Mango growing first time, new member from UK

[laidbackdood]

...so drainage and terracotta is better......drill extra drainage holes in pots with masonary bit....

Sorry, but drilling more holes is a myth.  You will increase the surface area ever so slightly, but it is miniscule.
If you have a bucket full of water with one hole in it or ten, the water will still drain. Water forms hydrogen bonds on particles, the more surface area, the more water will adhere, hydrogen bonds beat gravity and a thousand holes wont drain any better than one. Researched "perchered water table".
To improve your drainage improve your mix first.
I agree that terracotta is better for a cooler climate, it does breathe a bit.

I use a wick too mate..............Sounds good but since i have put more drainage holes in both my plastic and terracota pots......i notice the water flows really nicely out of the base of the pots and i have not changed my mix at all........with the wick and i dont have a  PWT in mix that is uninhabitable to the roots either.....esp with the citrus. ...when i repot, the pot is fully colonized by roots.

[laidbackdood]

Tim.....I have bought many seeds from the guy that sells the chilli focus......I can understand you wanting to take cuttings as when grown from seed...they are painfully slow initially .....to get going.......as they start to grow....every now and then i remove a  leaf on the stem .....this seems to spur them on a bit....along with removing the laterals......dont let them bush up the stem and form that Y shaoe with the stem bare........you will notice the tree bushes right out on the v part of the Y with plenty of flowers........then spray flowers with warm water and use artists brush to pollinate andyou will get heaps of fruits.........one thing i have noticed with all chilli....is the first couple of fruits have no life in them....especially the first one at the base of the v on top of the Y so to speak...............if they are green.....dont pick until they go dark green.....esp cayenne.......more power..........when the temp drops for autumn the chillis get angry and compensate for the drop in temp by making themselves hotter(thats my theory anyway).............I will post some pic when my trees are doing their thing......its spring here.......If you pot up gradually you should be getting 50 plus fruits a tree.

[treefrog]

Welcome to the forum mate,

If i may give you an advice then it would be to grow a grafted mangotree. You can order them online from Spain/Italy or graft a scion onto your seedlings.

The advantages are:

- you will get a more compact tree
- you will sure get the mangovariety that you ordered
- it will fruit much faster

Thanks for the welcome!  I hadn't considered a grafted tree, if the seedlings don't thrive under my care I will look into these some more.

Tim

the reasoning behind grafted trees versus seedlings is twofold.

a) you will be getting a known genetic cultivar with predictable traits.  polyembryonic seedlings do come true to type - most of the time.  monoembryonic, it's a spin of the genetic roulette wheel.

b)  sooner to fruit.  there are two aspects to this.  first, and most obviously, a grafted tree already has some growth and is larger than a new seedling.  secondly, and less obviously, reproductive maturity.  many fruit trees go through a maturing period preparing them for reproduction - analogous to puberty in humans.  in some cases, this involves five to fifteen years.  grafted trees' scions come from tissue that has already passed through this process, and are ready to blossom and produce fruit as soon as their root systems and leaf surface area are sufficient to support production.

[Tim K]

Tim.....I have bought many seeds from the guy that sells the chilli focus......I can understand you wanting to take cuttings as when grown from seed...they are painfully slow initially .....to get going.......as they start to grow....every now and then i remove a  leaf on the stem .....this seems to spur them on a bit....along with removing the laterals......dont let them bush up the stem and form that Y shaoe with the stem bare........you will notice the tree bushes right out on the v part of the Y with plenty of flowers........then spray flowers with warm water and use artists brush to pollinate andyou will get heaps of fruits.........one thing i have noticed with all chilli....is the first couple of fruits have no life in them....especially the first one at the base of the v on top of the Y so to speak...............if they are green.....dont pick until they go dark green.....esp cayenne.......more power..........when the temp drops for autumn the chillis get angry and compensate for the drop in temp by making themselves hotter(thats my theory anyway).............I will post some pic when my trees are doing their thing......its spring here.......If you pot up gradually you should be getting 50 plus fruits a tree.

Thanks laidbackdood. For pollination I have been lucky, the apache pollenates easily with a flick of the finger, when I tried using a brush initially I was damaging the pistils and they were dropping off, stopping fruit set. Some other varieties are more difficult to pollenate I understand. Mine is coming to the end of the season, and the pods are maturing much quicker now, perhaps because the plant has reached a good size and can focus all it's energy on pods, perhaps it knows the days of sun and heat for fruiting are numbered, and is desparate to push out a few more pods quickly, perhaps because it's pot-bound, it thinks it might die so is focussing on ripening a few pods as quickly as possible.

For managing the growing cutting, I was going to leave the plant to it's own devices for a while, and only prune if it is getting too tall or too bushy. The plants had a very good growth habit this year, and a good mixture of bushiness vs. height, well until the taller one started crowding out the shorter one and stunting it's growth. Have you had issues with yours bushing out too low down the stem and not growing tall enough?

[Tim K]

Welcome to the forum mate,

If i may give you an advice then it would be to grow a grafted mangotree. You can order them online from Spain/Italy or graft a scion onto your seedlings.

The advantages are:

- you will get a more compact tree
- you will sure get the mangovariety that you ordered
- it will fruit much faster

Thanks for the welcome!  I hadn't considered a grafted tree, if the seedlings don't thrive under my care I will look into these some more.

Tim

the reasoning behind grafted trees versus seedlings is twofold.

a) you will be getting a known genetic cultivar with predictable traits.  polyembryonic seedlings do come true to type - most of the time.  monoembryonic, it's a spin of the genetic roulette wheel.

b)  sooner to fruit.  there are two aspects to this.  first, and most obviously, a grafted tree already has some growth and is larger than a new seedling.  secondly, and less obviously, reproductive maturity.  many fruit trees go through a maturing period preparing them for reproduction - analogous to puberty in humans.  in some cases, this involves five to fifteen years.  grafted trees' scions come from tissue that has already passed through this process, and are ready to blossom and produce fruit as soon as their root systems and leaf surface area are sufficient to support production.

Thanks for the input Treefrog. I can see the benefits of the grafted tree. I didn't know too much about why grafted trees fruit sooner, other than the size advantage, interesting information.

I am so happy with the growth of my seedlings so far, and I think that getting fruit is going to be a pipe dream, without a lot of investment - several hundred pounds on a grow light, a big chunk of energy every year, a grafted tree for a guarantee of trueness to type, and no guarantee of a super crop from growing in a pot.

For me the decision is hundreds of pounds of money vs. a few pounds a year.

I am tempted to keep persevering with my seedlings, I am sure I can get them to a few feet tall, and to look spectacular as decorative plants in the house. If I catch the bug some more and really want fruit, I will empty my wallet!.

Cheers,
Tim

[laidbackdood]

No need to empty your wallet...just give them room to grow....buy cheap bigger pots/potting mix.....Here are some pics for you mate......most of these trees are one year old.......you can see some have laterals and i have removed the odd leaf going up the stem on the newbies with the idea of removing all branches and leaves off the main stem and form a Y.......if you want a good tree a 200 mm pot is absolute minimum.......a 250 is better with 300MM+ even better........that big brown pot is a 290mm 13.5 litres(trinidad moruga scorpion 1 year old) and all trees were heavily pruned from last year and spring is here........another pic shows some seedlings and my heated propagator for more difficult seeds..... I have had trees live to ten years old(In Auckland New Zealand)...especially in the ground(as long as they can handle the winter but doubt if they would like your winters!)......If you get yourself a heated propagator of E bay....you can get your seeds going earlier ...say the last 2 weeks of winter and keep them in there until temps warm up/inside.....you then have all of spring/summer/autumn to grow your chillis which should be fine......or just get grafted plants as suggested but i have never needed one.....all my chillis perform and both me and the mrs enjoy them.

[Tim K]

It's been a while since my last post, work is getting the better of me unfortunately.

Laidbackdood, thanks for the pictures.

The mangoes are coming along pretty well, since they have been indoors the whole time as it's been too cold to get them out in the sun, they are still relatively small and tender so I am trying to keep them above 20C. They have just been getting light from moving them from the window at the front of the house, to the one at the back, and a bit of evening light from the house lighting in the kitchen.



Plants (1) (left hand side) - (4) (right hand side)

I want to let them all grow a bit more, before choosing 2 to pot up into superoots air pots, I have two 6 litre ones (1.5G) waiting.

I am now thinking (4) (right hand side) might be an offtype, it is floundering, there was a second flush of leaves growing fiinally about a week ago, but they dropped off.

For (2) (second from left) , I am tempted to pull it as it is clearly a runt with the shoot and root not following gravity very successfully, and it has a twisted tap root so will always be at a disadvantage. It is being majorly overshadowed by (3), you can't even see it hardly. I want to see just how far down the tap root goes, so I can judge whether the others need potting up ASAP, or I can let them grow a bit to try and select the two "true to type" plants to transplant into the air pots.

(1) is looking quite healthy, and (3) is doing amazingly well, on it's 4th "tier" of leaves, would that be called the 4th "flush"?

I also bought a cheap mini greenhouse, about 1.6M tall, so if the mangoes are still alive and kicking next year I can use that to get them some extra sun and warmth in spring and summer, I imagine it will get 10 or more celsius warmer inside than the air temperature when it is sunny, so this could give some 30+ Celsius days for it, should help a lot with getting some decent growth.

[Tim K]

Just to add, here a picture from 9th September, really shows how much they have come along, except (4):

[Doglips]

Gotta love the red flush.

Your not out of the woods yet, It may still be feeding off of the reserves in the seed.

[Tim K]

Gotta love the red flush.

Your not out of the woods yet, It may still be feeding off of the reserves in the seed.

Indeed those red flushes are quite special, I think my phone made them look even more vivid than they actually were.

I attributed the slow growth of (4) after it's initial fluorish being due to it having used up the seed store, now I'm not so sure, as this was 3 months ago, and no (1) had the same sized seed and has done much better after a slow start. If (1) has used up it's seed store it is struggling to move on and reap it's own energy, time will tell if any of the others stop growing as if they have used up their seed stores.

[Tim K]

Update, as it was time to repot the little trees.  Their growth has slowed down in the last couple of weeks as the amount of daylight has gone down.

I uprooted the runt seedling (2) a couple of weeks ago, as I wanted to see how deep the roots had bored. The roots were almost on the bottom of the planter, so I knew it was time to repot the other seedlings soon.



I carefully loosened the soil using a fork, pulled them all out, and rinsed the soil off. You can see the effect of the biodegradable pots on the taproot growth (especially the middle one), it has spiralled around a bit before breaking through the pot - I had planted the biodegrable pots in which they were planted at the beginning in the planter, and didn't break them away from the seedlings. The spiralling didn't stunt the growth of the largest seedling though. Anyhow, I pruned the roots a bit to reduce their depth and straighten up the tap roots a bit.



Nicely potted up in their smart pots - I used the gist of the advice from Coplantnut given previously, and went for 6 litre Superroots air pots, with 75% John Innes no 2 compost (peat/coarse sand/loam based, with a bit of fertiliser built in), and 25% perlite. The smaller seedling will have to make do in a traditional pot as I only have 2 air pots for these, I used a bit more Perlite though to help it along.

I hope now that they survive the root trimming, and also the winter here.

[LEOOEL]

Nice going! Good looking plants with good root development. And, I like your plans for re-potting. I hope they make it okay through the winter.

[Tim K]

Thanks for the encouraging comments!

[TheWaterbug]

this was grown under 450W of Black Dog LED lights.

 

Those must have been the most expensive mangos ever.

And worth every penny 

[Tim K]

Update, the root pruning and repotting has affected the seedlings to varying degrees.

From the photo of the mangoes in their pots, in the post above, only the two seedlings on the left have survived, the other one dried out and all the leaves dropped, the transplanting was too much for it. One of the remaining ones is looking very poorly (1 leaf left, slowly withering), and the other very healthy.

I think one or more of these factors might have taken its toll:

- I left the roots uncovered for about an hour when I repotted, after rinsing off all the soil, they might have dried out
- I root pruned about to remove the circular shape of the roots from the starter pot, perhaps I was too aggressive or disease has taken hold and killed off the small root structure.
- It was very cold, about 5 Celsius, and the plants were exposed for about an hour.

Heres a pic of them now (2 pots on the left are my chillies, 2 on the right are the mangoes):



It looks like the larger seedling is going to make it through winter, with the lack of light recently it is still looking vibrant, it has just stopped growing almost completely for now. Hoping next year it can put on some more growth spurts and become a sturdy tree for the house.

[Tim K]

It's been a while since I posted any updates on my mango trees.

Transplanting was not kind to them, I ended up with only the largest plant surviving, then it stayed dormant through winter, and dropped it's top level of leaves.

I bought a fluorescent grow light for my chillies, and put the plant under it, the remaining tier of leaves dried out within 2 days, I pulled them off and the stem started drying out from the top down, but it did stop this after a couple of weeks. I think the sudden transition from low light to bright light constantly was too much for the plant.

I almost threw it away after the leaves dropped.

However, I decided that the stem was green so might be able to photosynthesise under the grow light and create some new growth, or the roots might store energy when in winter (some trees do this).

Anyhow, here's a picture of the plant now, looking quite sorry for itself:



There are two very promising things on it though, two little swellings that have the beginning of new leaves popping out. The grow light is useful as it's a couple of months before the mango could go outside into the greenhouse, there are still frosts around on some days.

Also, here's a picture of my grow light setup, got some chilli plants and a strawberry plant under there too. Strawberry is thriving and has fruit developing after about 3 weeks, might get some of those a bit sooner than some fresh homegrown mango!