Here is a photo of the tree.

Good for you! It's good to see those blooms coming up. I wonder if there's any spray that is effective for weevils though. Here my problem seems to be caused by web worms. The larvaes will devour the young lychee leaves and then destroy whatever blooms emerging. But we've now got a spray to make those larvaes sick so they'll stop eating. It seems to work and last year I got a fair amount of crop from my Brewster lychee. This year the same tree is resting--I was told they're alternative bearers.

Lychees love mulching. Do you think yours can use some mulching there too? Perhaps remove all the weeds and grass around the base and mulch it with barks. I also learned that they like their own dead leaves for a mulch, but since yours is still quite young, probably barks will do to help water retention. Are you feeding it with anything yet? I heard they'r very sensitive to fertilizers, so I only give them a light organic liquid compost or fish emulsion.

I hope you'll get some fruit from your lychee this year. I think it's going to grow up to be a handsome plant and you have a very huge area for it to grow and stretch. I don't have much space here and have to compromise a lot of times ...lol. Have fun with your lychee tree!

It was very windy the last 4 days in a row. The new growth and flowers all died on this tree. The bigger sweetheart lychee is barely hanging on to its buds.

Cutting 5 acres of grass is very time consuming and I use about five gallons of gasoline. I cut the grass every three weeks so I don't spend to much money on gas and maintenance and repair of the mower. The grass gets very tall. The grass clipping and weeds get shot into the pot.

I planted the lychee high because my farm is prone to flooding during the heavy rains season.

The lychee rots are very deep about 3 inches below the mulch compost. I pull out the large weeds with deep roots. The small ones I remove when I have time.

I got 30 lychee trees, 2 longans, 1 avocado, 2 bunches of bananas, 40 coconuts, 200 dragon fruit, 6 sugar apples, 8 guanaba, 4 pineapples, and 4 mangos.

I am going to start air layering my larger sweetheart lychee this year. There is 4 branches that I can air layer.

They weevils infestation comes from the neighbors farm. They are big when I catch and kill them. An 8' longan would be strip bare in three weeks. I lost 50% of my 8' avocado because I stopped killing them for 2 weeks. There was about 60 weevils on the avocado tree. If I didn't kill them, then there would have been even more because they like being in groups and mating.

Lychee takes a long time to grow before the plant is mature enough to begin producing fruit. Looking at the pictures I am going to estimate it is going to take at least 2 to 4 more years before any fruit appears.

That lychee tree was air layered. It is 4 years old already. The weevils have been eating all the new growth for the first three year and it hasn't gotten any bigger. That is just one year's leaves growth.

I have seen worse looking lychee trees at the nursery bearing fruit.

I paid $30 for this sweetheart 4 years ago. It is the best out of all my lychee trees. It has multiple panicles on one main stem.

The growth spurt gets larger as the tree gets bigger. This sweetheart didn't bloom but has a lot of new flush.

Foliage fertilizer spray doesn't work on the older leaves, but it works very well on the new flush. Don't over fertilize or you will burn the new growth.

Tony, you sure have a very nice orchard growing there for you and with all the space to grow whatever you want. 30 lychees plus all the others there sure will keep you very busy taking care of them :). I've managed to plant 6 lychees in the ground and so far only Brewster has done better than the others, but this year my Sweetheart may be doing better. My Mauritius has been consistently

uncooperative. Right now, it's flushing like crazy but only with a few small bloom spikes. I heard they like acidic soil and iron, so I have added some sulphur and will soon add some iron to water it. Is that a good idea? Will post some pictures later.

Thanks for sharing your lychee pictures and your nice orchard. By the way you are not growing for commercial purposes, or are you?

We bought 5 acres of agricultural land. We are not allow to build a house on it. We paid $85K for it 4 years ago from the bank who foreclosure on the property. It is worth $150K now. If we plant some trees on it, then it would be worth even more.

They can't grow crops on 5 acres. That is not enough land. You can't get nothing for vacant farm land. Fruit trees make the small land worth more money. Buyers of small farm land like seeing trees instead of a vacant lot.

I am trying to keep the tree as healthy as they can be without putting too much money and work into it. The weevils set me back three years. The trees should have been 8' fall with a bunch of leaves.

There is plenty of tall cane grass and invasive trees that I can cut and use as fertilizer when I burn it. It is an excellent fertilizer with no nitrogen for the fall and winter.

Lychee like pH soil between 5.5 an 7.5. They can also live in lower pH soil or higher.

I am using the cheapest fertilizer 10-10-10 which cost $17 for a 40lb bag. I use the 10-10-10 liquid fertilizer too that I get at the Home Depot.

The trees require very little maintenance when it is small and growing. The dragon fruits require a lot of maintenance. The grass requires the most maintenance with weedeating and mowing 5 acres. I do not use chemicals around the trees. That is why I kill the weevils by hand.

The only thing I am growing for commercial purposess is the dragon fruit. My neighbor will sell them to his distributor for me at $2/lb.

Here is the metal container we use to burn the tree branches for our ash fertilizer.

Nice blooms on your Sweetheart! Thanks for the info on the PH for lychee. I'm now trying to get my soil more acidic for my Mauritius. I think it might be because I have placed some concrete pavers around the base as a walking path which might explain why the PH is more akaline than the others. I'm not sure though. So, is your ash fertilizer of an acidic nature too? It seems most fruit trees prefer more acidic than akaline. Is that true?

You sure have a very interesting orchard there. Can you show more close up pictures of your other lychees and dragon fruit as well and 200 hundred of them ... I can imagine the show of blooms when they all bloom at the same time, or do they? I only have one of them and it bloomed, but never bore any fruit.

Here's a picture of my Sweetheart which was planted 6 years ago when it was a few years old. So, I'm thinking this is a 10-year old plant and it's height is around 16 ft or so. It didn't fruit after being planted for many years and last year, only produced a handful of fruit. Hopefully, this year, it will produce more as I'm seeing more blooms. I wonder if it's due to the stone mulch I've placed outside the small area of wood mulch around it's base that's causing this low fruit production. I know pruning is important and I did cut it back every year. So, we'll see what happens this year before I start guessing again the reason(s) that is/are causing the low fruit production.

Are you pruning it back about 7 inches after it bloom even though it didn't fruit? Your tree is very tall for me to prune the flower panicle back. That is why I want to keep my tree short.

My brother's neighbor down the street never pruned back his flower panicles. In seven years it only fruited once. The tree is twice your size. It only had about 100 fruits on it.

The tree ash is alkaline but it has potassium and other minor nutrient elements. Fruits need a lot of potassium.

Yes, I've pruned the tips back at least 7" and a lot of times up to 2 ft length when they are straggly. I've also been trying to keep them short, but they keep growing so fast. I also heard that stems an inch thick or more shouldn't be trimmed back. Otherwise, they'll stop fruiting. Is that correct?

Your metal burning container looks great--what a nice way to recycle yard trash. Can you get potassium besides burning wood? I don't have a big yard here, so burning may not be best for me, but I'm interested in the idea of applying potassium to my plants if it's good for them. I've got some a package of Miracle-Gro (all purpose plant food) that contains 16% of potash. It also has 24% of nitrogen, 8% of phosphate and small amount of boron, copper, iron and manganese, molybdenum & zinc. Is this good for longans and lychees and other fruit trees too?

You did get a good buy for your 5-acre land. We were also thinking of doing so when the property prices were low and if we came across one that we could really afford that is .. lol. At first, we were curious with those with citrus fruit trees. However, since the citrus fruit trees have been under the attack from the citrus greening disease, it's so sad to see the demise of so many citrus orchards ... Sure, it's going to be a lot of work for a large land area, but it's certainly worth all your effort now that the property prices have picked up. Are you going to put it up for sale soon?

Real estate is very expensive here. We wouldn't be able to buy nothing if we sold it for $150K. A good location is very expensive. The Redlands are south of me but it cost double because you can build a house on 5 acres. We can't build a house on our land. People live in RVs on some of properties here.

On a large area with many trees it's impractical but one of my lychee was being devastated by white weevils, the other was not. I read that weevils are very localized, which goes with what I saw in my yard.

I refuse to use anything but organic means of pest control but nothing worked, but I did discover a non toxic method that works... needle nose pliers. I started going out there a while ago at night with a BRIGHT flashlight (it stuns them to not move) and crush them. At first I was getting 30-40 a night, on one tree now I cannot find more than 7 or 8. I think I interrupted their reproductive cycle! My trees are both flushed out with new growth and it is not being eaten.

I got citrus weevils that eat my lychee trees.

The diaprepes root weevils eat four times as fast. They run out of food and eat everything in sight. They eat my lychee, longan, avocado, guanabana, sugar apple, mango, guava and dragon fruit.

I also noticed my young lychee leaves being munched by something, but I don't know what ate them. I do have some citrus trees next to the young lychee tree. I looked closely on the citrus tree leaves and there were black spots under the leaves. I think some insects lay eggs on them. I wonder if it was the weevils you talked about. I did spray Neem oil on the leaves a while ago when I noticed some creepies crawling around the leaves. I don't think it kills them.

I also had a huge caterpillar eating my lychee. It was about 2 inches long and half an inch wide. I knocked it of the leaf and stepped on it. The weevils are still coming but like 2 or 3 a week.

i hate those weevils . it ate my the leaves off my citrus and herbs. I sprinkled diatamecious earth around the tree and it helps. Just make sure you don't get it wet, otherwise it's not effective againt those things.

They fly in from the surrounding neighborhood. They land on the tree. They don't go near the ground. I shake them off the tree branch and into a 5 gallon bucket where I smash them dead.

These diaprepes root weevils are tough. I don't think that even a small contact with that stuff will kill them. I knocked one of them off a branch into a red ant pile. The red ants attacked but couldn't penetrate it's exoskeleton. It walked away with all the ants on it and the ants eventually let go of it.

I thought the yellow jacket hornet was going to attack it but the hornet was waiting for it chance to suck on the honeydew after the weevil leaves that spot.

The only thing that caught one of those weevils was a dragonfly. The dragonfly caught it while the weevil was flying. The dragonfly don't hunt for weevils in the tree.

Hi

Does lychee flowers need bees to pollinate? My tree have a lot of flowers but don't see any bees yet.

Thanks

Small flies also pollinate the flowers. They are usually fruit flies.

If you do not have bees like I once did, go to a local nursery and watch the perennial flowers and buy those that have bees on them. It won't take long for bees to find your yard. Here in so. Fla. I planted Mexican heather and basil and now that bees found my yard i do not worry about pollinators any more