Got 5 new trees from Shamus O'Leary's:

• Sapodilla (has about 3 or 4 fruit on it)
• Carambola
• Araviapa Avocado
• Jaboticaba
• Southern Blush Mango

Removed stakes from:

• Pakistani Mulberry
• Oscar Mulberry
• Jaboticaba
• Sapodilla
• Both Mangoes
• Avocado
• White Guava
• Surinam Cherry

Metrics:

• Height (inches only): 5'

AZ Avocado has a large black dead or diseased section on the trunk where the tree had been staked. There are a couple of Facebook discussion about this here and here. Possible that this is Dothiorella Canker Disease.

Soaked AZ Avo with Copper Fungicide. Mixed 2 fluid ounces with 1 gallon of water.

Here's a series of photos of how I setup the frost cloth over the sub-tropical part of the orchard for winter. I've tried to plant all of my frost sensitive plants in one place to make it easier to cover them all with one structure instead of doing lots of small structures around each one. I have a sort of door at the south end which allows me to unpin the frost cloth and go inside and check on and care for the trees.

Soaked AZ Avo with Copper Fungicide. Same container mix from last time.

Soaked AZ Avo with Copper Fungicide. Same container mix from last time.

Applied 4 gallons of Neem Oil to a bunch of trees.

Removed most of frost cloth from sub-tropicals

Avocado trunk is still looking damaged.

New growth on Starfruit, Aussie Finger Lime, Avocado, Sapodilla, and Olympian Fig. Also new fruit on Sapodilla and Olympian Fig.

• The height has changed by 0" over the last 151 days.

Metrics:

• Height (inches only): 5'

Shade cloth over parts of E orchard. May have been a bit too late for the loquats that have some very brown leaves now. Temp recently hit 100F 2 days ago.

Metrics:

• Girth (inches only): 3.5"

New growth on avocado. Wound seems to be healing.

Healthy new growth on Avocado. Shade cloth working really well and no sun burn.

• The height has changed by 10" over the last 157 days.

Update

Metrics:

• Height (inches only): 5'10"

Healing is progressing.

Removed all shade cloth. Mostly from sub tropical area but also from Aussie Finger lime and from dead blackberries and figs in the SW corner

After taking off the shade cloth.

The compost bin is right in the middle of a bunch of trees in the sub-tropical orchard. The theory is that the roots will grow under the compost bin and receive the nutrition from the decomposing compost that will be brought down into the soil be worms and water. (I occassionaly soak the contents of the compost bing to achieve this.) The trees in this photo that benefit from it are, from left:

• Pineapple Mango
• Araviapa Avocado
• (Dead) Carambola Star Fruit (foreground)
• Southern Blush Mango (behind bin)
• Thai Sapodilla (to right of bin with orange strap)
• Jaboticaba (just to right and behind Sapodilla)

Put 2 pounds (about 2,000) of red wiggler worms into the compost bin next to this tree.

• The height has changed by -3" over the last 92 days.
• The girth has changed by 0.3" over the last 197 days.

Metrics:

• Height (inches only): 5'7"
• Girth (inches only): 3.8"

Morning: First frost in yard. Low temperature recorded at 28F. No frost covers have been put on yet. Hope they survive.

Afternoon: Frost cloth put over the sub-tropical area. Took a total of 2.5 hours to cover the existing rickety wood structure with frost cloth and staple gun it to the poles.

Manually watered sub-tropicals. 7 trees.

Sprayed a bunch of trees with Copper Fungicide. Mixed 2.0 fluid ounces per gallon of water.

Sprayed with Neem Oil. 2 Fl Oz per gallon. Made a total of 4 gallons for the trees listed on this note.

Sprayed with Spinosad solution. 2 Fl / gallon concentration. Made a total of 2 gallons for the trees in this note.

The old wound on the tree is still healing.

I feel that there's been some more leaf growth on this tree over the last week or two.

During the winter the temperature inside the frost structure often hits 110F in the late afternoon, you can see that at the bottom of the high bar that records the temperature. That would be from the last couple of weeks as I rarely reset that one. This image is from noon today (8th Feb 2017). The frost structure also traps the humidity so the sub-tropicals in here love it. The temperature when I took this image was 104.

With the temperatures rising the inside of the frost protection area is getting super hot in the afternoons. The high recorded yesterday was 115 F inside the frost structure. Outside the structure there is a control thermometer hanging in the Pakistan Mulberry tree which is in full direct sunlight. The reading on that was 90 F. So a 25 F difference from inside to outside.

Removed frost cloth from structure today.

• The height has changed by -0.5" over the last 89 days.
• The girth has changed by 0.1" over the last 89 days.

Metrics:

• Height (inches only): 5'6.5"
• Girth (inches only): 3.9"

Even though the Avocado is evergreen I'm marking this as First Bud as it's the first new growth since it started warming up.

Metrics:

• First Bud: ✔

A whole bunch of leaves are going yellow. Ground felt a bit dry so I manually gave it a good dose of water.

Started putting shade cloth over the sub-tropical and (young) citrus section of the orchard.

Sub-Tropical Shade Cloth Project 2017.

After putting up the shade cloth this tree is still going to get hit by the sun from around 2pm to 4pm. Need to monitor to make sure that it does not get burned and if so setup a screen for it.

Even though there's shade cloth overhead this tree gets about two hours of direct sunshine on the west side of the tree (the side visible in this image) and even with the high temperatures it's showing no signs of burn or stress yet even with the 100+ temperatures.

Still no leaf burn from the afternoon sun and reflection off the white concrete path next to this tree. Appears that the overhead shade and allowing around 2 hours of sun around midday to 2pm on part of the tree is okay at this stage of the tree's life.

Looking dehydrated after today's 118 temperatures. Gave it a whole bunch of extra water.

The leaves are looking crispy and dead on the west side of the tree. I think that it's just getting too much sun and reflected heat from the sidewalk running past it.

Put up some more shade cloth on the west side of the sub-tropical part of the orchard. With the 110+ temperatures it seems that these trees aren't ready for that type of heat yet. Hopefully when they're more mature they'll block out the sun on the sidewalk and prevent the reflected heat as well.

A couple of dead branches on the west side from the extreme heat it got exposed to a couple of months ago.

• The height has changed by -1.5" over the last 203 days.
• The girth has changed by 0" over the last 203 days.

Metrics:

• Height (inches only): 5'5"
• Girth (inches only): 3.9"

• The height has changed by -1'8" over the last 1 days.

On examining this tree today there is more necrosis than I expected. In checking the soil at the base of the tree it is moist and loamy and looking very healthy. Even though I don't think that it is lacking water it might be that it is not getting enough.

I've swapped out the double looped soaker hose irrigation ring for a triple ring of twenty-two twelve-inch spaced emitters at 0.8 GPH for a total of 17.5 GPH.

Images

1. Tree before trimming it back.
2. Irrigation ring that was removed.
3. Closeup of some of the necrosis.
4. Cross section of the main stem after cutting off the top one-third of the tree.
5. New emitter ring with black-eyed bean seeds scattered along it.
6. The pruned, smaller tree.
7. A before shot of what the mulch around the base of the tree looks like now before the black-eyed peas start growing around the base.

Metrics:

• Height (inches only): 3'9"

Removed shade cloth from sub-tropicals.

Dying fast in spite that it's getting more water. The black-eye peas around it growing well.

Declaring this as dead today. There's no sign of life on it. I will cut it back later in the winter to confirm this.