Congrats on your lychee trees, $20...what a bargain!! I remember when mine looked like that...with
"GREEN LEAVES",lol...Good luck and thanks for sharing your pictures!

that Sweetheart sustained a few 30 degree nights a week ago unprotected. i think the close setting and the concrete houses absorbing sun during the day really help cut down the winds.

do you have a south facing wall?

Your trees look very nice. If you don't already have them I'd recommend you also get and emperor and hak ip. They're also very good.

Great looking trees, Mango kush. I am jealous of your grapefruit. Looks yummy! My citrus have all been mercilessly attacked by leaf miner.
How far apart do you plant your trees? I have a space issue myself. I would love to fit more trees in my very small backyard.

pepperseed, my citrus trees have been ravaged by leaf miner. im starting to actually scrap the varieties that are more prone and hold onto the ones that are better.
my Duncan and Dancy seem to be doing good against it. leaf miner and grey asian weevil killed my temple orange you can see the defoliated twig in the back there. kumquats are really resistant and easy to grow and fruit.

in dooryard situations space is an obvious issue. using dwarf varieties, good pruning and a little creativity is the key.
(dont mind the pics, im in the middle of painting my house)

i space medium trees about ten foot apart, like these in the pic below:

anonas on the right, the first is a Rollinia Biriba, the one behind it closer to the house is a Lisa Atemoya, the last pic is a kampong mauve sugar apple to the right of that. these can get very large and bushy, but i will keep them tightly pruned.

on the left is a row of asian mango varieties

below: the mangos are also ten foot apart and about two foot from my west property line. im going to build onto that fence behind the trees to join the front and backyards to guard my fruit!
nam doc mai, tong dam, behind that you cant see a po pyu kalay and choc anon. again these will have have to eventually be pruned. i chose Asian mangos varieties for here because they form a good medium upright canopy and im going to try and prune them uniformly.

Staghorn fern

behind the shed; Alphonso mango tree, im growing it in the back corner because it will be a big tree. dragonfruit cage behind it, i have 6 varieties but some are still small cuttings

heres an ice cream mango on the left i recently planted, behind the hammock is my Jaboticaba, and on the right is the Rosigold in bloom, on the car pad is my citrus.
the Jaboticaba is there temporary until i move my gravel driveway in the front yard to the front swale.

heres my cheena Jackfruit. im going to eventually gorw two more varieties on the right of it in a row about 5 foot apart like the pic below it

These are such nice pictures to look at. Those citrus looking good in pots too. You know you should not plant your fruit trees too near to the fence or your neighbor will help you pick some when they're ready....LOL

Leafminers killed your citrus? My trees seem to have more leaves affected this year than ever before, but they don't really seem to affect the tree (aside from making them look kind of ugly).

As far as I know, leaf minors would not kill a citrus tree. The more likely cause is one of the citrus diseases du jour......citrus greening, tristeza virus, canker or any other of a myriad of citrus pathogens. The bottomline is.....nature does not currently seem to want to permit citrus growing here in South Florida....at least not for any extended period with any particular tree.

when i mean killed, i mean all leaves completely attacked until the twigs are deprived of nutrients and die back.

then you get shoots from the base of the trunk and no canopy :(

here are my flame grapefruit and temple orange,

murahlin, you have tried emperor and hak ip?

what varieties have you tried in total and how would you rate them?

ive never seen a full grown sweetheart lychee so i dont know how large it will get compared to the Mauritius and Brewster which get huge.

mango kush,
I have tried hak ip, emperor, mauritius, sweetheart, sweet cliff, brewster, and ohia. I might have tasted more but those are the only ones I remember. I liked em all. Hak ip, sweet heart and emperor are nice because they sometimes have the smaller aborted seed.

Mango kush, I bought a Brewster(but turned out NOT to be). After doing some research and asking on this forum there is a very good likelihood I have a Sweet Cliff(now severely damaged...but that's another story). Anyway this is "one" of the best lychee I've ever tasted, but the best part about it was 100% of the seeds from all the fruits that I got(although I didn't have a lot that made it through Jan.09 freeze) were all the small ones(chicken tongue?) Here's some pics to compare the seeds/fruits sizes...although the fruits were smaller I actually got more fruit because the seeds were so small. Any way that is another variety you might want to consider.
Taken last June '09...
{{gwi:1305688}}
Fruits, left to right...Emperor, Mauritius,Brewster& Sweet Cliff?
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Seeds left to right...Emperor,Mauritius,Brewster & Sweet Cliff??
{{gwi:1305692}}
Good luck with your decision...I'm sure you can't go wrong with any of them.

Can anyone tell by the last picture on the right if that is in fact "Sweet Cliff". Hoping someone can tell by the seeds and fruit, since this tree is now just a total guess since I originally purchased it as Brewster...and obviously by the pic I posted is def. NOT a brewster. Thanks!!

Nancy:

Yes, that is defintely Sweet Cliff. I have never been successful at growing it (after two attempts). However, I have tasted it when I bought some up in Palm Beach County about 15 years ago. They have excellent flesh to seed ratio....but the fruits are small. I have tasted some that had a bit of an after taste, but most were quite good. They are not my persoanl favorite, but I did enjoy them very much when I tried them.

Harry

Nancy-
YUM!
I can't grow Lychees here (too warm). But they are tasty!
Good luck (I hope you are done with cold weather this year).

Mangokush,
So sorry to hear that your citrus are being ravaged and killed. That really sucks. I have two right now, my keylime and my blood orange. I cannot believe the prices on citrus in NY right now. I paid almost $6.00 for 8 honeybells and 3 something for 5 tangerines. Citrus was all ready on the high side hear and now the prices have gone even higher. One of my favs is the blood orange. They are over a dollar a piece now. I am going to buy a honeybell this year. I got my keylime and blood orange from Roberta's on QVC and this year they are offering the honeybell. I have a question about thepicture of the citrus that you have. On the left there is a tree with fruits that kinda look like buddha's hand or is it something else? Just curios.
Andrew

yes thats buddha hand citron, i wonder if the hands are going to get larger and open up.

Harry thanks for the info...at least "if" my tree survives I will know the true variety. I had some fruits from my tree last year and I was very happy with the taste. The flavor was as good if not better(to me at least,lol) than the rest of the lychees I've tasted. I really loved it. Luckily I detected no after taste at all. Thanks again Harry!

nancy- i concur with harry- sweetcliff- i found some for sale for the first time last summer- they were very good-
where did u get your emperor from- was it home grown- how would u rate the taste?

rayandgwenn, thanks for the well wishes :o)

LL, a neighbor gave me (5)fruits to try...a friend gave her some. The emperor was very good. All the ones pictured above, there isn't one I wouldn't plant. The large seeds was the only thing I wasn't crazy about. They were all very good in my opinion.

Mangokush,
that is what thru me off. What do you do with the fruit or is it just an ornamental. Do pesticides help any with these problems you have? I know that certain things can't be helped but this is so discouraging. I mean FL is supposed to be the citrus capital! Does anyone know how much progress they are making to help rid these problems? I am just concerned (I am sure everyone in FL is) for the future of these fruits!
Andrew

Andrew, IMO there will not be much of a citrus industry in FL in another 10-15 years. The greening disease is killing the big growers and there appears to be no hope of stopping it. I would bet you are going to see more and more of them going out of business.

Jsvand,
That really worries me. I know it is a problem all over the US and even the carribean. I wonder if it infects trees worldwide. What will be the sollution? Indoor orangeries? Can't imagine the expense there! I better stock up on the citrus I want now before they start charging a fortune for them!!
Andrew

The only known way to stop it it to grow the trees in a screened in area. The bug that carries the disease can not get through the screen, but this solution is obviously not a viable solution for commercial citrus growers. I believe UF is trying to find resistant varieties but I don't know how much progress they have made. It's just a matter of time before CA and TX is widely affected as well.