Gardening with Tropical Fruit

March 2005

By Gene Joyner, Extension Agent
Palm Beach County Cooperative Extension Service

Most tropical fruits are off to a strong start on our spring growing season. Many fruits have large amounts of blossoms coming out which should insure a good fruit crop later in the season.

If you forgot to fertilize, don’t put it off any longer. Fertilize tropical fruits with a good quality complete fertilizer at manufacturer’s recommended rates. If you have any leftover pruning that hasn’t been completed earlier, that, too, needs to be done now so the trees don’t waste energy on branches that should have been removed earlier.

If you have container plants that need to be put in the ground, that can be done too and they will establish quickly and have the benefit of our long growing season to get well established before next winter.

If you’re going to try grafting, air layering, or other propagation methods, don’t put that off either. Things are ready right now and you can safely do any type of propagation from not until late fall.

Check new growth coming out on many plants for signs of sucking insect buildups such as aphids, whitefly and scale. If these get to levels that warrant control, apply pesticides labeled for that particular crop and keep the pests from doing major damage.

If you have fruits that should be producing flowers this time of year and they are not, you can probably blame it on leftover stress caused by the hurricanes. Some trees may skip this year on flowering because they put all their energy into producing more leaves and replacement branches and there’s little you can do to change that.