Best tasting and most reliable Mangos for Southern California

[Oolie]

Maha tried to hold a bumper crop, but I removed it favoring vegetative growth for it's second year in the ground.

[yonip69]

My 5 years old maha with Florida rootstock in ground is so reliable for me here in San Diego. It is holding around 10 fruits right now and alot of fruitlets.
 But my 5 years old lemon zest flowers like crazy but will not set fruits due to white powdery mildew and I  refused to spray it with chemical so few days ago I top grafted it to what Simon told me that is good here in San Diego. 

[simon_grow]

Maha is a very consistent producer in SoCal. In my opinion, it’s a good Mango but not top tier. A couple years ago, I removed my tree so that I can replace it with either M4, E4 or Orange Essence. These three varieties are still unproven in terms of reliability when grown in SoCal.

Thanks for the information everyone, keep it coming if you have anything to add!

Simon

[BonsaiBeast]

Maha is a very consistent producer in SoCal. In my opinion, it’s a good Mango but not top tier. A couple years ago, I removed my tree so that I can replace it with either M4, E4 or Orange Essence. These three varieties are still unproven in terms of reliability when grown in SoCal.

Thanks for the information everyone, keep it coming if you have anything to add!

Simon

What made you choose M4, E4, and Orange Essence given that they are not proven here?

[Oolie]

Maha is a very consistent producer in SoCal. In my opinion, it’s a good Mango but not top tier. A couple years ago, I removed my tree so that I can replace it with either M4, E4 or Orange Essence. These three varieties are still unproven in terms of reliability when grown in SoCal.

Thanks for the information everyone, keep it coming if you have anything to add!

Simon

The Maha I tasted from my tree was exceptional. If you (Alex as well it seems) say it's only mid-grade it really stirs my interest in the newer top cultivars.

[simon_grow]

J12 on Kent seedling rootstock appears to be at least somewhat disease resistant. I have absolutely horrible Powdery Mildew on my mango trees this year and this little J12 is starting to set some tiny fruit. I’m going to remove all these fruit this week to encourage vegetative growth.



Simon

[Oolie]

My J12 results are encouraging as well. Growth and fruit set look awesome on both random seedling (Exotica) and Turpentine rootstock. This is despite strong PM, which I'm not seeing on your bloom, but is everywhere here.

It's reported that this one is exceptionally vigorous in Fl, so looks like we may have something that will make the grade here.

[RobPatterson]

I'm looking to get a mango tree to add to my garden. I live in Ontario, CA, and I want to get a more mature tree that I can plant in the ground, get good fruit with reasonable yield, but Im having trouble finding specifics on A) which variety to get for my area, and B) where I can get a tree that's older than just a one gallon Home Depot sapling. My thing is dragon fruit, so Im very green when it comes to mangos and fruit from proper trees. I'm not looking for a 30 year old monster Id have to airlift into the yard, just something that has at least a year or two of growth behind it. Is that something Id have to go to a private grower for, especially to get a decent variety?

[Viraldonutz]

Are Lemon Zest worth growing in SoCal, or nah?  Should I try PPK instead?

[simon_grow]

Maha is a very consistent producer in SoCal. In my opinion, it’s a good Mango but not top tier. A couple years ago, I removed my tree so that I can replace it with either M4, E4 or Orange Essence. These three varieties are still unproven in terms of reliability when grown in SoCal.

Thanks for the information everyone, keep it coming if you have anything to add!

Simon

What made you choose M4, E4, and Orange Essence given that they are not proven here?

Sorry, just saw your question. I’m planting these based on flavor and a little bit of information from my friends in Florida. Without testing out new varieties here in SoCal, we would never know for sure how well they will perform.

Simon

[simon_grow]

I'm looking to get a mango tree to add to my garden. I live in Ontario, CA, and I want to get a more mature tree that I can plant in the ground, get good fruit with reasonable yield, but Im having trouble finding specifics on A) which variety to get for my area, and B) where I can get a tree that's older than just a one gallon Home Depot sapling. My thing is dragon fruit, so Im very green when it comes to mangos and fruit from proper trees. I'm not looking for a 30 year old monster Id have to airlift into the yard, just something that has at least a year or two of growth behind it. Is that something Id have to go to a private grower for, especially to get a decent variety?

You should call around your local nurseries to see if they have larger rootstocks for sale. I know Ongs Nursery in San Diego has some larger Manilla type trees but it’ll cost you more.

I would also recommend you just plant some Kent seeds while you are looking for your larger tree. The seedlings adapt really well and can grow fast if you fertilize them appropriately.

Simon

[Jose Spain]

Hi everyone,

I follow with interest this topic because your climate is pretty similar to mine so there are good chances that same cvs will perform in a similar way here. I don't mean any disrespect by what I'm going to comment now, it's just my opinion. I think there is an unjustified phobia to "chemicals" (everything is chemical, even water) often favored by certain companies of "bio" products. Unless there are strong evidences (with serious, thorough studies to support it) that a particular fungicide product (not chemicals in general) can produce health risks even respecting safety periods, I use it and don't give up varieties like LZ (for many the best cv) because they require fungicides during flowering. The safety periods of these products are based on very exhaustive tests and a mango requires months to mature, that is, many times the safety period of most fungicides against powdery mildew. As I said, I don't mean any disrespect by bringing this up, simply I see more and more people getting into this chemophobia and I think alternatives points of view can be useful. Of course everyone is free to do whatever he decides, I just think that many times we could be missing useful information about which particular fungicides are better to treat some plagues just because it's becoming little by little kind of an anathema. I let you a paper about this topic that could be of interest.


https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257789222_Food_chemistry_and_chemophobia

[simon_grow]

Are Lemon Zest worth growing in SoCal, or nah?  Should I try PPK instead?

I love Lemon Zest Mangos, one of my favorites. I personally have 3 LZ trees/grafts at my house and I planted more at my friends and families yards. The fruit is absolutely top notch but the tree is a Powdery Mildew magnet.

The PM infects the young leaves really bad and the blooms get them really bad as well. The flower panicles often abort due to the fungal infection but here in SoCal, our trees can bloom about three times. If you are lucky, one of those blooms will occur during a period where there is little or no fungal diseases and you may get some fruit.

One year, I had extremely heavy fruit set with maybe 100 or more baby LZ fruit that got to around 1 inch long and they slowly dropped one by one and I only ended getting 1-3 fruit that year, I can’t remember exactly.

If you want a highly productive tree, don’t get LZ unless you are willing to spray and have a regimented IPM system.

My initial thoughts were that I will let Mother Nature take its course but now I really want my LZ tree to start producing more so I am starting my IPM this year and will continue it to see if I can get significantly higher yield from my trees.

There are rumors that LZ needs many years to get settled down before it will start producing. The fruit is so good, I’m willing to wait it out but in the meantime, I’m going to start spraying.

You can read this thread where I’m going to track my progress
http://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=33398.msg375454#msg375454

On a side note, I am also growing grafted PPK and Orange Sherbet seedlings. I’ve tasted all three multiple times before and LZ is still my favorite although the other two are also excellent.

Seacrest/Triple Sec may be another good mango to test out. I recently grafted several onto my seedlings so we will see in the coming years if this variety is productive here in SoCal.

Remember that our microclimates are unique and if you get good air flow at your location, LZ may do fine for you. Everyone should try for themselves just in case.

There is a little bit of good news with LZ, I’ve noticed over the years that my LZ grafted onto Lavern Manilla gets significantly less PM and also sets and natures more fruit than my LZ on Florida rootstock. I’ll update with pics soon in my other thread.

Simon

[simon_grow]

Hi everyone,

I follow with interest this topic because your climate is pretty similar to mine so there are good chances that same cvs will perform in a similar way here. I don't mean any disrespect by what I'm going to comment now, it's just my opinion. I think there is an unjustified phobia to "chemicals" (everything is chemical, even water) often favored by certain companies of "bio" products. Unless there are strong evidences (with serious, thorough studies to support it) that a particular fungicide product (not chemicals in general) can produce serious health risks even respecting safety periods, I do not understand why to give up varieties like LZ (for many the best cv) because it requires fungicides during flowering. The safety periods of these products are based on very exhaustive tests and a mango requires months to mature, that is, many times the safety period of most fungicides against powdery mildew. As I said, I don't mean any disrespect by bringing this up, simply I see more and more people getting into this chemophobia and I think an alternative point of view can be useful. Of course everyone is free to do whatever he decides, I just think that many times we could be missing useful information about which particular fungicides are better to treat some plagues just because it's becoming little by little kind of an anathema. I let you a paper about this topic that could be of interest.


https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257789222_Food_chemistry_and_chemophobia

Jose Spain,

I completely agree with you and I do not oppose using chemicals, I’m going to start my IPM this year but it will be well thought out if I’m going to do it.

The reason why I haven’t done it yet is because I’m lazy and I know many other LZ growers here in SoCal don’t want to spray frequently in order to get fruit from this variety when there are many other varieties that will produce without spraying.

I’m not one of those people, anymore. I love the fruit so much that I’m going to pony up and purchase the different fungicides and stickers. I’ll post more detailed info in the link above.

There are some great systemic fungicides that are OMRI listed such as Magnabon CS 2005 which Mark has mentioned several times. I will be using Phyton 35 instead because it’s easier to purchase for me. I will be combining this fungicide with other fungicides that have different modes of action so that the organisms will not build resistance.

Simon

[Jose Spain]

Hi Simon,

I have actually a similar problem to yours with PM, this spring was specially rainy and I alternated cupric-based and triazol fungicides and PM was controlled pretty well both in mangos and roses. It may be a good idea to cover with a plastic the soil before spraying to don't affect the soil microbial community and avoid too high Cu concentrations. Since we usually have just a few trees to spray it's not a big deal to do so.

[simon_grow]

Hey Jose, thanks for the suggestion!

I just want to bring up another important point here for those members that may have not seen my post in the fogger thread.

I used to use hand pump/backpack sprayers for foliar feeding and for insect/disease control. I stopped using the pump sprayers after I got my fogging backpack sprayer. Foggers are completely next level and if you have more than a few trees, I highly recommend at least doing your research on fogging.

The fogger saves me an incredible amount of time and money, so much that I couldn’t even believe it. I posted in another thread my actual savings but I can’t remember exactly right now so I’m just going to go off my memory.

I believe I was able to complete my spraying in about 1/4-1/3 the time by fogging instead of pump spraying. So if it normally takes me 2 hours to spray all my trees, now it only takes me 30 minutes. This is because with a pump sprayer, you have to invert your spray head upside down in order to spray the underside of the leaves and you also have to stick your wand into the canopy and poke hole around to get just ok coverage, I never could get full coverage on larger trees because the wand/spray just couldn’t reach up high enough.

The foggers creates a mist that penetrates into the canopy so you don’t have to fumble around.

The foggers also use significantly less solution because it atomizes the particles. Instead of using 6-8 gallons of solution for all my trees, I only need to use about 2 gallons.

All this was just to say that with a fogger, there is very little drip so it minimizes impact of soil microbial life when compared to traditional hand pump/backpack pump spraying.

Simon

[UplanderCA]

I'm looking to get a mango tree to add to my garden. I live in Ontario, CA, and I want to get a more mature tree that I can plant in the ground, get good fruit with reasonable yield, but Im having trouble finding specifics on A) which variety to get for my area, and B) where I can get a tree that's older than just a one gallon Home Depot sapling. My thing is dragon fruit, so Im very green when it comes to mangos and fruit from proper trees. I'm not looking for a 30 year old monster Id have to airlift into the yard, just something that has at least a year or two of growth behind it. Is that something Id have to go to a private grower for, especially to get a decent variety?

Hello Rob,
I live in Upland and we share similar climates - except for the heavy winds that Ontario experiences.  I would recommend planting a Home Depot mango tree (Manila) and graft the variety you want onto the tree.  The Manila tree grows fast.  I'm top-working my Manila tree with other varieties at the moment.   My Manila tree has been on the ground for 5 years and is now over 13 ft tall.  I have  Valencia Pride and Nam Doc Mai, both from Florida and have been on the ground for 6 years and are under 7 ft tall.  Both the VP and NDM produce fruit reliably in Upland (Inland Empire including  Rancho Cucamonga, Ontario, Pomona).  This year would be the fourth straight year of successful fruiting. 

If you want to purchase a large Mango Tree in the Inland Empire area try:
SOCAL NURSERY
9312 BEN NEVIS BLVD
RIVERSIDE CA 92509
(951) 295-3525
OPEN MON-FRIDAY 7AM TO 5PM SATURDAY 7AM TO 3PM
CLOSED SUNDAYS
I have been there a few times and they have large fruit trees (many over 6 ft tall) - including Mangos.  Hope this helps.

Tony

[simon_grow]

Honey Kiss is very productive in SoCal. This picture from my friends tree has been posted before but it’s great visual proof it produces well here. The Honey Miss was grafted onto an established LaVern Manilla rootstock.

Simon

[Calreef18]

Any updates from people for this season?

[spaugh]

My winters 20222 tree is LOADED with fruitless.   This will be the first year letting it set a good load.  Its around 5 years old and is a strong grower, very erect and strong growth.  Its one that many of the local nurseries sell because it grows strong here. 

I will top work some other droppy trees over to this variety. 

[simon_grow]

I know some people have bad luck with PPK but my PPK tree gets lots of fungus on its blooms and dropped all of its fruit so far this year. It’s disease resistance to the fungus in my yard is very weak, similar to Lemon Zest.

Pineapple pleasure was setting good amounts of fruit in my yard and E4 and M4 looked good so far but still much too early to tell.

Simon

[sapote]

The most reliable and less decease of my trees in this order:

Peach cobbler
Iman Pasand
Maha
Okrung Tong
LZ
Alphonso

Fort my location, pick off all flowers until March 1 when it's warmer and high chance of fruits set.

[palmcity]

The PM infects the young leaves really bad and the blooms get them really bad as well. The flower panicles often abort due to the fungal infection but here in SoCal, our trees can bloom about three times. If you are lucky, one of those blooms will occur during a period where there is little or no fungal diseases and you may get some fruit.

One year, I had extremely heavy fruit set with maybe 100 or more baby LZ fruit that got to around 1 inch long and they slowly dropped one by one and I only ended getting 1-3 fruit that year, I can’t remember exactly.

My initial thoughts were that I will let Mother Nature take its course
Simon

Just my observations over the years...
I believe Temperature plays a major role in the year to year fluctuation of powdery mildew seen on my trees. (Humidity, sunlight,air flow, humidity, etc. also factor in spore growth).

Unfortunately I see little to no studies on mango trees powdery mildew growth vs. temperature, but other plants have received some studies and IMO the hawthorne study closely resembles my location yearly temperature vs. powdery mildew growth over the past many years.

I Graph shows peaking growth rate at about 23C (73.4F) and rapidly dropping when temperatures hit 27C (80.6F) and stopping almost Completely at 29C (84.2F)...

So... Hope for some hot 84.2F (29C) weather during flower bloom and powdery mildew should be far less if my guess is correct... This is also why I think most of the 2nd and 3rd blooms are more successful in setting mango crops in south florida as usually the temperature is much warmer (also why I believe Miami has less of a powdery mildew problem than in Martin County, Fl where I live and it is cooler here and hotter in Miami).

Go to Figure 2 in below site
https://bsppjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1046/j.1365-3059.2000.00520.x

Well, no one's commenting thus I will add some suggestions:::
It would be easy for one like Mark in Tx. to test this by enclosing his area if able to regulate temperature between 85 and 90F During bloom and till fruit set if facilities allow... It might save some expense on fungicides but will probably cost more on electricity & gas... Just a thought. Perhaps others with green houses have tried these temps during bloom to decrease/stop powdery mildew???  Then again, perhaps just too fun opening up the green houses & shutting off the heat... lol.

[Lovetoplant]

The most reliable and less decease of my trees in this order:

Peach cobbler
Iman Pasand
Maha
Okrung Tong
LZ
Alphonso

Fort my location, pick off all flowers until March 1 when it's warmer and high chance of fruits set.

Sapote,  this will be my first year grafting mango scions on to the seedlings.  You do not live that far from me and I am interested in the verities you have growing.    Will you able to sell me some scions for grafting this summer?  TIA

[fruitnut1944]

The PM infects the young leaves really bad and the blooms get them really bad as well. The flower panicles often abort due to the fungal infection but here in SoCal, our trees can bloom about three times. If you are lucky, one of those blooms will occur during a period where there is little or no fungal diseases and you may get some fruit.

One year, I had extremely heavy fruit set with maybe 100 or more baby LZ fruit that got to around 1 inch long and they slowly dropped one by one and I only ended getting 1-3 fruit that year, I can’t remember exactly.

My initial thoughts were that I will let Mother Nature take its course
Simon

Just my observations over the years...
I believe Temperature plays a major role in the year to year fluctuation of powdery mildew seen on my trees. (Humidity, sunlight,air flow, humidity, etc. also factor in spore growth).

Unfortunately I see little to no studies on mango trees powdery mildew growth vs. temperature, but other plants have received some studies and IMO the hawthorne study closely resembles my location yearly temperature vs. powdery mildew growth over the past many years.

I Graph shows peaking growth rate at about 23C (73.4F) and rapidly dropping when temperatures hit 27C (80.6F) and stopping almost Completely at 29C (84.2F)...

So... Hope for some hot 84.2F (29C) weather during flower bloom and powdery mildew should be far less if my guess is correct... This is also why I think most of the 2nd and 3rd blooms are more successful in setting mango crops in south florida as usually the temperature is much warmer (also why I believe Miami has less of a powdery mildew problem than in Martin County, Fl where I live and it is cooler here and hotter in Miami).

Go to Figure 2 in below site
https://bsppjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1046/j.1365-3059.2000.00520.x

Well, no one's commenting thus I will add some suggestions:::
It would be easy for one like Mark in Tx. to test this by enclosing his area if able to regulate temperature between 85 and 90F During bloom and till fruit set if facilities allow... It might save some expense on fungicides but will probably cost more on electricity & gas... Just a thought. Perhaps others with green houses have tried these temps during bloom to decrease/stop powdery mildew???  Then again, perhaps just too fun opening up the green houses & shutting off the heat... lol.

I'll be growing mango in a warm dry greenhouse soon. Do you think there will be PM or other fungal issues even with no rain? The only other fruit with PM is grapes. Nothing else on a wide variety of fruits. I can get to 90-100F if wanted even on most days in winter. There will be humidity at night but not when it's warm and of course no rain.