Durian
Durio zibethinus
It fruits on the trunk and lets the crop fall when ready, which is why harvesting means nets overhead.
- Type
- Fruit · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Green
- Flower color
- Green
- Sunlight
- Full sun, somewhere strong wind cannot reach it.
- Watering
- Constant moisture — the equivalent of 1500-2000mm of rain a year.
- Feeding
- Balanced NPK four times a year, turning to high-K ahead of fruiting.
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Flowering
- February
- Pruning
- Prune lightly after harvest, and leave the fruiting wood on the trunk alone.
- Feb–Mar Bud Break
- Mar–Mar Flowering
- Mar–Jun Fruit Set
- Jun–Jul Harvest
- Jul–Dec Growing
- Jan–Feb Growing
- Plant spacing
- 39 ft 4 in
- In-row spacing
- 39 ft 4 in
- Between rows
- 49 ft 3 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- Woody, shallow and far-reaching
- Working depth
- 12–24 in
- Can reach
- 4 ft down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 79–118 ft across, about 2–3× the width of the plant
Almost all of a tree’s roots are in the top two feet of soil, where the air is, and they run out well past the branch tips. The deep taproot most people picture belongs to the seedling; the tree grows out of it and spends the rest of its life spreading sideways instead.
The habit is Durian’s own; the figures are what that habit usually comes to at this size, not a measurement of this species. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
- Scale insects Scale insects on stems and branches
- Leaf spot Leaf spot disease marking the foliage
- Phytophthora root and foot rot Phytophthora palmivora, the cause of patch canker
- Durian fruit borer tunneling into the developing fruit
- Rhizopus fruit rot
Beneficial predators that hunt this plant's pests — grow their favourite flowers nearby to recruit them. companion plant
- Hoverfly SyrphidaeHunts Scale insects
Bee-mimicking flies whose legless larvae graze aphid colonies clean while the adults pollinate. A ribbon of shallow, nectar-rich flowers kept in bloom all season recruits wave after wave of them.
- Ladybird (lady beetle) CoccinellidaeHunts Scale insects
The gardener’s favorite ally: adults and their alligator-shaped larvae each eat thousands of aphids, plus scale, mealybugs, and other soft-bodied sap-suckers. Grow flat, open flowers for the adults and never spray a colony that ladybird larvae are already working.
Green-leaved fruit, like this one.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com