carambola

Anonymous starts with ...
i bought a star fruit (carambola) about 2 weeks ago but it is looking rather sad
the leaves will not spread out can any one help me!! i live in pooraka south australia

Anonymous says...
thank you!!! i thought my plant was dying

John says...
Hello Mr Anonymous, mine has been in for 3 weeks now and is doing the same except for some burnt leaves from some 40c heat the other day. In Indo they do handle just the morning sun.

John says...
The leaves and branches will grow back. If your in SA give them a month coarse of pot ash and plent of water but watch out for wet feet, they dont like.

Shaun says...
How long will it take a seedling to produce fruit?
Is there any particular variety of Carambola that does better than the others in Australia?

Scott G says...
I did a lot of searching for info about Carambola before I bought mine. There seemed to be very little information out there. On the web I eventually found a partial list of what the difference in the fruits was but nothing about how the plants differed in any other way.

With so little info I felt I couldn't make an informed decision about what would do best in my area. So I bought whatever variety I came accross. It is doing well (no doubt thanks to the very wet summer we have just had here). It produced 3 fruits within a few months of putting it in the ground!

I agree with John - they like lots of water.

Anonymous says...
will a carambola survive an adelaide winter?

Anonymous says...
will shade cloth protect a carambola from heat and frost?

Scott G says...
For the record here are details of my Carambola that is doing very well.

It is on a small mound in sloping heavy clay soil with a good layer of organic material near the top. And lots of mulch. This is one of the wettest parts of my garden.

It receives a little shade in various parts of the day due to the neighbours huge palm trees. I suspect it is also in one of the mildest temperature ranged parts of my garden. Temperature from about 7 to 37.

The planted is a grafted type "Fwang Tung". I am not sure what the rootstock is.

I planted it late spring and had 3 fruits by late summer. The fruits were tastey. It is not near any other Carambola to my knowledge so it is self polinating.

After 5 months in the ground (through a wet summer) it is about 1.4m tall by 1m wide. It has an open semi-weeping form and is covered with lush leaves and still retains many of the original leaves that it had when I bought it.

The soil has had a heavy application of gypsum and light applications of Dynamic Lifter and blood and bone.

I am very happy with this plant.

Anonymous says...
between what temperatures do carambola grow? what temperatures can they handle?

Shaun says...
Does anyone know whether Carambola Arkin variety is self-pollinationf? .....
I read that some carambola need cross-pollination.

BTW, what is "polyembronic" ??

Anonymous says...
if a seedling is polyemboric it will be the same as the parent plant

Anonymous says...
do they lose their leaves in winter? as mine are.

Dekka says...
To clarify my last post about polyembryonic seed, there is a tendency for these to be true-to-type but no guarantee as one embryo in the seed is often a true sexual embryo having genetic characteristics of the parents. These are often less vigorous than the asexual seedlings but in some species the reverse is the case.
On the subject of Carambola from seed, I saw a study done by a group called Echo where they planted seven seeds from a very sweet Carambola 'Arkin' and ended up with only one sweet variety. The rest were very sour and all had undesirable fruit-shape characteristics.

Shaun says...
I got an Arkin Carambolas from Joe @ Tass-1-tree (WA) ....
do I need to buy another variety to cross pollinate so that I get fruits ?
Has anyone got any info on this subject?
Thnx

Shaun says...
Thanks for your response, Yong.
Which area of Perth are you located?
If Carambola/Star-fruit plants need cross-pollination, then manual pollination may not work if you only have 1 plant or 1 variety.

My plant is still very small (approx 1m tall) and I intend to keep it planted in a pot (kind of like a 'bonsai') as I only got a very small court yard.

Hope to have comments from others who had experience with Carambola.

Tran says...
Like Yong's tree. mine is about the same age in a big pot under veranda. When the tree first arrived it had some little fruits but has been flowered ever seen. This year I don't cover up the soil and give it a bucket of water a week and it is still flowering in the cold Melbourne weather. I was told Kary type does not need polination and one book said so but I am still waiting.