Gardening with Tropical Fruit

March 2006

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

This month we should be finished with our chance of frost or freezes and plants are growing strongly now for the upcoming spring season. If you haven’t fertilized your landscape, make sure that all fruit trees and other plants are fertilized this month with a good quality complete fertilizer.

If you’re getting ready to do some installation of new materials, this is an ideal time as plants put in now will have the benefit of our long coming growing season to become well established. Make sure new plants are watered lightly but frequently for the first several weeks until they become well established.

New growth and flowers that are coming out on many tropical fruits always invite insect or disease activity so inspect your plantings at least weekly and look for signs of potential problems. If problems become severe enough to warrant control measures use appropriate control measures, but don’t spray on a preventive basis since this in most cases is unsuccessful.

If you have a lot of suckers or low branches trying to form on trees, those should be pruned off as soon as they begin active growth. If you have damage left over from last year’s storms that hasn’t been corrected, now is a good time to do that and get the trees in good shape for the upcoming growing season.