Switching from Traditional Growing to Organic
In organic growing programs you feed the soil first the plant second. Your goal is to create the ideal soil
This video updates the status of the upcoming lychee fruit season, which is about to begin. It is filmed in our Sweetheart Lychee grove in Ft. Pierce, Florida. It shows the state of ripeness of the fruit and gives an informative overview of the issues involved in planting, optimally growing and harvesting of the Sweetheart lychee fruit. The Sweetheart has rapidly become the most popular early season lychee due to its sweetness and tiny seed.
A lychee is a rare sub tropical fruit originating in South China where the lychee is very important in their culture and is famed as "the King of Fruits"
The lychee fruit is about 1½ to 2 inches in size, oval to rounded heart shaped and the bumpy skin is red in color. Once you peel the skin off, the crisp juicy flesh of a lychee fruit is white or pinkish, translucent and glossy like the consistency of a grape, but the taste is sweeter. Lychees have a sub acid sweet taste and have a wonderful freshness to them that is hard to describe. Lychee fruit is high in the antioxidant Vitamin C and the essential mineral Potassium.
Lychee trees are beautiful hardwoods that can grow 20 to 40 feet tall in a primarily dome shaped habit of growth with dense, evergreen leaves. Lychee trees are popular landscape trees in South Florida and other areas of the southern U.S. and container, atrium or greenhouse growing of lychee trees is becoming popular throughout the rest of he country.
Lychee trees are grown commercially in the US for the highly sought after fruit in primarily South and Coastal Central Florida where it is warm and there is some winter chilling, but little or no risk of hard freezes.
We enjoyed Sweethearts, Mauritius, Brewster, Emperor and Kaimana lychees unlike the past 5 years. The warm winters in Florida experienced since 2016 are unlike any in past years. We need chilling temperatures below 68 degrees F for decent bloom induction in lychee trees. The 68 degree temperature was established during research years ago in Australia, the largest Southern hemisphere lychee producer.
We will anxiously await this years winter temperatures (hopefully cool, but not freezing). Let’s hope we get cool days so that next January and February will see massive blooms on our indigenous lychee crop.
January and February are the critical months for lychee tree blooming. If we get the right quantity of hours below 68 degrees Fahrenheit there is a high probability that we will have bloom. In fact, this is what happened, and we are seeing the results now. We are getting bloom on all the major varieties which include Sweetheart, Mauritius, Brewster and Emperor. The video below provides a visual update. The fruit should be set and ripening by April and at that point we can make more accurate predictions about the late Spring crop.
The Emperor lychee has some unique characteristics that distinguish it from the Sweetheart, Mauritius, and Brewster varieties. It is a mountain variety, originating in the mountain rain forests of Thailand and southern China. We often recommend this type for growers in the north who keep their trees in greenhouses during the freezing months. It is the largest of all of the major lychee varieties, in some cases attaining an almost plum like size (10 – 11 fruits to the pound vs 18-22 per pound) if the fruits are thinned. The flavor is a cross between a Brewster and Mauritius with a distinctive sweetness, but lacking the tartness of the Mauritius. The seed is large, unlike the Sweetheart, but it makes up for this by its large size.
We are shipping at the end of May and beginning of June. We will send out an email as soon as we are ready to ship. When we do please Select Next Day Air or SECOND DAY AIR Shipping unless you are in Florida. If you live outside of Florida please DO NOT select Ground shipping. If you live in Florida feel free to call us and we will arrange for the less expensive ground shipping (954) 648-6020.
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