Ugh, 18 degrees tonight. I think tonight might finish of my already heavily damaged avocado's. I have them a little better protected this time and am going to place a few hot water bottles at the base every few hours throughout the night. I am hoping that will get them through the night. I was really hoping to get a few years growth on these things before we had such bad cold spells during the winter.

SB- The pollen should be pretty obvious. The stamen, initially, look very plump, then they change to look dried out. When they look dried out/dusty, that is when the pollen is set to go. I had a ton of males all over, so the pollen was everywhere. The brush looked like it had yellow paint on it at times. If you gently flick the brush with your fingernail (in direct sunlight is best visibility) you'll see a small cloud of them. you could always pollinate the same flower several times like I did...just to be sure. Jay- sorry to hear about that. At least you know it'll yield for you soon...after another growing season. My tree is still dropping fruit. I'm guessing the mortality ratio is around 75% right now. The fruits that are growing are plumping up nicely though.

Hey Phase, great update! Your Sweetheart looks like it will hold some good fruit this year. My Kaimana is about the same size as yours and it is also flowering. My Sweetheart is flowering this year and I hope I will be able to taste my first lychee from this tree this year. Keep up the great work and give me a call if you want to come check out my plants. Simon

They fly in from the surrounding neighborhood. They land on the tree. They don't go near the ground. I shake them off the tree branch and into a 5 gallon bucket where I smash them dead. These diaprepes root weevils are tough. I don't think that even a small contact with that stuff will kill them. I knocked one of them off a branch into a red ant pile. The red ants attacked but couldn't penetrate it's exoskeleton. It walked away with all the ants on it and the ants eventually let go of it. I thought the yellow jacket hornet was going to attack it but the hornet was waiting for it chance to suck on the honeydew after the weevil leaves that spot. The only thing that caught one of those weevils was a dragonfly. The dragonfly caught it while the weevil was flying. The dragonfly don't hunt for weevils in the tree.