Geffie's In Trouble

About 350 days a year, I hope for a good heavy rain. Many of the other fifteen days came in the past three weeks.

The tipsy papayas got the headlines. As for the other hundred-and-some fruit trees, most all were unharmed or looked just a little out of sorts for a few days. There's one, though, that might not recover--- the Gefner atemoya.

Back in 2012 I planted Geffie in the northwest grove, in what seemed like a nice sunny spot. In the historically wet summer of 2013, I heard Adam Shafran speak at the Tampa Bay Rare Fruit Council. He said that atemoyas are not flood tolerant, a fact that I had learned a few days earlier when Geffie completely defoliated. It turns out that her nice planting spot is on the edge of the main east-west swale on the west side--- a subtlety beyond my sophistication at that time--- and the choice of an atemoya there was, shall we say, sub-optimal.

No one had had the good graces to graft Geffie onto pond apple rootstock, so she suffered mightily that summer. But she leafed out again, and eventually managed to work her way up to good health, even producing a nice little fruit this year.

It was a tad overripe when I picked it, but still good enough that the Queen of the Indoors became an instant atemoya enthusiast.

I think Geffie's going to pull through again, but as you can see, she's taken another bad hit. During winter dormancy I'll do what I should have done in 2014--- move her onto higher ground.

All the other fruit trees look happy, except for two of the white sapotes--- the Suebelle and the Bonita Springs--- that had been going great guns but suddenly went downhill even before the big rain. I haven't figured out what's wrong with them, but I'm not the only one to have trouble with this species, a topic for another day.