Where frost is rare, plant a young fruit tree as the rains begin.
As recorded: Where frost is rare and the year has a dry season, a young fruit tree or banana sucker is best planted as the rains begin; where it has none, plant it whenever you can water it.
Promising A person has checked it against its sources. If you skip this, it still grows, just less well. The planner suggests it.
How it works
A new tree's roots have not yet reached deeper moisture, so it settles in on steady rain or watering, and planting into the rains gives it that water.
What to do about it
Plant at the start of the wet season. Planted earlier, water it every two to three days until the rains come.
The evidence
Evidence: checked against 5 sources in the research-based literature.
The 5 sources
But…if you have a choice, the very best time to plant is during south Florida’s rainy season. The high humidity and rainfall are a perfect pair to help your new tree establish itself and begin to grow.
The best time to plant is when you have a pick and a fruit tree in front of you. The second-best time to plant is in May, just before the rains begin.
In south Florida, March, April, and May are the best months for planting if irrigation is available. Otherwise planting should be delayed until the onset of the rains in June.
Planting is best done at the end of the dry season and beginning of the wet season for adequate initial moisture and to avoid waterlogging of the young plants.
Leonie says they're easy to grow in the tropics and recommends planting them during the wet season, when the monsoonal rains arrive.
Where this rule stops
It reads the place's dry months, so the month it names is a normal year's, not this year's first rain. Where a place has no dry month, the sources give no month, and none is named.
Plants it applies to · 8
How this rule has changed
Every change is dated, newest first. The full record, with each reason, is in the data download.
- Added to the rules
More ways Milpa can help
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Cite this page
Milpa Gardens. “Where frost is rare, plant a young fruit tree as the rains begin.” Evidence grade: Promising. https://milpa.garden/rules/where-frost-rare-year-has-dry-season/
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- Well established
- The rule names its mechanism and is settled, by sources a person has read and checked or by plain arithmetic and geometry.
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- The evidence points both ways, or no study has tested it, so the planner does not enforce it.
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