I appreciate these videos. I've never been able to find a Lychee anywhere to eat! So I decided to grow a tree of my own. But I think because they're so hard to find, I can't find much information comparing the taste of different varieties. So it sounds like you like the Mai Tsze, then the Maritous, then the Sweetheart? Is that right? And the ease of growing is the exact opposite order? :)
That’s correct. Our No Mai Tzse tree does last year - the flavor was our favorite, but the tree is very difficult to grow here. I’m hoping to try grafting it onto a longan seedling to see if it does better on that rootstock.
hi again. we did 10 air layers on my friends 18 year old lychee tree that has only produced half a dozen fruit .was hoping that planting the air layers somewhere else would give better chance of producing fruit. only 7 developed roots. 2 died during the first two weeks. the last five showed promise. still alive after 4 months and new growth on 4 of them came out. the new leaves then turned dark brown on the edges and most look like singed burned string? the new growth will completely die .now the branches are dying. the last one had lots of new growth come out in the past week but now the leaves are also dying. we did all the same as the other lychee air layers on another tree and had no issues with that . any thoughts.
mywalkingfriend perhaps too dry - or insufficient roots? They seem to really like consistent water from winter-summer. We almost lost one of our mature trees when we had to cut the irrigation for a month - completely defoliated. It came back with consistent watering.
My mom always told me that a small lychee taste better because it has less water and more taste. In her country, they don't care about the size of the lychee but the size of the seed. They always propagate the ones with the smaller seeds. Myself, I prefer Longans more than Lychees but both are just awesome when chilled. Lychees are more temperamental because they are more prone to temps and moisture.
Do you do anything about the Sri Lankan weevils? They spread from our longan tree to almost everything in our yard(mango, avocado, macadamia, etc), except bananas. I know they don’t kill the tree, but with a lot of leaf damage it can make it hard to get trees established. Also, I think they eat very young fruit like just emerging avocado baby fruits as well as tiny citrus fruit. Have you heard of this?
Mark Oberlander We found covering the yard in over 6” of mulch helps reduce numbers - possibly by breaking the reproduction cycle. They primarily eat this particular lychee tree. The also eat the leaves of our Inga trees, but not much else. If you can get a tree company to dump free mulch and spread it thick, maybe your numbers will be reduced too. We do shake the leaves of the plant and destroy the fallen weevils too. We never use any pesticides.
Thanks, I’ve notice a reduction too after spreading loads and loads of woodchips. I also shake the leaves and since getting a dozen chickens last year that seems to help, any weevils I can shake off or grab goes to the chickens.
NO MAI TSZE fruit is always small and as older tree gets less consistent producer it becomes. Hakip is close by taste but bigger fruit and more consistent producer.
