Are orange trees available in Thailand?

[jpinx]

On 10/11/2016 at 10:41 AM, banlampang said:

khwaibah & Sparkles - we visit the Khamthiang Market often and a year ago made a thorough sweep of the shops there inquiring about orange trees - no luck.  The small Thai oranges (don't know proper name) were available but up to this point I haven't been interested.  Thanks to all for your comments!  khwaibah - what do you do with all of the lemons from 24+ trees?

Make lemon marmalade !!!  : )

[jpinx]

We used to keep chickens penned around the trees in Spain, to eat all the bugs, many of which pupate in the soil and climb the tree. 

Also -- learn how to graft (if you don't know already)  Citrus respond very well and we had several trees with multiple varieties of oranges, lemons and grapefruits growing on them.  Good luck -- a nice orangery is thing of rare beauty and a pleasure for it's carers.

[banlampang]

jpinx - wife is pretty good with the grafting.  My poor eyesight makes me very clumsy with the fine work.  YouTube has been a great source on technique.  I agree on you comment about the 'orangery'.  When all the trees are in bloom the fragrance is amazing.  'Cocktail' trees are on my list.  Lemon marmalade...

[jpinx]

6 minutes ago, banlampang said:

jpinx - wife is pretty good with the grafting.  My poor eyesight makes me very clumsy with the fine work.  YouTube has been a great source on technique.  I agree on you comment about the 'orangery'.  When all the trees are in bloom the fragrance is amazing.  'Cocktail' trees are on my list.  Lemon marmalade...

.....also - pickled whole lemons -- amazing when cooking curries after they've been sitting for about a year :)

[rickudon]

Thanks for the further input, everyone. I'm certainly not yet doing anything at the serious level yet, just a hobby to help fill my time. I have 2 lime trees currently, one doing well and about 2 metres high, grew from a pip discarded in the garden, next to a path. Part of its success i put down to the fact it gets the drainage water from the air conditioner. Hopefully will flower in a year or so. The other is in a 8" pot and needs transplanting soon, it was a discarded air layered cutting from my thai B-in-law. It is pretty sick (always has been, guess that is why he threw it! Lots of leaf damage. 

 

My oranges (none at present) were always in pots, so water logging not the problem. Guess they needed better soil. I do now mix my own potting compost from garden soil, sand and dried duck shit.  On this point about potting compost, over the wet season did an experiment with 2 large pots, one with the 20 baht bag stuff you can buy and the other my own. Both had granular growmore added occasionally. Planted lettuce from seed and my compost had plants 200% bigger.  I knew the 20 baht stuff was crap, but that bad?

[jpinx]

17 minutes ago, rickudon said:

Thanks for the further input, everyone. I'm certainly not yet doing anything at the serious level yet, just a hobby to help fill my time. I have 2 lime trees currently, one doing well and about 2 metres high, grew from a pip discarded in the garden, next to a path. Part of its success i put down to the fact it gets the drainage water from the air conditioner. Hopefully will flower in a year or so. The other is in a 8" pot and needs transplanting soon, it was a discarded air layered cutting from my thai B-in-law. It is pretty sick (always has been, guess that is why he threw it! Lots of leaf damage. 

 

My oranges (none at present) were always in pots, so water logging not the problem. Guess they needed better soil. I do now mix my own potting compost from garden soil, sand and dried duck shit.  On this point about potting compost, over the wet season did an experiment with 2 large pots, one with the 20 baht bag stuff you can buy and the other my own. Both had granular growmore added occasionally. Planted lettuce from seed and my compost had plants 200% bigger.  I knew the 20 baht stuff was crap, but that bad?

yes -- that bad    Poultry shit is good, but better if composted with leaf-sweepings for about a year before use.  Raw/fresh it tends to burn the roots a bit.  Like anything in gardening/crofting - it takes time and patience to get the best results. Orange trees grown from seed rarely produce, and if they do it's nothing special, but the tree can be used to host grafts.  If you know of any really nice fruit growing on a tree and you can get to it - you can take a tiny piece of twig with leaf and graft it.  It's a skill well worth learning --  plenty of youtube help  

[jpinx]

Something else often overlooked -- Oranges *need* a frost to promote sugar and flavour.  Frost-free oranges are pretty bland and not nice texture.

[banlampang]

15 hours ago, Paruk said:

We have germinated seeds from some oranges we bought in the Macro some weeks ago (they were delicious and worth the try!). We first will let them grow in a good potting mix and transplant them later into grow bags we make ourselves from landscaping fabric. This way the trees will develop a very healthy root system with lots of smaller roots and do not have the problem of over watering in the rainy season.

 

We are using the grow bags already on a group of fig trees and they go like crazy!

 

Potting mix is 2 part cow manure, 1 part compost, a handful chicken manure, a teaspoon of diluted Epsom salt, a mug of Perlite, handful of rice covers, and at planting we use a home made organic fertiliser on the bottom of the hole to really boost the growth. Bugs and other riffraff is battled with Neem oil and wood vinegar. Fungus we don't have yet, but if it starts to show its going to be a mix of water with baking soda and some oil.

Paruk - We got our seeds from Valencia oranges, tangerines and lemons purchased from Macro.  Seeds germinated two years ago - fairly high percentage germinated.  Lemon tree transferred to large container last season - now 7' tall and healthy.  Expect lemons this coming season.  I recognize it is a 'wait and see' on fruiting and quality - I have a lot of time on my hands :)  Sounds like you have a pretty comprehensive fertilizer. Good luck!

[fruitman]

If you live in a cold place it's worth trying the japanese Yuzu or Sumo oranges...they are really the best i ever ate.

 

I saw grafted tree's for sale at the chatuchak plant market on wednesday, 1500 baht....

 

 

[fruitman]

Just now, Paruk said:

 

I'm never going to pay 1500 baht for a tree that we could grow ourselves from seed.

 

You can't grow that yourself from seed.

[banlampang]

Fruitman - Never heard of Yuzo or Sumo - how do they compare to Velencias?  Where is the Chatuchak plant market?  I'm up in Lampang.

 

Paruk - In my experience seeds are not common in the Valcencias.  I save any plump seeds I encounter, remove the tough outer coat and put them in soil.  If they germinate - great.  I have one Honey Mercot plant (two years old) that I will use for grafting a 'cocktail' tree.  We compost from the vegetable garden with cow manure and use on all the plants and trees.  I agree with you on organic fertilizers.  We just recently got a 10 kilo bag of cricket droppings from our neighbor.  Anxious to see how our next vegetable garden responds to cricket droppings.  Our property is walled and rather small so we are limited.  A grape arbor would be a nice addition. 

 

It's all great fun playing in the garden!

[fruitman]

13 minutes ago, Paruk said:

Looks like it! Never had one of those. I guess you have one in your garden?  If so, I'm volunteering to have a couple to try when you're harvesting. ;-)

 

However, I don't foresee in the near future that Thai are going to spent about 150 - 250 Baht for 1 orange. It works in Japan and looks that US is catching up with it, too. But I'm afraid it will take another 20-30 years before they are ready for that here in Thailand. For 1500 Baht I can grow a whole lot of nice stuff of which the overproduction is easily absorbed at the local market.

 

I don't know if citrus grows true from seed or you might end up with a very bad (can also be very good) fruit. And a whole tree full of them.

Grafted tree's is the way to go, grow smaller, fruit much faster and the fruit is exactly the same as the mothertree.

 

In BKK people pay 20.000 baht for the best durians...that's for 1 !!

I have no idea if yuzu can grow here in BKK, i guess not but maybe in chiang mai on a mountain they do better. They need cold as well like in japan.

 

In BKK is the kastetsart agriculture fair from 24 jan till 3 or 4 februari...there you can buy all the citrus and fruittree's you can dream of. I also saw grafted blood moro orange last year. And much much more.

That moro orange might cost 2-4000 baht for a grafted tree....i also have several expensive tree's, if you want something special which had to be imported you have to pay.

 

The or-tor-kor market also has expensive fruit but it's all same same...nothing really rare to find there. Sure they would pay a lot for yuzu's, bangkoks richest people shop there.

 

Now i have a Ross sapote tree blooming. I've never seen it in thailand..

If you have plenty of bare land than go to the kasetsart fair the first days...bring a pickuptruck and load it with all kinds of fruittree's there.

[fruitman]

Here's my jackfruit...these are the first 3 fruits of it and it's phet raa chaa variety....very nice one (tastes the same as thong prasert jackfruit).

I bought jackfruit today which was amazing cheap, yellow and crispy but it was not thong prasert and not nice at all. 

 

I didn't pay crazy money for rare fruittree's but i swap tree's with other collectors. IF you want to buy from them they 'll ask you crazy prices. Also on the kasetfair they ask crazy prices for rare or imported fruittree's. On chatuchak a new mangovariety costs also 1000 baht for a small grafted tree.

 

It's more for farmers who want to start a new fruitfarm. There's no use in growing the same as all others. It's all about varieties....

Same goes for guava...pen sithong tastes much better than kim yu and gets a higher price.

The jackfruitshop here who sells phet raa chaa always has a qeueu on the market...you might have to wait an hour sometimes to buy from her. There are plenty other jackvendors but they are not busy.

 

durian laplae  from utteradit is also very expensive.

 

I grew a navel orange but i was full of seeds...now there's a red pomelo which is very expensive as well but the price goes down every year.

I had a cocktail citrustree but it didn't give me much fruit, BKK is too warm i guess. Now it is a fingerlime tree, i cut all others off.

 

There are plenty of fruits that thailand doesn't have yet...some also can be grown in isan. You need something droughtresistant for there i guess. jujube or some sapote or a new guava maybe. There are loads of them on the world.

 

 

[banlampang]

Our dominant tree in the yard is a jackfruit.  It will put on fruit but very quickly the fruit is covered with a fungus (?) and soon drops.  Any ideas?

[rickudon]

Came back to life again .......

 

Didn't have any joy with a few mandarin seeds planted this winter, but have 2 Mangosteen on the go - but the hot season is the critical time and not survived the previous couple of times. They need protecting for up to 5 years from extreme heat and sun i have read.

 

Also tried grapes for the first time - pink ones from Makro - planted about 10 and 3 came up after about 4 weeks just before new year. 2 aborted without throwing out leaves but have one nice 2 cm grape vine ......

[banlampang]

On ‎1‎/‎21‎/‎2017 at 7:01 PM, Paruk said:

Maybe try a mix of 1 table spoon of baking soda mixed with a gallon (US one) of water and a teaspoon of dishwashing liquid to make it stick better. Put it in a sprayer and spray over the leafs and the fruit. Don't forget underside of leaves. Repeat if needed every other day. Spray very early in the morning or end of the day. If you spray it in full sun it could burn the leaves, so don't do that! Hope it helps.

Paruk - A daunting task to be sure.  The tree is some 40 feet tall.  The other day I noticed that ants might be 'farming' the fungus.

[banlampang]

On ‎1‎/‎22‎/‎2017 at 0:11 AM, rickudon said:

Came back to life again .......

 

Didn't have any joy with a few mandarin seeds planted this winter, but have 2 Mangosteen on the go - but the hot season is the critical time and not survived the previous couple of times. They need protecting for up to 5 years from extreme heat and sun i have read.

 

Also tried grapes for the first time - pink ones from Makro - planted about 10 and 3 came up after about 4 weeks just before new year. 2 aborted without throwing out leaves but have one nice 2 cm grape vine ......

The root stock for grapes that I remember seeing in the US was so large - it had to be several years old.  Still worth a go - good luck!

[banlampang]

5 hours ago, Paruk said:

Is it a kind of black fungus? If so, it might have to do with aphids. They excrete honeydew that the ants farm for food. The honeydew also attracts various kinds of fungus, among which this black fungus. (Have it at the moment all over my mango trees, spraying like crazy!). One way is to keep the ants from climbing the tree. Tanglefoot is a commercial product from the US, google it. A cheaper way is buying a big pot of heavy duty machine grease and smear it around the stem of the tree, at a hight that keeps pets and children away from it. The ants will get stuck in the grease and die. As an extra measure, spread used coffee ground around the base of the the tree (just sprinkle a thin layer). Ants hate the smell of coffee and stay away. The coffee ground is also a great fertiliser, with nitrogen/phosphorus/potassium/sulphur/calcium/magnesium in it plus a bunch of micro nutrients that your soil will like (as your plants will too!). A line of corn meal around the tree is another extra measure. The meal will stick to limbs of the ants and cut their joints etc. They soon die off. If they eat it, even better. It expands in their little bellies and ........ kaboom!. ;-)

 

Good luck!

Black fungus for sure!  I used to get it on the orange trees back in the states.  I took and placed a 3 inch collar of aluminum foil and taped it top and bottom to the base of the tree.  Then I spread this tarry, honey colored goo on the foil.  Ants would get trapped to the goo - possibly the Tanglefoot you referenced.  Haven't looked for it over here - good idea!  We normally compost the coffee grounds - will tell Nong to sprinkle it at the base of the tree.  Great input - thanks!