Holiday Update - Jabo Growth

My multi-grafted jaboticaba trees are doing great. I've rotated one of them into my greenhouse for a bit to get some of the latter grafted scions to push so that I could be sure that they took on the rootstock. It seems to have worked. I got P. grandifolia and P. aureana to show their leaves and now the first of my two multi-grafts is chilling outside like it was springtime.

On my primary P. cauliflora "Sabará" tree, I now have:

• P. grandiflora (Giant)
• P. aureana (White)
• P. peruviana, syn. trunciflora (Cafe)
• P. coronata (Crowned)
• P. coronata "Restinga" (Crowned)
• P. sp. "Grimal"
• P. spirito-santensis
• P. phitrantha "Branca-Vinho" (fmr "Paulista açú") (Costada)

Besides these grafts, I have a few plants that are holding in there just fine through the colder months. Escalarte is getting bigger in the greenhouse, so that and some Red scions will probably go on to my multigrafts next spring. I'll probably do a very small graft from "Roxa Polpa" if it can survive the winter. I have had a hard time with the small plants, and this is my smallest. I've lots too many to unknown causes this last year. I think I'll stick to sticks (aka scions) or well-established plants in the future.

• P. cauliflora x aureana (Red or "Precoce") 2x
• M. vexator (Blue)
• P. sp. "Escalarte" (Scarlet)
• P. sp. "Grimal"
• P. cauliflora "Roxa Polpa"

Holiday Update - Last Annona Standing

I had too many Annona plants, and they were mostly stagnant in their small planters. I picked the heathiest plants and kept those on the fence (literally), which I up-potted a sugar apple "Super Atis" (Annona squamosa) and a Phat Pak Chong "PPC" (Annona cherimola x squamosa) into the perforated 20 gallon trash cans. The former has a large human heart sized fruit about 8 feet off the ground that is slowly getting a blush. It was was cherimoya tasted last year, and it will be one sugar apple this year. The lot on the fence are:

• Annona reticulata "Tobago Pink"
• Annona cherimola x squamosa (Atemoya) "Randhir"
• Annona cherimola x squamosa (Atemoya) "African Pride"
• Annona scleroderma (Cawesh or Poshte)
• Annona sp. (muricata x glabra) (Golden Sugar Apple or Pineapple Annona)
• Annona rollinia deliciosa (Biriba)

Holiday Update - Yuzu and Poo

I haven't been keeping up with some of the small changes in the garden in the second part of this year. Here's catch up post one.

I bought a semi-dwarf yuzu tree (Citrus x junos (ichangensis x reticulata var. austera)) from a local nursery. It's only a couple of feet tall and sitting in a 20 gal perforated trash can which has become my standard for I-want-this-to-grow-healthy-roots. It had a few tiny immature fruit and some flowers on it when I bought it. It grew a little bit in the summer months, and held on to a few of the fruit. Recently three of them were worth picking, so I have those ready for a cocktail. Coincidentally, some tiger swallow tail butterflies had been showing interest and there were a few eggs laid. The yellow jackets picked off some of the tiniest caterpillars but at least one survived to grow large enough for its bird dropping mimicry to work. I later found the dried chrysalis busted open, so I missed the metamorphosis, but wait, there were more. There were and are many more! There are about five of them living on my white sapote (Casimiroa edulis). Apparently that's a similar enough host plant on which they can feed. They are growing slowly, and I think there are a couple of parasitic tiny wasps controlling a couple. It's interesting to watch them hang out with the caterpillars 1-to-1. I'm not totally sure what's going on there, and I haven't researched it any. We'll wait to see if I get more butterflies or wasps.