Carefree or not?

12 years ago

My experiences with tropical fruit may or may not be typical, but if I were starting over I might focus on different things were I to know how susceptible to problems certain trees are. Unfortunately my GF and I LOVE Guava and Sapodilla... I'm having terrible luck with these.

Guava (white and pink) Scale, whitefly and sooty mold

Guava (Lemon and strawberry) No problems

Sapodilla Scale and sooty mold

Mamey / Sapote No problems on any of my 3 cultivars

Canistel Only Cuban beetle leaf destruction

Mango powdery mildew and anthracnose (some seem immune)

Jakfruit No problems

Jaboticaba No problems

Persimmon No problems

Banana No problems

Fig Several Fungi

Passion fruit No problems

Carambola Only Cuban beetle leaf destruction

Papaya Whitefly, Papaya fly, fungus

Muscadine grapes No problems

Anyone else here having similar / better / worse results with their fruit trees?

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Comments (3)

simon_grow
12 years ago
Hey gnappi, I'm sorry you are dealing with insect and fungal problems on some of your fruit trees. I wonder if you can use Neem oil on your plants? I hear that Neem oil is a really good organic way to solve insect and fungal issues.
Simon
gnappi
Original Author
12 years ago
Boy did I ever try neem oil. And the Alcohol neem, water, dish soap cocktail, and also Volck oil.

I resorted to chopping my beautiful Ruby supreme to the nub and I'm now going to buy a few thousand lady bugs this summer.

For the short term, I'm scraping the scale off the guavas by hand... at least with the Ruby supreme out of the picture for a while, the whitefly seems to be gone.
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simon_grow
12 years ago
I was going to also mention lady bugs. They are fantastic for getting rid of aphids and I think scale insects. Do ants farm scale insects? If they do, you may want to put a barrier around each tree and then put tanglefoot on the barrier.
Simon