needs nitrogen starvation?

Thanks, shaneatwell, for your reply. How do I go about the nitrogen starvation? I think the soil naturally has some nitrogen. There are lot of dead leaves around its base which will also act as some kind of organic material.

Do you think cutting off the new growths will stop leaves growth? I don't think it makes any sense though if I'm after the bloom spikes. because sometimes the bloom spikes will appear with the new flushes. While at other time, the bloom spikes may just appear on their own without any new flushes. but sometimes they also do both. In this case, it's only doing one thing--just pushing out more and more new leaf growths.

Was hoping someone else would chime in. I've only read about the nitrogen issue and have no first hand knowledge. There's a long thread on this on TFF. Fruit or die its called.

Here is how you can do it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_deficiency

Thanks, Tony, for the interesting link. I've learned quite a lot about the nitrogen needs for plans.

Shaneatwell, I told my lychee Mauritius last night that it's going to be chopped

down to make place for another Lychee Sweetheart. I don't know if it heard

me ... lol. In any case, I came across a very interesting link about how to make lychee trees fruit every year. I know how frustrating it is not to have fruit, so

I hope the suggestions there really work. I'm going to try it on my Mauritius and the other lychees that I have that are not blooming. Here's the link if anyone else is interested.

http://rfcarchives.org.au/Next/Fruits/Litchi/ForcingLychees1-90.htm

http://rfcarchives.org.au/Next/Fruits/Litchi/ForcingLychees1-90.htm

Both of mine (Sweetheart & Hak Ip) started out with just growth flushes in the last few weeks. So I thought it "was no lychee for me" this year. But their flush continued on and now both are starting to flush out with buds, so their may be hope. Years past my SH bloomed Feb-Mar and the HP bloomed Mar-Apr, so still kinda on track.

I would wait it out before doing anything, since our Winters have been kind of wacky the last few years.

DM

You also need to figure out why your trees haven't produce many fruits. Have you been counting the numbers of male and female flowers?

No females mean no fruit. At least if it is all female, you can cross pollinate with another lychee tree.

If it produces too many male, then you have to find a way to produce more females. I wonder if the hotter temperature produces more female while the colder temperature produces more male.

If it doesn't work, then you should look into girdling the tree for next year.

stop cutting off the branch tips where the flowers form

This is my mauritius lychee.

I never fertilize with iron. Almost all my trees show signs of iron deficiency. The leaves are yellow and the vein is dark green. Iron greens up the tree. It is used by the leaves. Too much iron and it will tie up the other nutrients. One of the other nutrients might be key in flower production.

Fertilize with iron after it fruit. Fertilize with a little bit iron just enough to green the leaves that are yellow. Don't fertilize with iron when the leaves are green. The soil doesn't need more iron and iron will tie up the other nutrients.

You can tell early when the lychee tree needs iron. The new growth is transparent and no longer red. You don't need to wait for the leaves to yellow.

Elements like calcium, zinc, manganese, phosphorus, or copper can tie up iron if they are present in high amounts.

The reverse will happen if you have too much iron. They tie up one another.

Some people say the lychee likes a lot of iron. The leaves like a lot of iron, but you don't want a tree full of leaves.

Here is some of iron deficiency but the sweetheart, mauritius, and hak lp trees still bloomed. The tips are browning due to the wind.

Here in So. Fla we seem to be having a banner year for lychee. My ~10 year old Sweetheart has erupted in blooms and looking up into the tree the blooms look like fireworks going off.

It's funny... we had a WET fairly warm winter and this goes against conventional wisdom that says they like a winter with dry and cold stress with a post season pruning to induce a spring bloom.

So you know, last fall (2015) was the first year I did NOT prune it from advice of a respected grower and mine appears to be the strongest bloomer of them all.

OTOH my ~8 year old Mauritius flushed a lot of vegetative growth and not one flower. I'm getting a longan to hedge my bets for future seasons.

I had new growth during fall and again in winter and most of my longans and lychees still bloomed.

The one longan that didn't bloom, I am going to be experimenting on it this year. We got it free from a friend but it was 8' tall and skinny. After I experiment with it, I am going to cut it down to 5'. There has to be other stuff that works on the longan besides potassium chlorate.

I guess this would seem to counter the conventional wisdom that Mauritius is supposed to be the best cultivar for reliably producing fruit.

My Mauritius lychee is the dumbest one out of the bunch. There has been wind over 15 mph this past month. The hak lp flower panicles are spread far apart and don't hit each out in the wind. The sweetheart stopped it's bud from flowering. The sweetheart also dropped most of its bottom leaves to keep the surface area small so the wind doesn't break it's branch.

The mauritius is stupid. It spiked up new growth after the wind killed some of it flower panicles. The wind blew the new growth into the remaining flower panicles killing both the flower panicles and new growth.

If I don't get any fruit, then I will be planting more longans and no more lychees.

Rain is bad for the lychees in Florida. The only time it rain is when the low and high pressure fronts meet and blows away the lychees. It rains when the cold front comes through and sometimes kill the the lychees with frost. The worst of the rain is when there is a tropical storm or hurricane. I am better off watering it with irrigation.

gnappi,

Congratulations to your 10-year old Sweetheart blooming. Such a happy news. I think my Sweetheart must have been about that old too. Although it was planted in 2010, it was in the pot with me for 2 years and when I bought it, it was at least 2-3 years old. So, I'm thinking some varieties are late bloomers. At least I'd say that about my own Sweetheart also. However, for my Mauritius ... I'm not so sure. It has been in the ground for 10 years this year and it was a few years old when I planted it. It's also doing the same thing as yours--very good with leaf production. Even though it's a nice looking tree, but who needs that in a fruit tree ... lol. My Brewster is the only one consistently producing fruit for me almost every year. Some alternative years, the fruit is a little skimpy, but when it does bloom, it will yield 200-300 fruit.

My Hak Ip consistently blooms every single year, but the strange thing is I have never tasted its fruit because the bloom would all be damaged by the web worm. This year, we have started spraying DT early in the season and hopefully we'll see her blooms survive the attack.

Yeah .. I see what you're saying about the cold weather and pruning theories. I think lychees sure have a mind of their own. They don't always follow what we dictate for them. They call the shots. As for us human, we can only do what we can ... and just hope for the best.

Do you have pictures to share of your Sweetheart?

Tony, I've also heard of potassium chlorate for longan. At first, I thought it was potassium, but my husband said not. I'm now just feeding them with liquid compost or fish emulsion and small amount of epsom salt every and every half a year some liquid micro nutrients. I have planted three of them so far and two of them are in bloom now.

Parker, I'm also perplexed about Mauritius .. I have yet to hear more stories about people's experience with this cultivar. As for me, Brewster is the only one that is reliable, but I must say I love the taste of Sweetheart. Last year, I had a very small yield and the fruit was really sweet and refreshing and with chicken tongue seeds too.

I just stumbled into this site. Tons of useful information about lychees and others. I'm still reading and thought to post the link for anyone having more questions about their lychees. I know I have many .. too many .. lol.

http://growables.org/

Have you gotten any flower buds on your mauritius lychee? I finally got flower buds on my last longan tree.

There are only a few very tiny flower buds on a few branch tips. The spikes are about half to an inch long. You can barely see those miniscule buds. Last year, it only produced a couple of fruit and that was it for a more than 10-year old and it's the largest lychee tree in the yard. Discouraging I know ... that's why I wasn't too worried to do that experiment on it. I'm seeing though some little tiny growths breaking through below the new shoots I have cut off. I have yet to see what becomes of them. If they continue to grow shoots, I have better use of that precious garden space there.

Does longan tree have a regularly fruiting season? Now I have three of them and two of them are in bloom. The ones in bloom are Biew Kiew and Kohala. The other Kohala is just growing new shoots very quickly.

The fruiting season for longan is now a myth. They can be induced to flower any season. They don't need the dormant growth winter period to produce. If you can get your hands on potassium chlorate, then you can get it to fruit off season.

The regular season is when they bloom without potassium chlorate. Similar variety flower at about the same time. If it produces new growth, then you would probably induce it off season after the new growth has mature. Pruning the new growth will take up to 70 days for the tree to recover. There is a high probability 99% that it will be new growth again.

You are learning first hand how long it takes after pruning. Commercial growers can lose 70 days on a non-reliable method that has not been proven to work or with any consistency.

There is only one time per year that you can harvest longan. You can't get it to fruit twice a year without possibly killing the tree.

You have to remember that the tree eventually drops it's older leaves. Without new growth and new leaves the tree will not survive. It is best practice to wait for two uninterrupted new growth spurts before inducing the tree to flower.

When you prune after the harvest, prune wîthin the last growth cycle. If you cut all the way back to the older leaves, then the tree know when it's older leaves will drop off and produce several cycle of new growth in order to survive. If there is only one new growth cycle before the spring, then there is a possibility that it will not fruit.

Well every longan I know of has fruited every year. The lychee are the most finnicky. I did do something unconventional to my sweetheart this winter, I started dumping 20-30 pounds of ice on the roots every cool night we had and from what i have seen mine is one of if not THE heaviest bloomers down here. I may have to abort fruit or build branch supports to keep the limbs from breaking under the weight of fruit

Gnappi, I'm happy for you that your ice bucket method works. I may try it out with some of my lychees here. Do you have a picture of it in bloom to share?

I'd like to get some potassiu chlorate but it doesn't seem to be quite possible.

I wouldn't say my ice test works just that it did not hurt. heres a pic

Nice! You're going to have a lot of succulent fruit. At this point in time, Sweetheart fruit is my first choice.

Here's a couple of pictures of my Hak Ip. It blooms regularly every year. However, due to web worm attacks, the blooms never survived. Close by is a huge Oak tree which is why the web worm never spared the blooms. However, we're beginning to use BT to spray and so far it has cut down on damages on our lychee blooms. Hopefully, this year, I will get to taste some of Hak Ip's fruit.

My nemesis has been the white weevil. for the last several weeks I have been going out several times a night and crunching them with needlenose pliers. At first getting 40-50 nightly was common beyween my mauritus and sweetheart. Now I barely get 5 or so, the trees are filling out and the blooms are not being eaten. I'm hoping I am breaking their reproduction cycle.

No insects and no pesticides.

I got the weevils under control too. Now I have to kill those pesky little birds. They pecked a hole in 100 of the fruits on my dragon fruit. If I let them live, then they will steal all my lychees. They like red fruits. They don't bother the green or brown ones.

I am going to net the lychee canopy

Here are my lychees in full bloom.

It can take many years before Lychee trees are established enough to begin producing fruit, and in colder climates (anything less than zone 10 ) the cold sets the tree back in its growth and it can take even longer.

Ironically, the same thing that ordinarily makes the Mauritius variety more precocious is also what may be causing it to take so long before it produces fruit in a colder climate. This variety is somewhat stunted, the tree grows smaller than the other varieties.

Parker,I have been thinking of the same thing too--about the
cold, particularly about the damage that was caused to it in 2010. I
think the fertility of the tree might have been greatly compromised because
otherwise the foliage growth seems to be prolific. In fact, I have had to
trim off the branches every year up to 3 ft from their tips. Trying to
keep it from growing taller and broader was a chore .. lol. Right now,
it stands at least at 16 ft if not 18 ft. This all happened after the
tree died down to 1/3 of its original size. Before the freeze, it was
about 6-7 ft tall. I think something weird must have happened that made this tree to behave in a way that is most unpredictable.

My other lychee trees although are slow in catching up, they do eventually put up a show of a full crown blooms. This year, I'm so happy to see my Hap Ip and Sweet Heart in full blooms. I'm thankful that my Brewster regularly fruits, although it seems to be showing a year of heavy alternate with a year of light bloom. This year, it's going on a light bloom mode. Anyway, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that all will go well as I also have to keep down the web worm infestation. So far, the BT we're spraying seems to be working. It's not a chemical, but a kind of a bacterium culture that the larvae from the web worm feed on. It makes them sick so they'll stop eating the young floral parts. They have been eating my Sweetheart every year until we found this wonderful spray. We're also spraying it on our mangoes as they also attack them.

If you keep some lychees in your yard, it would be nice if you share pix of some of your plants.

Bananafan2, are you applying the correct fertilizer during the seasons. Most of the different websites recommend the same thing. Are you using 10-5-20 fertilizer?

http://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/fb/lychee/lychee.htm

I can't afford that fertilizer so I am using the cheap 10-10-10.