The Tropical Fruit Forum

Unlikely to find any Dekopon inside EU and if i were you, i would be wary about any plant you may find, because if not properly imported (from scientific institutions) they can have lethal diseases.

Thank you guys. I'm so happy. Fruits are awesome. I mean goosebumps-awesome. Dunno if its the Glenn, or maybe (seems more likely to me) the strong taste is due the fact that this summer has been particularly dry and since and i haven't been able to water the plant at all (I did broke a leg a couple of months ago and I知 about to finish my recovery just now); however in the last couple of months the plant didn't get any water at all. Well, i have heard people complaining that Glenn is a little watery but i found that this isn't certainly the case! I find a little tricky to find the perfect ripeness spot for the fruit because i fear to let them pass their prime, so if anyone has suggestion on how to get the best ripeness from the fruit, please let me know!



@Van: The soil is a big problem and i wish you some good luck. Are you planning to grow the mango in OK?
I don't have first hand suggestion because i think that the problem that we may face are just superficially similar; that because (i assume) climate are pretty different between OK and Tuscany (few months ago here talking with some members appeared like my climate was more similar to Oregon, temp-wise, and this may be true).
However, in my place in winter the soil doesn't freeze (that is, we never ever get frozen-solid soil, if that's what are you referring to).
We get temps regularly under the 0C or 32F for several day every year (45 days on average every winter). Most of those are just small dip, but on a normal winter you can expect at least a couple of night in the low 20s. But you can count on the fact that once the day comes, the temps will rise again above the 0 (or the 32F). Not much: the average max for Jan is 50F.
Some years we get cold air from russia to the center of the mediterranean basin. When it happens we get snow and since i'm in a valley with thermal inversion (a big problem every winter - places a few kms from me are way warmer) the temps can go down quite a bit. Lowest record ever for my city was -23C or -9F. If we don't get snow we can't realistically go under -10C or 14F.
Last few years have been particularly warm and seem part of a trend of warm winters. When i was a child orange tree were unheard of around here and now some people plant them in gardens, and honestly last 5-6 winters were so mild that they thrived.
Last winter we got a week of low temperatures:

The plant didn't got any problem with this, not heather needed.
Last time we got artic blast from russia was 2012. I used a small heather for that week and the plant survived but got a nasty infection to the stem. I haven't been able to solve this issue in the last 4 years so i guess that this problem will remain.
The stem is damaged low, close to the ground. I was suspicious why the damage was so low so last year i take notes of the temps at ground level and at the graft level, and i noticed that in the enclosure, with unmoving air, you can get till 3ｰC of difference from ground level to the graft point.
So keep in mind that you have to pay attention to air stratification inside the enclosure if you think to do something similar to me, or at least, find a way to have the cold air not remain in the same spot for weeks at time. Otherwise you risk to girdle your plant at the soil level with cambium death due to cold while leaves appears fine.
Regarding the soil itself.
I wasn't worried about temps of the soil because as i said, here the soil doesn't freeze.
After this observation, my other concern was if the soil was warm enough to allow root growing all year long.
There's a simple way to ascertain this, and is to find the average yearly temp of the place where you want to plant the mango. Since the deep soil tends to reach the yearly temp of a place, once you have it, and you get a temp ABOVE the zero-growth temp for a mango (that is, about 14ｰ) the soild shouldn't be a concern, temps wise, (unless of course you get frozen soil, wich isn't my case).
For me the main concern was the dampness. We start with the rain in October and you can bet that you aren't going to see dry ground till the end of April. Sometimes the soil is so wet that can't absorb any more water... and you don稚 want your mango to sit with its roots in cold damp soil.
I tried to do this to reduce the dampness in close proximity of the plant:

I produced some kind of light/free draining soil in the close proximity of the cement base INSIDE the frame in hope to reduce the amount of water passing from under the foundation to the plant, int the hope of giving to the roots/stem a drier environment.
I mixed sand and soil. Recently i have read that to have the sand improve the soil quality you have to estimate that the new soil has to be made of at least 45% of sand.
So far so good, but if I have to be perfectly honest, i do expect the plant to die suddenly because of the cold- damp soil triggering some disease.
Maybe till now the fact that the plant was from Spain and thus, supposedly, grafted on Gomera-3, may have helped.
However i did post in the cold citrus forum some links with thermal closed and frames made to optimize the solar heating; take a look a the citradia post, there a lot of cool projects to take inspiration from.

@ Luisport: Luis, thank you. I'm sorry for the namwah, you can bet that i haven't forgotten about you but as you may know, I got a broken leg, and while i have attempted to root some pups in last weeks i just ended wasting 5 pups before realizing that without a spade was impossible to cut them without ruining them.

Not any thought, but a comment.
Changing solar input to heat is very high in efficiency; in fact you ca go for a 90% efficiency easily (with a simple black cover you can be assured that almost all the solar radiation will become heat).
Transforming light to electricity, storing said electricity, and using it for heating,  has several losses in efficiency that will force you the use a comparatively high surface of solar collectors (expensive) and batteries (also expensive) to save few dollars of electric bill (of course, I知 still thinking to single enclosure plants).
I'm all for energy savings, but at this point it think that on the long run, probably, you would be happier (and could potentially save more $$$) if you managed to use sun directly for heating more than for electricity (to use for heating later).
I'm not by any means an expert in solar building, but those links helped me a bit.
Maybe they can be also useful for you who knows?
http://www.builditsolar.com/
https://web.archive.org/web/20120329185815/http://www.ece.vill.edu/~nick/solar/solar.html
https://energyfarms.wordpress.com/2010/04/05/solar-greenhouses-chinese-style/

Yes, indeed cold hardiness is a multi-factor characteristic of trees.
Size is for sure one of the factor to take in account, and i think it works best for evergreen trees. Probably it's related to canopy-soil/longwave interaction, but i'm not completely sure. Also, the usually more stable nutritional status of bigger plants can also play a role, increasing the physiological resistance.
In general, any of those things can't do a big difference, but small things add up. So, a good rootstock, with a good variety, planted in a sheltered location, in a urban heat island, when reaches certain size, can be the explanation why once in a while you seem to see plant that are unexplainable otherwise.
I know a guy with a fruiting avocado in my city. No other avocado around and the closer avocado to his plant is 200km south and close to the sea.

As far as cold tolerance, I don't know of any success using cold tolerant rootstocks to give added degrees of tolerance to the scion.

It's common in citrus. Everything else held equal, apparently citrus on come rootstock are more cold tolerant than other. They may be due nutritional or physiological effects, but is observable nonetheless.

Hey citradia,
I'm a fan of grapefruits and I知 definitively hoping to grow them in my place but, as you can imagine, I知 not completely sure that I知 going to get acceptable quality fruits (i have a well pronounced "sweet tooth" and while i love the bitter-acid complexity of grapefruits, the have to be sweet for me to be an enjoyable eating experience).
However, i was hoping to do what you are doing, that is, growing them for more than a year on the plant to have them ripen over the course of two consecutive summers.
I was wondering, how they turned out? How much cold did you plant take? I'm going to use bitter orange (or FD) as rootstock and Duncan/Enzo/Bloomsweet as scion. Can you help me with your tecniques and your results?

Regarding Satsumas. I have just a small plant that i have been growing for last 3 years. I'm my place the ripen fine at the end of October- November (I'm growing Miyagawa). I assume sastuma don't need very much heat overall because they come from Japan which is itself pretty oceanic and while there isn't very cold there in citrus growing place, i'm assuming there isn't very much heath either.

I think citrus can be a decent choice. A foot tall potted citrus can give plenty of fruit given its size but if you want an aesthetically pleasing tree rather than just an healthy one, they are (in my humble opinion) very maintenance intensive, especially indoor.

The scent on properly ripened one is amazing, but I'm unsure on how well they go with recipes. As you know they are used mainly as perfumes.
I have a plant and i'm thinking that on the long run i may get rid of it. When space is limited and edible fruit is the main interest, probably bergamot is a sub-optimal choice.

Well, better this way then, hopefully i won't have any other issue with my lemon. I trying to save an old clone my grandpa left us, i don't know what rootstock the old man used, but i guess it was some seed grown lemon because few winter ago it got quite some frost and now it's dead for the most part. Half of the plant already crumbled because the old rooststock died for the most part.
Now if i were able to figure what kind of lemon is the one i grow and especially how my variety is called in the US, would be awesome...

I have heard that lemon on poncirus/poncirus hybrid can give compatibility issues starting from the 2nd year after the graft.
I think that one poncirus rootstock avoiding this is the benton citrange.
Since your location however, i think that maybe you are not going to want pure poncirus roostockt?

I think the hardiest one is the Gomera-3
I have one of those as rootstock for my "in ground" Glenn.
Well my plant survived 6 years, so i can't talk bad about it. But keep in mind i have had issues. This doesn稚 mean anything; i haven't tested it next to another rootstock, so i can't really say anything for comparison, except that "it worked" for me.
Plant grafted on those looks like they handle cold a little better than other mangoes, for my potted plant. In fact i try to use them as rootstock for my most valuable specimen. Taste of the fruit is fair, but i see them mainly juicing variety because it has a lot of fiber.
My understanding is, that while the plant itself doesn't have a groundbreaking cold hardiness, compared to other mangoes, it deals better with cold damp winter of the Mediterranean area.
As far i can see long cold spell (weeks with temps around 32-40) are a problem also for this variety.

Ok guys, so 3 gallons seems the way to go. I'll try to elaborate some kind of good drainage mix. Will see how they behave in my cellar; plumerias and royal poinciana did like the warmth even in complete darkness. So hopefully a dry pineapple will tolerate this environment too. Well, they can't behave worse than the one in my unheated greenhouse anyway.
I was wondering if there's any cv. more cold resistant than others.