Author Topic: Growing Mango trees in Southern California  (Read 180018 times)

spaugh

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Re: Growing Mango trees in Southern California
« Reply #450 on: September 09, 2020, 01:32:24 PM »
Put multiple stakes in the ground (3 is a good number), spaced away from the trunk and use green tree tape to straighten it up.  You shouldn't really be staking up trees with the stake sitting on the tree.  That makes the tree weak a d dependent on the stakes.  You want to stake it and use tree tape down as low as possible just to straighten it up and let the rest of the tree lignify


Hey guys,

Anyone have any tips for a mango that slightly tipped over? I have a seedling that is growing rapidly that I desperately need to stake but Im worried about hurting the roots. It is in the ground if that matters and is about 3ft tall with about a 1/2" thick trunk.

Thanks so much!

Sean
Brad Spaugh

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Re: Growing Mango trees in Southern California
« Reply #451 on: September 09, 2020, 02:58:47 PM »
Simon, during the early years of a mango seedling in the ground, how many set of leaves should I expect per season please? My seedlings have been kinda slow so I was wondering if it's normal.

I just counted how many leaves are on my E4 seedling that was planted this year and it has 58 matured leaves and 15 new leaves forming at the tip. I included the tiny leaves at the bottom in the leaf count. It’s about 2.5-3 feet tall right now. Here’s a picture



Simon


WOW!!! I'm super intrigued! 58 + 15. Tell me more about this one please. Is E4 poly? Did you shade it at some point? Did this one ever take a break throughout the year? When exactly was this planted? The trunk at the base is like almost fully lignified! That looks like a beast. Very good job.

simon_grow

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Re: Growing Mango trees in Southern California
« Reply #452 on: September 10, 2020, 01:51:54 PM »
I forget exactly when I planted The seed but probably around June or July. E4 is sometimes produces poly embryonic seedlings and sometimes mono. I have been giving my trees supplemental Silica supplements in order to stiffen up the branches and thicken up the leaves.

E4 has a coconut tastes that is most noticeable when allowed to fully ripen. The seedlings appear to be decent growers. I also recently grafted actual( non seedling) E4 scions onto my, used to be, Lemon Zest tree.

You can increase lignification by allowing the wind to blow the seedling around and by fertilizing appropriately.

In order to maximize growth of mango trees in SoCal, it is very important to fertilize our trees during the heat of the Summer months. If you use organic fertilizers, you want to give your fertilizer well in advance of the expected growth.

Simon

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Re: Growing Mango trees in Southern California
« Reply #453 on: September 20, 2020, 07:50:21 PM »
Simon

Thanks for keeping this thread and project going.  I’m curious about your efforts on growing direct from seed.   What’s the oldest seedling you have?  Anything that’s flowered yet? 

Looking at your opening post on this thread, it seems you have all the making of an expert - willingness to make more mistakes than anyone else in a narrow field.  I’m talking to a friend, we are bouncing around ideas on the fastest way to get a seedling to fruit.  These include girdling, tipping, grafting a seedling onto a seedling (sounds odd but there is some evidence...), potassium, horizontal branch bending...

Keen to hear more about the Cali experiences

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Re: Growing Mango trees in Southern California
« Reply #454 on: September 20, 2020, 10:39:28 PM »
For me the hardest part of getting seedlings started was choking down the storebought mangos we have available here. There was one Tommy Crapkins that was so bad I couldn't finish it. It tasted like a hairy scotch brite pad dipped in turpentine and vomit. I cut the seed out and threw the rest of the fruit (which cost like 3 bucks or something!!) into the compost.

ammoun

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Re: Growing Mango trees in Southern California
« Reply #455 on: September 21, 2020, 08:03:17 AM »
Simon

Thanks for keeping this thread and project going.  I’m curious about your efforts on growing direct from seed.   What’s the oldest seedling you have?  Anything that’s flowered yet? 

Looking at your opening post on this thread, it seems you have all the making of an expert - willingness to make more mistakes than anyone else in a narrow field.  I’m talking to a friend, we are bouncing around ideas on the fastest way to get a seedling to fruit.  These include girdling, tipping, grafting a seedling onto a seedling (sounds odd but there is some evidence...), potassium, horizontal branch bending...

Keen to hear more about the Cali experiences

Did you probably mean grafting a seedling scion to an established tree?

simon_grow

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Re: Growing Mango trees in Southern California
« Reply #456 on: September 21, 2020, 02:32:45 PM »
Hey Future,

Here’s a synopsis. My yard is very small so I plant most my mango trees at my friends and relatives houses. I’ve planted so many seedlings that I’ve lost track of many of them. Some have died and some are huge now. Many years ago, I planted out a bunch of Lemon Zest seedlings. Ever since I found out there are so many disease issues with this variety, I have replaced many of them with Sweet Tart and various other seedlings so I had to start over again.

Brads( Spaugh’s) orchard is where I planted a majority of the seedlings and many of them are starting to really take off. We have seedlings of most the newer Zill varieties including both monoembryonic and Polyembryonic varieties planted out. Ill have to stop by the orchard and take some pictures. Our biggest seedling is probably a Sweet Tart seedling that is nice and bushy with strong upright branching. We have E4, Sweet Tart, Orange Sherbet, butter Cream, M4, Pina Colada, Fruit Punch, Coconut Cream, Fruit Cocktail, Honey KISS, NDM and many other seedlings planted out.

In my yard, I have a Sweet Tart Seedling that is 4 years old. It was squished in between two large trees and is shaded much of the day but it flowered in 3 years from planting the seed and it flowered again this year( 4 years from seed). This year, I thought I removed all the blooms but one hid under some leaves and I’m allowing it to grow since it was palm size when I discovered it. I’ll take a picture later.

I also have a NDM seedling that flowered in its third or fourth year from planting the seed and it held small fruits which aborted. I grafted over most the branches but I still have one branch from the original seedling.

The Double Stone graft experiments gave me fruiting trees that were too precocious. 12 inch tall trees were blooming and holding fruit which is a very bad thing because it delayed vegetative growth and there was extremely high mortality rate of about 80-90% after 5 years or so.

From the DSG experiments, I used that info and started my California Super mango rootstock experiments. http://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=20852.0

This CSMR technique gave me the most incredible growth I have seen. Because this technique does Not involve grafting with mature scions, the resulting multiple rootstock tree exploded with growth. Some mistakes that I made are that I kept the seedling trees in much too small of a pot and did not up pot them appropriately.

My CSMR tree was planted at an orchard where It grew like crazy but unfortunately, the gophers and or rabbits had a strong liking to the multiple rootstock trees. Perhaps the multiple rootstock trees have more sap flow/moisture and are preferred over single rootstock trees.

I grew the seedlings in a special root pruning pot which is a critical part of the experiments.

You can use fabric pots or any of the newer root pruning pots or paints. As soon as the pot is filled with roots, it should be up potted to the next larger size of root pruning pot until the plant and/or root mass is large enough for field planting.

This technique gave me the largest rootstock in the shortest amount of time. Getting the largest rootstock is one of the most important factors for maximizing fruit production when growing mango trees in SoCal but this may not be an issue with growing mangos at your location.

Multiple rootstock trees are likely cost and time/labor prohibitive on a commercial scale.

Here in California, we start getting fruit production within a year or two of grafting mature scions.

I still have lots of experiments going and some that ended early because other trusted members of this forum already has proof of concept.

For Example, if you just want to test out seedling varieties for quality of fruit, the fastest way to achieve this is to graft seedling scions onto mature rootstocks.  Cookie Monster grew a bunch of Orange Sherbet seedlings and grafted the seedling scions onto his mature trees. This enabled him to Fruit his seedling trees in the shortest amount of time possible and he was able to prove that his seedling OS trees did produce fruit identical to the true OS and some people that have tasted his fruit say his fruit is perhaps even better than the original OS but his excellent tasting fruit may also be attributable to his great gardening skills and his knowledge of fertilization.

The above was already discussed in literature and Cookie Monster proved it in his climate so that’s good enough for me. I’m still trying to answer questions that are counter to what most the mango growers are looking for.

In my climate, we have no issues with flowering and fruit production(except for specific varieties like LZ) so I’m trying to find a technique that grows the largest tree possible in the shortest amount of time.

I’m still gathering data on what happens if you graft seedling scions onto mature fruiting rootstocks in cold climates and so far, it looks like the grafted scions are able to delay flowering for 1-2 years which is extremely beneficial for growers in colder climates like California.

Simon

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Re: Growing Mango trees in Southern California
« Reply #457 on: September 21, 2020, 02:58:46 PM »
Haha, thanks, I see the resemblance.

Simon

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Re: Growing Mango trees in Southern California
« Reply #458 on: September 21, 2020, 03:09:53 PM »
Here’s a shot of my 4 year old Sweet Tart seedling. The Polyembryonic seed was planted directly into the ground. I now separate my Polyembryonic seedlings so that the trunks don’t push away from each other like it happened here. One of my uglier seedlings. I recently trimmed back the neighboring Pomegranate and huge Lemon Zest tree. I posted more pictures of this tree when it was younger, maybe on this thread but I’m too lazy to look.










I’m surprised it held a fruit considering how small the tree is and the heavy shade it was in before I trimmed back the neighboring trees.

Simon

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Re: Growing Mango trees in Southern California
« Reply #459 on: September 21, 2020, 04:01:51 PM »
Here’s an Orange Sherbet seedling. I’ll have to look through my posts to see how old it is but I’m guessing it’s around 4 years old from planting the seed.


Here’s the E4 seedling, please ignore all the weeds in my yard. I’ve been volunteering a lot thus year so I’ve been neglecting my own yard.


When I sprouted this E4 seed, two sprouts came up, this one which was growing straight and another that was twisted and scraggly. I separated them early and grafted a scion of the scraggly one onto my multi graft tree. I’m curious to which is the clone and I’m also eager to see how the fruit of the zygotic seedling is considering one of them is zygotic. Here’s the scion after one push.

Simon

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Re: Growing Mango trees in Southern California
« Reply #460 on: September 21, 2020, 04:14:56 PM »
Pina Colada is an absolute flavor bomb and is on my top ten list but it does not grow well here according to some interviews with growers around SoCal. I grew out about 30-40 seedlings and selected about 5 seedlings that grew with more vigor and were more disease resistant. Several of these trees are planted at Brads orchard and I grafted a branch onto my multigraft tree. This variety is growing significantly faster when grafted onto mature rootstocks. I recently grafted this scion and hopefully will get fruit from it in the coming years. I’m hoping that it won’t flower this Winter.



Simon

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Re: Growing Mango trees in Southern California
« Reply #461 on: September 21, 2020, 04:18:03 PM »
Simon

Thanks for keeping this thread and project going.  I’m curious about your efforts on growing direct from seed.   What’s the oldest seedling you have?  Anything that’s flowered yet? 

Looking at your opening post on this thread, it seems you have all the making of an expert - willingness to make more mistakes than anyone else in a narrow field.  I’m talking to a friend, we are bouncing around ideas on the fastest way to get a seedling to fruit.  These include girdling, tipping, grafting a seedling onto a seedling (sounds odd but there is some evidence...), potassium, horizontal branch bending...

Keen to hear more about the Cali experiences

Did you probably mean grafting a seedling scion to an established tree?

Good catch. I actually meant to include both onto a mature tree (a proven approach) and seedling on rootstock (early evidence shows some promise) but it’s not yet firm.

Future

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Re: Growing Mango trees in Southern California
« Reply #462 on: September 21, 2020, 10:00:29 PM »
Hey Future,

Here’s a synopsis. My yard is very small so I plant most my mango trees at my friends and relatives houses. I’ve planted so many seedlings that I’ve lost track of many of them. Some have died and some are huge now. Many years ago, I planted out a bunch of Lemon Zest seedlings. Ever since I found out there are so many disease issues with this variety, I have replaced many of them with Sweet Tart and various other seedlings so I had to start over again.

Brads( Spaugh’s) orchard is where I planted a majority of the seedlings and many of them are starting to really take off. We have seedlings of most the newer Zill varieties including both monoembryonic and Polyembryonic varieties planted out. Ill have to stop by the orchard and take some pictures. Our biggest seedling is probably a Sweet Tart seedling that is nice and bushy with strong upright branching. We have E4, Sweet Tart, Orange Sherbet, butter Cream, M4, Pina Colada, Fruit Punch, Coconut Cream, Fruit Cocktail, Honey KISS, NDM and many other seedlings planted out.

In my yard, I have a Sweet Tart Seedling that is 4 years old. It was squished in between two large trees and is shaded much of the day but it flowered in 3 years from planting the seed and it flowered again this year( 4 years from seed). This year, I thought I removed all the blooms but one hid under some leaves and I’m allowing it to grow since it was palm size when I discovered it. I’ll take a picture later.

I also have a NDM seedling that flowered in its third or fourth year from planting the seed and it held small fruits which aborted. I grafted over most the branches but I still have one branch from the original seedling.

The Double Stone graft experiments gave me fruiting trees that were too precocious. 12 inch tall trees were blooming and holding fruit which is a very bad thing because it delayed vegetative growth and there was extremely high mortality rate of about 80-90% after 5 years or so.

From the DSG experiments, I used that info and started my California Super mango rootstock experiments. http://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=20852.0

This CSMR technique gave me the most incredible growth I have seen. Because this technique does Not involve grafting with mature scions, the resulting multiple rootstock tree exploded with growth. Some mistakes that I made are that I kept the seedling trees in much too small of a pot and did not up pot them appropriately.

My CSMR tree was planted at an orchard where It grew like crazy but unfortunately, the gophers and or rabbits had a strong liking to the multiple rootstock trees. Perhaps the multiple rootstock trees have more sap flow/moisture and are preferred over single rootstock trees.

I grew the seedlings in a special root pruning pot which is a critical part of the experiments.

You can use fabric pots or any of the newer root pruning pots or paints. As soon as the pot is filled with roots, it should be up potted to the next larger size of root pruning pot until the plant and/or root mass is large enough for field planting.

This technique gave me the largest rootstock in the shortest amount of time. Getting the largest rootstock is one of the most important factors for maximizing fruit production when growing mango trees in SoCal but this may not be an issue with growing mangos at your location.

Multiple rootstock trees are likely cost and time/labor prohibitive on a commercial scale.

Here in California, we start getting fruit production within a year or two of grafting mature scions.

I still have lots of experiments going and some that ended early because other trusted members of this forum already has proof of concept.

For Example, if you just want to test out seedling varieties for quality of fruit, the fastest way to achieve this is to graft seedling scions onto mature rootstocks.  Cookie Monster grew a bunch of Orange Sherbet seedlings and grafted the seedling scions onto his mature trees. This enabled him to Fruit his seedling trees in the shortest amount of time possible and he was able to prove that his seedling OS trees did produce fruit identical to the true OS and some people that have tasted his fruit say his fruit is perhaps even better than the original OS but his excellent tasting fruit may also be attributable to his great gardening skills and his knowledge of fertilization.

The above was already discussed in literature and Cookie Monster proved it in his climate so that’s good enough for me. I’m still trying to answer questions that are counter to what most the mango growers are looking for.

In my climate, we have no issues with flowering and fruit production(except for specific varieties like LZ) so I’m trying to find a technique that grows the largest tree possible in the shortest amount of time.

I’m still gathering data on what happens if you graft seedling scions onto mature fruiting rootstocks in cold climates and so far, it looks like the grafted scions are able to delay flowering for 1-2 years which is extremely beneficial for growers in colder climates like California.

Simon

What’s up Simon. Excellent summary.  Thanks for CSMR reminder. I read it with interest. You are 4 years into CSMR now.  What would you say has been the most successful aspect, lessons learned?

Btw I’ve met up with Cookie Monster several times and his yard defines incredible.  His OS growth rate is unreal. 

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Re: Growing Mango trees in Southern California
« Reply #463 on: September 22, 2020, 07:32:42 PM »
Hi Simon, Brad,

Thank you for sharing your experience.

Couple of years back I got bunch of different seeds. After the seeds sprouted I did overwater them and most of them died except one seedling which was probably Jacartia. Do you have experience with Jacartia seedling? Maybe it's less sensetive to root rot.

Except SweetTart which of the seedlings did good? I noticed CC has a tap root.

Thank you

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Re: Growing Mango trees in Southern California
« Reply #464 on: September 23, 2020, 01:07:11 PM »
Hey Abayomi,

The take away is that Grafting the seedlings together increases growth and just one or two additional rootstocks is enough. Don’t graft mature scions onto the multiple rootstock trees until they reach fruiting size. Root pruning pots and paints are definitely beneficial for increasing root mass, especially the finer feeder roots. Up potting at the appropriate time is critical to keep the plant in a constant growth phase.

Alternatively, you can graft seedling scions onto mature trees to induce precocity.

simon_grow

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Re: Growing Mango trees in Southern California
« Reply #465 on: September 23, 2020, 01:10:10 PM »
Hi Simon, Brad,

Thank you for sharing your experience.

Couple of years back I got bunch of different seeds. After the seeds sprouted I did overwater them and most of them died except one seedling which was probably Jacartia. Do you have experience with Jacartia seedling? Maybe it's less sensetive to root rot.

Except SweetTart which of the seedlings did good? I noticed CC has a tap root.

Thank you

I don’t think we have seen any patterns with a specific variety of seedling that has better or worse resistance to root rot but the literature I posted somewhere showed that there were I believe 2 rootstocks from non Indica species of Mangifera with increased tolerance to set soils.

Simon

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Re: Growing Mango trees in Southern California
« Reply #466 on: September 23, 2020, 01:27:05 PM »
nice to see your trees

I have a lot more trees in the backyard but my backyard is so over run with weeds that it’s difficult to see my trees. In my front yard, at least you can make out the shape of the trees!

Here’s a double rootstock Sweet Tart. I do not recommend this technique of Double Stone Grafting for California because it increases precocity too much. The tree stays short and bushy if it survives.


Here is my original DSGed tree. One of the rootstocks died back and left me with a lot of lower scaffold branches. I grafted all the branches, around 15-20 grafts. Most are Real Sweet Tart but there’s also Sweet Tart Seedling #1, ST seedling #2, Orange Sherbet Seedling #1, OS seedling #2, Cotton Candy, PPK, Lemon Zest, Peach Cobbler and a few others



And here is what I’ve been suggesting to everyone growing Mangos in California. Grow a seedling or purchase a Lavern Manilla mango rootstock and top work it when it gets to the appropriate size. This is a Po Pyu Kalay on Lavern Manilla rootstock.

Simon

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Re: Growing Mango trees in Southern California
« Reply #467 on: September 23, 2020, 06:29:32 PM »
Incredible work Simon.  Variations from location to location make for such interesting approaches. I’m largely restricted to growing from seed keen to I’m keen to incorporate double rootstocks and CSMR into our regime.

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Re: Growing Mango trees in Southern California
« Reply #468 on: September 23, 2020, 08:00:06 PM »







I’ve been having fun this year with mangoes and getting much better results. My diamond grafted turpentine exploded vegetatively and took a nice wide shape. Planted out a ton of Florida seedlings and they were all rootbound in their 1 gallons - now in 5s. I too worked the diamond and will add another 4 peach cobbler scions on in the next week.

Also you can see the base of my future hoop house which seems will be very needed for winter cold. The snow on the mango last year was cute and all, but too stressful.

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Re: Growing Mango trees in Southern California
« Reply #469 on: September 23, 2020, 11:31:46 PM »







I’ve been having fun this year with mangoes and getting much better results. My diamond grafted turpentine exploded vegetatively and took a nice wide shape. Planted out a ton of Florida seedlings and they were all rootbound in their 1 gallons - now in 5s. I too worked the diamond and will add another 4 peach cobbler scions on in the next week.

Also you can see the base of my future hoop house which seems will be very needed for winter cold. The snow on the mango last year was cute and all, but too stressful.

is that buddy tape you are using? if so, the wrap is not correct and not stretched correctly for maximum benefits of sealing moisture.

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Re: Growing Mango trees in Southern California
« Reply #470 on: September 24, 2020, 01:08:16 PM »
I am not sure if it's buddy tape. These were prepared by JF. The one I took a photo of appears to be pushing already... I will wrap them all tighter, I see some desiccation on some others.

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Re: Growing Mango trees in Southern California
« Reply #471 on: September 24, 2020, 02:40:26 PM »
Heres some pics of Simons mango block that we planted at my house.  Theres around 50 mango trees on 15'x15' spacing. About 40 are various seedlings ungrafted.  A few florida grafted trees are doing well, the seedling trees grow faster though.  Ive done very little for these trees, they are on a sprinkler timer and get fertilized avocado fertilizer 3 times each hot season.  And trim them back to ~16" shoots and tipping below the tightly spaces top nodes.  Then thin back the new shoots to 3 new branches per cut.  This keeps them perky so they dont get top heavy and droopy.  If theres any weak trees or infected trees, they get yanked and replaced.  Ive probably yanked 20% of the trees and replanted.





Orange sherbet seedling 2016 or 2017 sprout


Sweet tart seedling 2016 sprout.  This one made a couple flower panicles in winter 2019/20


Taralay on turpintine from FL.


Taralay and sweet tart half and half grafted tree on manilla rootstock.


COC seed 2018 sprouted


J12 seed 2017 sprout

« Last Edit: September 24, 2020, 03:00:10 PM by spaugh »
Brad Spaugh

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Re: Growing Mango trees in Southern California
« Reply #472 on: September 24, 2020, 03:12:42 PM »
This is the best damn thread on.the.internet. KEEP IT UP EVERYONE!!

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Re: Growing Mango trees in Southern California
« Reply #473 on: September 24, 2020, 03:35:19 PM »
Wow Brad those put on a ton of veg since I saw them last! Great work.

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Re: Growing Mango trees in Southern California
« Reply #474 on: September 24, 2020, 03:44:08 PM »
Thanks, maybe we will even get a couple fruit next year.  Im thinking after year 7 or 8 they should start to make a real crop.  Mangos in CA require a ton of patience.  And also willingness to trash a plant and start over if necessary.
Brad Spaugh