Here in San Diego in zone 10B there is a sneaky little plant that has made its
way into ornamental landscaping all around the city - so you can see it.
And I have one in my front yard. So let's start "how to care for it",
we're looking at the loquat today guys.
Kevin Espiritu here from Epic Gardening where it's my goal to help you grow a
greener thumb. Loquats, they are related to the rose.
They produce tons and tons and tons of these fruits.
They kind of taste like a tropical peach, really juicy and delicious.
You can dehydrate them and they're really not that hard to grow.
So in today's video we're going to look at the full range of care from sun to
water to fertilizing to transplanting, all the way down to pests.
And if you stay, towards the end,
I'm actually going to harvest and show you how to prepare and dehydrate these as
well as what they look like on the inside. So first of all,
if you want to grow loquat - I was fortunate enough to actually move into my
house - this was just here. So I've managed it, I've pruned it,
we'll talk about that.
But my friends at FastGrowingTrees have also sent one out and it's come in
typical FastGrowingTrees fashion, absolutely amazing condition.
And so if you'd like to start your loquat adventure,
I really highly recommend FastGrowingTrees.
They ship out fast and they ship out quality at a price that's pretty crazily
low to be honest with you. So without further ado, let's hop into the video.
Okay. If you're going to be transplanting a new loquat tree into the ground,
and that's what most of us are doing,
it's better to grab a healthy grafted cultivar than to try to struggle and grow
it from seed for the most part. But you can certainly do that. If you are,
what you'll want to do is dig a hole, maybe three, four inch, three, four feet,
excuse me, in diameter, and then maybe 12 to 18 inches down.
Loosen that soil up and then match to the soil line that's in the planting pot
or the planting bag. So I would unwrap this, I would go ahead and sink it in,
but I wouldn't bury it too low and I wouldn't bury it too high.
I would just match the soil surface, give it a nice healthy water.
And if you'd like, if you have issues with rain, you're not getting enough rain.
Weirdly enough, I'm in San Diego zone 10B and it's raining on me right now,
which is very unusual. But you may want to add some mulch.
You can do it in a ring,
don't suffocate it and stack it up right against the base of the tree,
but give it a nice little mulch and you'll help keep that water and that soil
moist. Let's talk light, temperature, humidity.
So if you're a fan of the USDA hardiness zone system,
then 8 to10 is your favorable range.
Although with some creative planting techniques you can push that zone a little
lower or you can protect it and push that zone a little bit higher. So sunwise,
full sun to part shade. This is my south facing front yard,
so this is way south, it's going to get hit by the sun all the time.
And so sometimes one of the major issues you'll get is a crispiness at the tip.
What you'll want to do to prevent that is of course to water a little bit more.
And potentially if you have planned where you plant your loquat tree out,
plant it in an area that may protect it from the absolute brightest and hottest
parts of the day. Temperature wise,
45 to 85 degrees is its healthy, happy zone.
Although I would say really the optimal zone would be somewhere around like 65
to 75 degrees. And then from there humidity,
it's a tropical so it can handle high humidity. In fact, here in San Diego,
in California,
it actually is surviving and doing pretty well in humidity that's lower than
what it's used to. Although there are so many cultivars of loquat,
800 plus I think something crazy like that,
that there are definitely some cultivars that do well in lower humidity.
By the way, if you're thinking, oh man, I'm in zone six Kevin,
I can't grow this plant. Well you still can.
As long as your temps don't consistently get below 30,
it'll do okay to about 30ish.
But if it stays there for too long,
your flowers and your fruits just won't form.
So effectively your loquat has now become an ornamental tree. And to be honest,
there are probably better looking ornamental trees.
So you may not want to cultivate it as an ornamental.
If you get below 10 degrees,
then you're really going to cause permanent damage to the plant. And so, I mean,
you might grow it in a container, take it in, things like that.
Let's talk watering. Now, in a perfect world,
it's going to get 25 to 40 inches of water per year.
If you're in a region that naturally your climate provides that much, well then,
you're good to go. I'm not,
despite the fact that it's actually raining on me right now.
So what I'll do to counteract that is I'll strategically water it at the times
when it needs it most.
So the two times it needs it most are when these little fruits here,
which are almost ripe actually, and we'll get to that in a second.
But when these little fruits are starting to swell up and really put on some
size, I will increase the watering then for sure.
And if the temps go above 90-95 and it starts to suffer,
then I'll also increase the watering then.
Otherwise I'm watering it not too often. I'm letting the spring play out.
Summer, I will water and then fall. Again this is a fall flowering tree,
which we'll get to in a second. I will also increase the watering a little bit.
You don't have to worry too much,
provided your climate just gets the rain that it needs.
Let's talk now about soil for loquats.
It's pretty tolerant to a bunch of different soil conditions.
It can do well in slightly alkaline. It can do well in slightly acidic soil.
This one, this is my native soil in my front yard. I moved in, like I said,
with this on the property.
And this is relatively clay soil and so it clearly can do well once it's
established.
I'm curious as to what they did when they first planted this in.But if I was
going to grow it in a container, I would give it a,
I would probably give it like a mix of potting soil and top soil.
It would do perfectly fine. Again,
this is not the pickiest plant when it comes to soil. By the way,
as far as fertilizing goes, I've actually never fertilized this plant.
Of course it's really well established, but if you were to,
you would use just an all purpose, general tree fertilizer,
citrus fertilizer or something like that over the fruiting and the flowering
phases. But honestly, like I said,
I've never ever fertilized and there's quite a bit of fruit on this plant.
By the way, guys, sorry for all the noise.
There's literally a manhunt going on right now and I don't understand why
there's so much noise, so I'm sorry.
This is just the peril of filming in an urban environment.
As far as diseases and pests for the humble loquat tree - disease wise,
there's some blights you can run into,
as long as you keep airflow good with some creative and proper pruning,
which we'll get into, you're going to be fine on that. Pests,
scale can be an issue,
although I will say the bigger pests end up being more of a problem.
So when the fruit is nice and ripe,
the birds are going to come through and chirp, chirp, chirp, and chomp away.
I've provided a bird feeder that I keep usually nice and full so that hopefully
they opt for that instead. I've had squirrels come in,
crawl up the tree and start munching away and then actually recently people have
become a problem. I had a young guy, I don't know,
maybe he was something was going on with him, but he walked in,
opens my gate and just ripped a bunch of loquat off of my tree.
Which look, I, I like to give it out.
There's more than I can ever use,
but without asking was just a little - crossed my barrier.
And so perks of living in an urban environment again.
So those are the things you could potentially run into.
Hopefully you don't have to deal with the human intruders. But yeah,
just keep an eye out for those larger pests.
For pruning loquats you can be pretty harsh with with the plant,
as long as you don't do it when it's setting its flowers or it's fruiting.
So I would say anytime after the summer heat starts to peak.
Most of the fruit is set. You've harvested it, you've eaten it.
Just time to prune.
I've done a pretty rigorous pruning job on this last year and actually I
attribute most of the fruit you're seeing, this is a pretty heavy set,
to that pruning that I did last year. So you can see new growth coming up top,
which is great, but I pruned it to shape,
so I didn't want it to shade out all my other beds.
So that was a big consideration for me.
But I also pruned it to remove wasteful branches like branches that were coming
out from the bottom.
I don't want those that's going to just cause a sort of a shrub look that I
don't want.
I took out any crisscrossing branches in the middle just to increase the air
flow and stave off some of those humidity problems.
So I would say as long as you don't go more than two thirds of the plant and,
you know, as long as you don't take off more than that,
you're going to be completely fine for pruning. Okay.
The part you have all probably been waiting for,
how do you know when they're ripe? How do you know when they fruit?
When they flower. So loquats are interesting.
They are a fall flowering plant so after the heat of the summer starts to
dissipate, the flowers start to set and they set on new growth.
So growing tips that are no older than about six months or so.
And as you can see they form in clusters.
Sometimes there can be hundreds of clusters on the panicles,
which are basically just clusters of flowers.
Of course that does not manifest in hundreds of fruit, usually get around,
I don't know, maybe like 6 to 12 or so per cluster.
And as far as ripeness goes, the larger ones tend to be riper.
The ones that are slightly squishy to the touch - this one is not yet - tend to
be riper.
And also the ones that have a bit more of a deep,
rich or orangy color are generally the ones that are ripe.
So let's find one that's ripe.
And the thing about loquats is mostly they ripen across the whole tree at the
same time,
which means you have a flush of the fruit and they don't store that well fresh.
They don't keep that long fresh. And so you either have to eat them,
turn them into jams or jellies or do what we're going to do in a second and
dehydrate them, which is the little bonus for this video.
So let's find one that's ripe and I just want to show you what they look like on
the inside. So this one's nice and large,
it's a little squishy to the touch and it came off really easily.
And so this is good. They have a little bit of a fuzz on them, so you may,
if you want to eat it fresh, you may want to just kind of wipe that off.
You can see the color even tends to darken a little bit as you wipe that fuzz
off. But let's take this inside.
We'll do a cross section of it so you can see what's inside.
Let's open one of these up and let me show you.
What I like to do is I'm preparing a loquat for dehydrating,
so I like to slice them in half just like that.
And we can see most of the time there's one seed,
two seeds or three seeds - it's one to three. So here's what I like to do.
You've got your flesh, as you can see, it's nice and juicy.
It's already sort of spilling around. And if I'm going to dehydrate,
I like to take this little brown tip right here and I kind of pull that,
which removes some of this interior flesh that can sometimes not be the most
delicious part of it. And we'll do the same thing over here,
we'll remove that and boom, now we are ready to dehydrate.
I like to dehydrate around 10 to 12 hours at 115 degrees and you end up with
these.
These are dehydrated loquats that I have kind of picked up from my tree outside
as well as other areas around my city because like I said,
it's a popular landscaping plant. So you can see the compression.
This is one half and this is one half and so they,
they really shrink down and they taste even better in my opinion as they're
dehydrated. When they're dehydrated
you get that fruit leather kind of vibe to them and it's like a really
concentrated level of sweetness and a little tropical kick. Like I said, fresh,
they taste a little bit like a tropical peach is my best way of describing.
If you have a better way drop it in the comments down below. Guys,
loquat is underrated, a really underrated tree.
Highly productive for relatively little effort. So if you're interested,
go ahead and grow one. Like I said,
my friends at FastGrowingTrees ship out some amazing ones.
So drop into the comments or under the video description if you want to link to
do that. And until next time, cultivate that Like button, subscribe.
I'm going to feast on these. Mmm, so good. One little tip.
Put those little silica desiccant packets in there if you're dehydrating.
These guys saves you a world of hurt. But I'm going to keep munching on these.
I'll see you guys in the next video.
Keep on growing.