We did “ok” on the first bloom all things considered. Edward trees had a full bloom, along with most “bloom sensitive stuff”, with plenty of trees with partial/incomplete blooms and too many with zero, to be expected with such weak winters. Spotty is a good description for most of south Florida. Larger, older trees saw majority blooms but most younger mangos saw incomplete blooms or no blooms at all depending on variety and tree condition.
The rain in December was so heavy and frequent that we were unable to protect the earliest opening blooms from fungal damage and so the early crops on Rosigold and Jean Ellen will be reduced compared to last year.
Male flower ratio is a huge problem with a number of varieties and will be a major reason why the early crop will be a bust for many in south Florida. The flowers that opened first on Edwards, Carrie, Julie, Dwarf Hawaiian and some others were almost exclusively male. Flowers that opened a week or so later had better female flower ratio and consequently set well. I’ll try to remember to take some pics later.
MBBS incidence is indeed likely to be increased over 2019. That it is showing up on small fruit already is a strong indicator, as these lesions will stay on the fruit, expand and spread rapidly to other fruit once rainy season begins again. The amount of spraying and sanitation removal to attempt to limit it exceeds what most backyard growers are willing to commit.
If the season was going to be based solely on what is on the trees now, then we would be looking at the worst south Florida mango crop in at least a decade. Fortunately, we are very likely to see a secondary bloom occur in the later part of this month. Already we are seeing some new bloom activity on Carries, Dots, Okrung, Rosas and others stemming from minor cool weather in the first half of January. We have had 15C and below nights on 11 of the last 16 days, which is what will trigger the larger bloom we’ll be seeing in a few weeks. The question will be how extensive it’s going to actually be given all the late vegetative flushes that occurred at the end of 2019 because of the ridiculously hot October we had. With the lows climbing up into the upper 60s/low 70sF the next few weeks, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a good amount of mixed panicles, morphing to vegetative growth in stuff that Takes too long to initiate following the relative cool of the end of January. Will also be interested to see how much “re-bloom” we see , vs new bloom on stems that did not flower in January.
A great crop is pretty much out of the question. But we could still have an “acceptable” crop (or at least what has become acceptable over the last 10 years in south Florida).
