The Tropical Fruit Forum

Thanks buddy roo - good to know that people really do use syringes. Unlikely I'll be by a feed store any time soon, but I'll see what I can find that might be similar that doesn't require an extra outing to source.

I learned to graft by watching th user  GraftingAvacado's videos on YouTube - can't get copy paste to work right now. The video I found most useful is called veneer grafting - top working. I've top worked two mango trees that way.

I have dwarf mango trees planted about 6' from my house. For a bigger tree you'd need more distance. I have another planted near a privacy fence on the perimeter of my property. The fence doesn't give nearly as much protection as the house walls do.

You can think  of canopies of large trees over smaller ones as similar to throwing a blanket over your small tree to hold in heat. The umbrella of foliage of the big tree acts sort of blanket like, giving some cold protection. The ground is warmer than the air in our climate, so blankets trap the heat of the ground in keeping the cold air off.

Those mesh bags look great! Where did you get them and what brand or mesh size are they?

Kudos for putting thought into what will suit you best! It is so hard to choose when you have limited space. Given your space constraints, I would skip banana, they are large plants and demand space. And yes, they do ripen all at once. That is actually true for a lot of kinds of fruit - most individual trees will have ripe fruit for 2-4 weeks of each year. Some trees have better "hang time" ability than others where ripe fruit left on the tree stays good & doesn't spoil.  Here's what I'm growing
Mangos - Manilita, Pickering, Maha Chanok, Fairchild
Emperor Lychee
Low chill peach - would need to consult my records to remember the variety
Gefner Atemoya
Citrus - Meyer Lemon, sugarbelle & ponkan

Emperor Lychee is nice since you can keep it dwarfed, the other varieties of lychee are not easy to size constrain. Lychees do grow slowly, so considering your patience level is important. The tradeoff is that slow growing varieties, once they reach maturity can be easier to maintain because less pruning is required to keep them small. Keeping my trees at 6' involves 1 hard pruning a year after fruit harvest, and for the mangos pinching the tips on new growth to encourage branching - usually 1 or 2 times a year. Keeping a tree small is a lot easier than trying to reduce the size of one that has grown too large.

If you can get power to all you fruit trees via extension cord, that greatly simplifies frost protection. Now that my trees are mature, frost protection is pretty easy, I string up old fashioned c9 christmas lights in November and leave them up until March. In years where we only have light frost (like the last 3), I just turn them on for nights below 35 degrees, and that's it. If a hard freeze (28 or below) is predicted, then I put up full hoop houses. I use PVC pipe to construct a frame around the tree, anchored by rebar chunks driven into the ground. Then I put a plastic cover over the frame (frame has to be big enough that the plastic doesn't touch the tree), and put a heat source (I use car trouble lights) inside the shelter, and then tie down the shelter with guy lines to keep them from blowing off. Setting up shelters for all my trees except the peach (which doesn't need it), takes the better part of a day. So it is a significant amount of work.  Microclimates also matter a lot. If you can plant your frost sensitive trees next to the wall of your house (south wall is best) or under the canopy of a large tree like an oak, you can get several extra degrees of frost shelter from those little microclimates. One thing that could be fun and help you feel less antsy over the winter is to look for a sale on frost sensitive landscaping plants - oyster plants or crotons or the like. Buy a few and plant them now anyplace you think you might want to put a frost sensitive tree next spring. Give them no frost protection at all and see which are not killed off by frost over the winter. If some get killed by frost and others don't, the ones that don't show you where your microclimates are. On my property, I use oyster plants as borders in my planting beds, and it is really interesting to see which are killled by frost and which are not, the pattern on my property is consistent year to year and coorelates to which trees need most protection during cold.

If you really want a large canopied exotic, you could consider a macadamia. I'm not growing them because they can't be kept small. But my understanding is that on hard freeze years they will get knocked back a bit, but otherwise, they do fine with light frost and they are large and pretty evergreen trees.

Peach can also be larger, but I consider it the least rewarding tree and if you are space constrained I wouldn't plant one. It takes a lot of pruning, fertilizing & disease maintenance for low payoff. The fruit is incredible (which is why I keep it), but I've had only 2 good crops in 10 years. It sets fruit every year, we do get enough cold for that. Trouble is, only the years that have really cold winters (hard freezes) knock back the fruit fly population enough to allow the fruit to ripen. For last 3 years running, the entire crop has been ruined by fruit flies attacking the fruit just before they ripen. I've tried lots of ways to mitigate - none that I've found work. But I keep it because on years when my tropicals do take a hit from frost and are not going to fruit, then I will have peaches to look forward to. 

The tropical fruit club that meets at Leu Gardens is a nice place to meet local fruit enthusiasts. You can search for my posts in this forum, I'm in the Orlando area too.  The best thing I did when planning was look up size information on plants I was considering and plot out where they would fit on my property, being realistic about how many plants I had room for, especially large trees. And deciding how dedicated you are to caring for them is another important factor. Growing mango and lychee is perfectly possible here, but cold protection is required as we are "zone pushing" a bit. If you want a low commitment plant that gives you a taste for tropicals, try a banana. They look neat, grow fast, and are easy to dig up and move (or get rid of) if you change your mind. I'd be happy to give you offsets from my plants. If I was going to choose one tree, it would be a lychee. Very hard to get fresh ones here if you don't grow your own, and aside from needing cold protecting it is a low care plant. Other fruit like mango, avocado and peaches are easy to get without growing your own, so it is worth considering how much you enjoy growing fruit vs just eating fruit. Have fun choosing!

Thanks for the great info! I did 8 grafts this morning using this technique on a mix of green and older brown shoots. My success rate with veneer has been about 30% - hoping for a better take rate with this method. It was very informative peeling out the strips of bark - much easier to see where the cambium is. I'm pretty sure now that my previous low take rate was due to not cutting deep enough in the host plant to expose enough cambium. Looking forward to seeing how many of these take!

That's awesome!

Here's what the manilita looks like today. It is just under 6' tall.

Angie definitely seems more available than manilita. I’m quite a fan on how the latter tree looks in subworshipper’s past photos of their tree though. (Speaking of which, do you have any current photos of the tree?) Can’t say I’d be too anxious in grafting as I’ve barely touched on research when it comes to doing so.

Size would probably be the definitive factor in my choosing. Seems Angie is mostly called a “semi-dwarf” as opposed to a complete dwarf...in assuming that means growth habit without pruning. How often do mangos require pruning to keep small? (6-8ft?)

I technically have Angie - it was top worked to become my Maha Chanok. You can search my previous comments on its characteristics. After some great discussion, the conclusion seems to be that it had good flavor on calcerous south fl soil, but terrible flavor on central fl sand. So if your soil is sandy, I wouldn't choose Angie.  And size wise for me From smallest to largest tree size
Manilita, Pickering, Angie, Maha Chanok, cogshall
I'll try to post a new pic of the manilita over the weekend. Pickering and manilita are about the same volume, but shaped different. Pickering is low and wide and manilita is a little taller, but narrower. Both are easy to keep under 6' tall. Angie I could maintain at 8' easily and keep to 6' with difficulty. Maha Chanok is new but based on habit should be easy to maintain at less than 8'. Cogshall is difficult to keep to 8' and impossible to keep at 6'. It would I think be easy to maintain at 10'.

Pruning aggressively to maintain a small tree means one major pruning each year after harvest and then tipping to force branching after each growth flush except the last of the season. There are usually 1-3 growth flushes a year in central fl after fruit harvest and before winter causes dormancy. So not a big time commitment to keep a single tree pruned. Works out to 2-3 prunings per year. 

Hmm, I did indeed get my Manilita from Fairchild, and I don't see any obvious other sources. Anyone else know if they are for sale anywhere else? If you want to try your hand at grafting I could share budwood.

Bev grower - thanks for the advise on removing shoots, I am going to do as you suggest and let it have another growth flush before doing the culling, and possibly waiting to spring.

I have had both lemon zest and sweet tart - both excellent but I prefer sweet tart. Unfortunately, those varieties are too vigorous for me to grow. I have to keep my trees at 6' to be able to frost protect. That really limits which varieties I can grow.

That made the honeykiss not taking especially frustrating, since it can be kept small. Pulling apart some of the failed grafts, it looks like lack of cambium contact was the issue, some minor fusing, just not enough. I suspect the issue is my lack of skill in making the cut on the host tree to the right depth. For I can get more budwood I want to try that coffin/grave method rather than veneer. Didn't see that method until after I grafted, I think I could get a better take rate that way. If anyone has budwood they can share please drop me a pm.

Indigoemu - I have Pickering, Manilita, Maha Chanok & this cogshall I'm top working. As you noted it is essential to cold protect, or trees will be killed outright. That pretty much means limiting to varieties that can be kept small. Now that my trees are established all I need is c9 old fashioned Xmas lights to protect from light frosts. For a hard freeze I put up a mini hoop house over each tree - made of plastic sheeting and pvc pipe with a trouble light inside - those have successfully protected at 26 degrees for multiple hours and below 32 for 10 hours straight. If you search the cold protection threads I think some of my pics are still around of that setup. If I could only have one tree here it would be the manilita - it stays smallest and is most productive. The fruit is pretty and is consistently good flavored. Obviously can't compete with something like ST for flavor, but miles better than a grocery store mango.