Skhan- thanks for the input! Glad you think the vertical looks good.  Because I'm a zone pusher I want multiple graft points to hedge bets against cold years. So I am planning to try to retain all three existing primary scaffolds. The grafts will become the secondary scaffolds. I'd graft to two this season, then stub the nurse branch back next year and graft to it. I've had good results with this approach on the last tree I top worked. I was really glad I had extra graft points as hurricane Irma took out an entire scaffold. I like symmetry too, but like you said - when you can get it!

As far as I know grafting a vigorous variety onto a slow grower will still be vigorous- would love for that to not be true since I have to keep my trees small enough to cold protect. But I am limiting my top working choices to varieties known to be able to be maintained small. So I gave no personal experience to relate.

Hi all. I've decided to top work my cogshall. Pretty tree but the fruit don't ripen well - jelly seed and soft nose.  I'm  making the cuts for e top work and would love some opinions on where to place them.

Tree before I started with some frost damage.



Bulk off so I can see the scaffolds



Some big cuts made leavin a nurse branch on the left




Had hoped to keep the y half of the biggest cut in this pic. But there was some dead wood - I took off half the y to get to healthy wood - so opinions - leave half the y or cut clean below it leaving a stub on the primary scaffold? Here's a close up

I'd leave them all. The fruit that are full size look like most should ripen fine, mine did. The few individual bananas that are black will rot, but the rest look good. The stalks that have pushed a bloom or are close can usually get enough energy from the clump if you let an extra one or two smaller shoots grow from the bottom to bring energy in to he shared corm. I'm in central Florida and will only cull the plants whose trunks rot from cold damage. If only the leaves were damaged they bounce back pretty fast and I leave them.

Blooms just starting for me in central FL. Manilita, which is always earliest in my yard is just pushing blooms. Others either showing some budswell or still dormant.

I decided not to stress this cold snap, and just did c9 xmas lights and not full shelters. My low was around 30 going off the nearest weather station's readings. Some bananas (unprotected) browned, and unfurling leaf tips on my lychee got nipped back a bit, but all else looks good. The lychee should be about perfect, it nipped back flushing leaves, so hopefully it will rebound with flushing blooms instead=)

An interesting observation - the area of my yard that is coldest, where the bananas browned, the tri-colored oyster plant next to them were totally melted. In other areas of my yard that get less cold due to microclimates, the oyster plants are undamaged, and so were bananas in those spots. Since they are a really common landscaping plant, the oyster plants seem to be a nice indicator for people contemplating zone pushing. If the oyster plants get killed back by frost in your neighborhood, chances are any mangos, lychees, bananas etc you are contemplating adding will need cold protection.

I've definitely been perusing the compact mango listing - thanks so much to @starch for putting that together!

Jose, good tip on matching not only vigor but ripening season in a cocktail tree. Seems to me that Honey Kiss and Fairchild might not work well together then since their fruiting season is so different, over time exhausting the tree.

Vernmented - That will be quite the cocktail tree! How large will the overall tree be? Seems hard to keep a small tree that has enough scaffolds to support that many varieties.

Thanks for all the great input! I think I'm leaning toward Fairchild. It is too late this year to do the topworking, I'll be doing it in the spring, so I have all winter to waver back and forth on my choice - lol!

I did not get a chance to try wood apple. Did you like them? I also visited Siem Reap. Amazing place! I loved my time there. The people are so friendly. I had a lot of fruits there for the first time: the mangosteen, salak, camito and rambutans in the pic above I had never tried before. I also tried palm fruit. Here's a picture of them being processed on the roadside. The things in the bowl are the edible bit, peel off that white stuff, and inside is a gelatinous clear orb, which is the bit you eat. Not strongly flavored, but bursting with juice.

What's the "new" rot? What causes is? Sorry to see this happening to your fruits!

Yes - that's it! Thanks for the id!

I have had some good success topworking my Angie mango to a variety I like better (Maha Chanok) and have improved my grafting skills (see http://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=16712.0 for the thread about that tree).

Next up, I'm going to topwork the Cogshall I planted. How come? I've had trouble getting it to set consistently, and when it does, the fruit are hard to ripen properly (jelly seed, anthracnose etc). Thanks to some great tips from forum members here, I modified my pruning technique, changed my fertilizing strategy, and picked them green and let them ripen on the counter. All of these things produced a good fruit set this year that were greatly improved. But even so, they were still only acceptable, not excellent. They were great smoothy mangos, but still ripen too unevenly to make them great for eating out of hand. The trouble is that the nose and interior near the seed ripens much faster than the stem end. So it is impossible for me to get one fruit to be ripe all at once. Either the nose is overripe and the stem end is perfect, or the nose is perfect and the stem end is underripe. The other factor is that the tree is hard to keep dwarfed. I'm in 9b and need to frost protect, so I am ruthless about maintaining the size of my trees. Here is a picture after pruning last week, when I harvested the last of the fruits:



It is 6' tall after pruning. So for those of you considering a Cogshall, it can be maintained small. Forgot to take a before picture, but I took off approximately 6' of height, taking out large uprights, with thinning cuts removing them where they connect to the main trunk. But it is much easier to control a tree that grows 2-3' a year not 6'! But if I could get the fruit to ripen better, this is in the acceptable range for pruning to stay small.

But based on the ripening issues, I'm going to topwork. I'm considering either Fairchild or Honey Kiss as the new variety. Which would you choose and why?

Very nice! I'm learning to cook Cambodian food after a visit there earlier this year. I planted tumeric, galangal (greater & lesser) and lemongrass in my yard a few weeks ago to give me a ready supply of ingredients. My tumeric hasn't taken off like yours has. How much sun exposure does yours get? I think mine may need a bit more shade.

Hope yours starts growing leaves soon mangoman! I have to say, I'm very impressed with the concept of top working. The vigour that an established root system gives the new graft is incredible - outpaces growth of a new planting so substantially!

John, would love to hear if your Angies are better this year. I'm envious you had room to plant more trees! I'm out of room for more trees, it is now a one in one out deal - lol.