Young potted trees like that which are constricted in size often will bloom. Once liberated into the ground, they concentrate their energy on growing roots, trunks,and branches. Eventually when larger and more mature, they will begin to bloom and fruit again.

What you describe is frustrating, but extremely common. Remember the old Kung Fu series from the 1970's? -- "Patience, Grasshopper"

So, what you're saying is buy two potted carambola and keep them totally wigged out stressed so I get early fruit till mine wake up every august then eventually get their act together to start the two cycles of fruiting per year? :-)

Nuff said. I'm off to Lowes!

I am just thinking that there has to be more to it than stress. Even though mine bear heavily they never flower from the trunk. The Lowes ones are fruiting all the way to the graft line!

A grafted tree is virtually the same age as the tree the graft came from. You probably won't be able to find out but yours might have been from an immature tree. The others might have been from an older tree plus been stressed.

When they say to use a 0-0-50 fertiliser they might as well leave out the first two zeros and just tell you to use Muriate of Potash. I think adding those zeros just confuses everyone. It's sort of like saying to someone to get a headless hammer when they need a piece of wood.

"A grafted tree is virtually the same age as the tree the graft came from. You probably won't be able to find out but yours might have been from an immature tree. The others might have been from an older tree plus been stressed"

Actually, all three of the Carambola I have were sticks when I bought them and all had the same situation as the one I saw in Lowes, covered with flowers and fruits.

Yeah, I know that the NPK is Potash, but just try and find it in south Florida, I've only seen it on EBAY..

Were the Carambolas grafts or just 'sticks' without graft marks?

I thought muriate of potash would be readily available at any of the nurseries or the gardening departments of the larger stores. Woodash is another source of potash/potassium but it's right out of chemical balance and has a very high pH.

The three I have in the ground were all grafted, that's what's bothering me.

I have a chiminea that I use the ash from to fertilize the trees, but to date no results as far a fruit bearing goes on he Carambola

You do not need the 0-0-50, find some potassium nitrate, ( KNO3 / salt peter ) and do some foliar sprays, I believe a 3% solution is what is used.

another recommendation is 10 gram per liter.

KNO3 will probably not be found at your regular garden centers, you can get it cheap from ebay.

Where I live its hard to find, unless your buying big bags of the stuff from an agricultural warehouse.

I was able to find 5-15-45 in powder, and have had good results with that this year, my Ylang Ylang, Grumichama, and Guanabana all flowered for the first time after using this, also it increased the hold and numbers of fruit on my Jujube.