Here We Mango Again

My 'Ice Cream' mango bloomed earlier this year and set a couple of tiny mangos, but then it dropped everything and started growing again. Bummer then; but exciting again now that it has bloomed and it has set some baby mangos again. I'm not sure if I hand pollinated it with my paint brush or some insects finally did the job, but because I have no bees around here I have to try pollinating it myself. Anyway, I hope these little fruits stick this time.

Jacked

I bought an Artrocarpus heterophyllus (jackfruit) Mai-1 recently, but it arrived just before a work trip, so I put it in a pot, watered it like crazy, put it in 50/50 sun/shade and then hoped it'd be OK until I returned...it was not. I found all of the leaves turned to a crisp, so I scrambled and stuck it in the greenhouse so that it only got filtered light and of course plenty of humidity. I'll have to post an update if it recovers.

Ground Cherry Quartet

I sprouted a slew of Physalis peruviana and picked a foursome of the strongest plants for a planter that was just sad because it saw direct sunlight in the summer and full shade in the winter. I've seen what these plants can do, and they seem to handle it all. Not to mention the fact that they're pretty tasty and their little paper lantern calyxes are novel. To date, they're all growing up just fine and will soon be ready to flower and fruit. If you don't like tomatoes, but you're looking for a substitute that is a little sweeter but still tart, this is your plant.

Pouteria Possibilities

I think I have some Pouteria flowers forming on both my cinnamon apple (Pouteria hypoglauca) and green sapote (Pouteria viridis). They look like tiny little spheres forming at the base of the leaves, but I'm not sure if they'll come to fruition (literally). We will wait and see.

Going Garcinia

I have just a few Garcinia. They've been green or sunburned all summer, but they haven't pushed any growth. So I moved all of them into the tiny greenhouse. The G. acuminata (sour bacupari), aristata, hombroniana (seashore mangosteen), and small humilis (achacha) and livingstonei (imbe) are all crammed in there now, but are pushing growth. I think it's just not warm enough here in Redondo Beach. But now they're growing, and they might be greenhouse bound the rest of their lives in my care. What's more, is that a curious sprout showed up in my Passiflora macrophylla pot. It looks like a Garcinia, but I have no idea which kind yet. I'll have to wait until it's a little bigger so I can extract it and give it a separate home.

Update: I blogged it. I couldn't stop myself from tugging the seedling to see if it would give up its purchase in the P. macrophylla pot. Since the stem was pretty firm I felt confident I could pull it up, and sure enough it released. Up with the stem came a very large seed and the roots. Relieved, I transplanted the little one (who was white half of its length due to how deep the seed was buried) into its own pot. Then I figured I would figure out what it was. So I went through my pile of discarded plant tags from all of the deceased plants I've accumulated over the years. I found two Garcinia tags that were from the same planting. One read G. brasiliensis and the other G. sp. (Vleerackerii aka Luc's Garcinia)...To the web I went, and the seed for G. brasiliensis matched my short term memory of the recent transplant, but the latter name wasn't to be found (reliably) in seed form. But to confirm my theory, I went back into my own blog and found this post: http://pergolatory.blogspot.com/2016/09/garcinia-galore.html. Which just about seals it. It's one of those two, so both tags will go into the pot for now. I'll have to wait to figure out which one.

Bananas and Bags

I found that my large Passiflora edulis was mysteriously losing green fruit. I highly suspect a clumsy opossum or a raccoon. Either way, I wanted to protect the rest of the crop. I bought some mesh bags and started covering all the new stuff. By a quick count I have about 25 - 30 bagged P. edulis fruits getting really swollen on the vine. They're hanging like white stockings above a field of bananas which are getting too big for me to pass through to my little greenhouse. I don't know what to do with them or what will happen if I leave them be. For now I'll fertilize them and figure it out later.

Unique Eugenia

My Eugenia luschnathiana (Pitomba) flowered very early this Spring, then it promptly dropped all of the buds, then leaves, then pushed new growth, then put out new buds again. Today the first one of them opened. It's a nice little puff ball of white. I brushed it in hopes of self pollinating it, but I'm not sure if that will work. I really hope I get at least one fruit to try this year.

Peanut Butter on the Brink

My peanut butter fruit tree (Bunchosia argentia) was looking pretty feeble. The leaves were very yellow and wilted. I tried some chelated iron and fertilizer but nothing seemed to perk it up so I turned to the forums. The gang almost unanimously suggested that the pH was too high. So, I did a few things, I added some acidifier, mixed some vinegar with water, put some Miracle Grow Miracid on it, and added pine bark chips to the top of the pot. I don't know which of these, if not a combination, did the trick, but eventually it did green up on most of the leaves. The others have dropped, so I'm hoping there's a enough time left in the summer for it to do some proper growing.