How Many Years Does a Loquat Tree Take to Bear Fruit Without Grafting?
Loquat is a very common fruit, sweet and sour and tasty, generally ripening in early summer. Most loquat trees grown on the market have been grafted, so how many years does a loquat tree take to bear fruit without grafting?
1. How Many Years Does a Loquat Tree Take to Bear Fruit Without Grafting?
A loquat tree without grafting generally needs 3-5 years to bear fruit. If a loquat tree grown from seed does not bear fruit, it may be a problem of variety and soil; seedlings show atavism, and outside their place of origin it is very difficult for them to flower and bear fruit normally, so superior varieties need to be grafted for improvement.
2. The Growing Environment of Loquat Trees
Loquat likes light and tolerates slight shade; it likes a warm climate and fertile, moist, well-drained soil. It tolerates cold slightly but not severe cold, and grows slowly. In areas with an average temperature above 12-15, winter temperatures not below -5°C, and temperatures during the flowering and young fruit stages not below 0°C, it can all grow well.
Under normal circumstances, it can also be cultivated in Henan Province, but during the fruiting period the young fruit is frozen once the temperature drops below minus 2 degrees. The suitable cultivation areas are the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River and areas to the south. Fertile soil is best.
3. Cultivation Methods
1. Girdling, branch bending and lightly breaking and wounding branches to promote and control flower bud differentiation. In late June, make 2-3 girdles on the main trunk, and use a 50-fold dilution of 50% thiophanate-methyl wettable powder to smear the wounds to prevent infection by pathogens; from June to July, pull all main and side branches with a branch diameter of more than 1 cm and a branch length of more than 70 cm to form an angle of 50-55 degrees with the main trunk, drawing the branch tips to develop horizontally, so that the branches grow at a slant and droop slightly; for other branches, use twisting and rubbing to change the direction of branch growth, so as to facilitate flower bud formation.
2. Fertilizer and water to promote and control flower bud differentiation
From June to August, do not apply nitrogen fertilizer, and appropriately increase the application of phosphorus and potassium fertilizers; from June to August, after branch bending and before flower bud formation, if the growth of vigorous branches still cannot be controlled, spray the leaves with a mixture of 600-800-fold monopotassium phosphate and boric acid 2-3 times. From June to September, for vigorously growing loquat trees, dig trenches to drain rainwater, reduce soil moisture, and appropriately cut off part of the root mass in the surface soil to reduce the moisture in the branches.
3. Use regulators to promote and control flower bud differentiation
Use paclobutrazol (PP333) applied to the soil at 0.5 g/m plus foliar spraying at 1,000 mg/L, treating once each around June 20 and June 30; or spray paclobutrazol on the leaves once each month from June to August at 1,000 mg/L, so that the summer shoots quickly stop growing, the cell sap concentration and C/N concentration increase, and the
loquat flower buds are promoted to form.