more nimble than I. Yes.....you do see an airlayer with your name on it on the Maha Chanook. I am not sure it will take, but we'll see. On labeling the trees......yes, they were all labled at the time of planting. Unfortunately, after years of weathering and several hard blows from hurricanes, the labels are mostly gone or unreadable. I have purchased new metal tags for the re-labeling project.......but, time hasn't been alotted to get that project done. In the mean time, I have most of the names engrained in my brain. There is one section of Thai mangos that I am a bit fuzzy about (I have to wait until I see the fruit to make the positive ID), but otherwise I know what everything is.

Kristy:
Just before Hurricane Wilma struck us, I had applied for an Agricultural Exemption on part of the property surrounding my home. This exemption requires an Agricultural business purpose for the land and gives a large tax break on property taxes. I have sold fruit to locals for a couple of years before the hurricane to comply with that business purpose. Wilma put me out of business for two years with no fruit to speak of. Now, with several hurricane-free years, my trees are finally back to good condition and I will be back in the swing of being able to sell fruit. So, there should be fruit available this year.

Murahilin:
Not sure when the Mammey Apple will be ready. It comes and goes with bloom cycles throughout the year. I only know when they are ready by when the fruit softens up or falls off.
Yes, I do have two Jujubes. The first was sent to me from Thailand but was damaged badly and then started growing from the rootstock into a large rather thorny fruitless tree. I recently hacked it back and turned it into another living trellis for a dragon fruit. The other jujube is a small, newly planted tree from Excalibur. It has bloomed, but not fruited yet.

Andrew:
Not sure when Martinez mango will be maturing. The cold weather we may or may not get will be determinative of how fast it matures. Today our temperature range is supposed to be 81 as a high and way down to 61 tonight. Brrrrrrr!
On the size of these trees......lychees can get huge. There is a property in my town, east of me which was being run as a nursery, but was recently purchased and I think is now up for re-sale. It had what I heard was the original Brewster lychee grove that was planted in Florida by Dr. brewster himself in the early 1900's. The grove was amazing. From a distance you could see the ridge of lychee trees....they looked like a lush green mountain range. The trees were about 75 feet tall. The owner of the nursery said that the trees drew people from Eastern Asia each year and that he would constantly be chastized by the Chinese people that came in. They were very upset that he allowed the trees to get that big. I guess in China, the thinking was to keep the trees at a more manageable height and that by allowing them to just grow rampant, they felt that there was guilty of improper care of these trees. So....don't be put off by the size. I am told that they can be grown very successfully as large hedges. On Cogshall...remember mangos can also get to be 50 foot trees or more. When a tree maxes out at 25 without pruning, that is very manageable and with pruning can be kept in a pot in a condo.

Really enjoyed looking at all your gorgeous fruit trees! It is definitely a small piece of heaven. Thanks for posting!
Wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas!!

Hope to see your trees in person and most of all taste the fruits...Harry!!

Merry Christmas Harry.

Thanks for sharing the pics. Love your trees. Would love to see your harvest pics when the time comes :)

Anyone have a mallika mango? Is it flowering yet for anyone in S Fl?

Murahilin:
I have Mallika and I noticed the first blooms on it a week ago today. The tree is not in full bloom as of yet, it is just beginning.

Harry

Harry,
Is it hard to air layer the mango? I am just curios.

Andrew:
Its not hard to put the airlayer on. The question is......will it root and provide a sufficent root system to propagate the tree. This is the first time I have actually tried it. It is supposed to work....in theory.

Harry

Harry,
I have airlayered before but not with fruit trees. I was wondering if the heat would hurt the developing roots, probobly not this time of year. I did airlayer Schlumbergia and some other plants, just to see if it would work well. I had success, but I think most everything I tried was easy. I just wanted to see if I could learn that skill. My manngoes are looking good so far. I have not had a flush on Julie yet. I have decided to wait on buying more mango trees for now. I want to make sure that I can keep these three happy for now.
Andrew

WOW Harry,
your yard and trees are amazing! I need to look into tickets to FL, I saw a nice spot for a tent under your alano tree. :)

On your Imam Pasaad mango graft did you bend the top over or did it have an accident? If it was intended did you bend it to push growth into your graft? Still haven't had luck grafting mangoes yet.

I'm going to show my trees your pictures....hopefully it will inspire them.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all,
-Ethan

Thanks Ethan. The bent stem on the rootstock mango was not an accident. I will usually do this to stimulate the pushing of the buds on the scion once it has been at least 1 month and it is still green....especially if the buds have not pushed themselves. In this case, the scion actually had some portion of it that wanted to die. Luckily two of the buds at end of the scion remained viable with one pushing out nicely (as you can see) and the other getting ready to push now. Of course you don't see the other 8 attempts I had at the same time that didn't take.....I didn't think anyone would be interested in my failures :-) Keep trying those grafts.....practice makes.....well, not perfect, but at least occassionally successful.

Harry

Harry, I think determination in getting the grafting technique right when beginning is essential. I had gotten to a point where I needed to top work a longan tree and I wasn't going to take no for an answer, eventually I got the hang of it. I think mango was not as hard to do after struggling with the longan for months.
Ronald

thank you Harry,
did you use chip/t-bud for your grafts?

-Ethan

Ethan:

No...it was a side veneer graft.

Harry

I just planted a cogshall