LYCHEE

Of all my plants that I was worried about during the cold snap it was my lychee tree. I've had it for about 5 yrs now and only gotten a few fruit the year before last as conditions haven't been right. Well this year it started budding out with the largest amount of buds I have seen yet. Well along came the cold snap and I though for sure I could kiss another season goodbye. Well look what's happened. The buds continued to mature and started opening up. I checked on it yesterday and it is absolutely covered with bees and even a couple wasps working there butts off collecting and pollinating. With any luck I will have a nice crop to munch on this spring barring any more cold snaps. Keep your fingers crossed. I do plan to get a few more trees for the back yard. Did I tell you I love lychee fruit.LOL

Closeup with busy bees

Female Flowers

Another busy bee. Make those fruit. LOL

Lots of Flowers

Last one shows even the wasps are getting in on the action.

Its nice to see so many bees enjoying the flowers. Now we know what they love lol.
I hope you get lots of lychees. It is a beautiful tree. What variety is it?

I believe brewster but not positive

Wow budgielover, lots of flowers there, mine is still so small and the small number of flowers I did have this year dwindled away in the freezes we had. Looks like you'll be getting lots of fruit.

Keep posting the photos of how they progress, I'd love to see the stages.

Will do. They are certainly hit or miss. My tree is still small. I did chance pruning almost all the branches last July except a few. As they bloom on new growth, the only ones that didn't get blooms are the branches I did not prune.

Really wonderful. So glad your tree did so beautifully during the cold weather this year.

We lost about 2' off the tops of our trees not covering in time for the freezes. Heartbreaking. We have had the trees for 3 years, and they were getting round and beautiufl. Hopefully they will recover over the summer.

Our trees got a huge unpremeditated prune this year. Maybe we will get a good crop next year.

Star
How tall are your trees. Mine is still on the short side for being 6-7 yrs old. I did trim and thin a nearby bushy tree that was blocking much of the sun from it. It seems to be doing much better now with more sun.

I am not sure how big they should be. This is the big tree, and it is about 8' tall before the prune and it fruited heavily last year. It has provided fruit every year except the first year we planted it when it was just a twig. I think we have had it about 3 or 4 years. It grew very fast and was really beautiful. I will need to find a picture from last fall before the freeze. :( We didn't get it covered in time. I took off about two feet and so now it looks pretty bad.

We used blankets the first couple years, but this year it was too big. I bought two large tarps, sewed them together using the grommets and then used bungees and tent stakes to stake the tarp into the ground. The tarps are about half the size of my driveway, so it was a big tree.

We lost a longun and a mango this year. Didn't cover them soon enough.

That's probably the height of mine now but your's is much bushier. I think too much shade made mine leggier. They say to keep them trimmed down to make it easier to pick the fruit but to me the tallerthey are, the more branches and thus, more fruit. LOL

The big tree is on the north west side of the front yard and the small one (a year younger and maybe 6' tall before the tree) and the small one is on the north east side. Both are in full sun. There's a pine and a cypress in the yard with them, but these Lychee trees are always in full sun.

I have never pruned trees before, and these were so badly damaged, I pruned off every branch where the freeze ended. So they both look bad. I didn't want to take too much so they can still photosynthesize.