The Tropical Fruit Forum

It is OK to buy grafted trees. Yes the seedlings can grow faster but not always. My grafted lemon zest and grafted orange sherbet trees are beasts. Yes some seedlings (mainly monoembryonic seedlings) are as large but not nearly as branched and certainly have not yet brought the same type of joy as the grafted trees.

My strategy has been to plant seeds next to and surrounding the grafted trees. Originally I was going to inarch graft everything but I got lazy. Some grafted trees as mentioned have done very well. Others (juicy Peach) have been laggards. Orange essence, coconut cream, M4, and Phoenix grow very well too.

Pina colada seems to be slow regardless. However mine was already 3 years old from Florida when I bought it. It's about 5 ft tall but maybe 6 feet wide at this point with so much dense branching that it really looks like 2 or 3 dwarf trees. i would caution everyone to acknowledge that there are multiple paths to success. Yes seedlings are tried and true but you can still have success with turpentine (seems to be delayed in socal-I think more due to leggy growth exposing branches to sunburn, rot of these branches during winter, and subsequent decline).

I'm in orange in a valley between 2 hills and get about 400-500 chill hours per year and still get great growth on the mangos.

My tree is small and has stayed small

Garden grove/Westminster mom and pop Vietnamese grocery stores will have peeled jackfruit,  sugar apple,  mangosteen,  sugarcane,  and some other fruits.

I live in orange. If you ever want to split the supplies or buy some let me know. I have them but in large quantities.... 😅

Some people treat the die back with antifungal including systemic antifungals,  but I'm not sure if those are reliably effective.

The only cure I know of and that works for me is cutting out the infection. I cut a couple of inches below any shriveling or black areas. If the branch is small enough or if a large part is compromised, then I just cut off the whole section. If the main trunk gets involved,  I try and cut under it. A healthy tree will push out new nodes. If the tree continues to decline,  then the infection has continued to spread internally.

The best protection is prevention. Protect the exposed wood in the summer. Mango leaves can handle the heat but the green wood can get sunburned like an avocado tree. The damaged wood can then be susceptible to infection in winter and spring.

Good pruning to prevent rubbing branches and to promote good airflow also helps. In summer it's not so much of a problem,  but mango trees don't typically shed their leaves so any poor airflow problems that arise in the hot summer when it's hot will be magnified in the relatively warm and damp California Winters and foggy misty spring,  setting you up for infection as well as powdery mildew on your blooms.

Buddy roo -  I used to use grow more 20 20 20 and micros in my fertigation system. Last year I switched to 30 10 10 but spread around various down to earth products to boost sweetness. It was OK. This year I did the 30 10 10 with micros but didn't spread anything else out. I minimized water quite a bit as my mangos last year were watery. So far what I have this year is very very sweet so cutting off water did help,  but many trees didn't bloom or lost all their blooms to powdery mildew. Next year I'll either move back to my spraying regimen and keep the 30 10 10 or swap to 20 20 20 with spraying or change to 10 30 30.

My mango report over the past few years in socal. The mango report is relatively pathetic this year. It's probably a mix of poor fertilizer choice,  severe powdery mildew,  and an extended freeze that damaged several trees.

In late February we had an unusually prolonged frost that caused cold damage. I'd never seen cold damage in my mango trees. Leaves partially wilted,  and unfortunately these half-dead leaves were severely disease-prone as the dead portions were like a magnet for disease.

Sweet tart is an easy grower here in CA but flowering is hit and miss. Only 1 fruit this year. In years past brix has been higher than 30. Easy grower. no die back that I can ever remember. It has grown too big for itself and broken branches because of how heavy it has gotten.

Pina colada,  coconut cream, M4, orange essence,  phoenix - reliable flowering and disease free for me. Pina colada is of course slow growing but tastes fantastic. Highest brix for me was 36.

Sugarloaf also fruits reliably for me but my tree is small.

Lemon zest flowers profusely but loses almost everything to powdery mildew. The tree grows quickly though and loves this weather and will flower. If you want to grow it in socal, you need to manage die back quickly and spray for powdery mildew starting in February.

Orange sherbet grows very well. Flowered heavily for me the first year but hasn't flowered for a few years until putting out 1 mango this year.

Taralay has been a reliable heavy producer for me for a few years now except for this year. I did change my fertilizer regimen and gave heavy nitrogen this year.

Honey kiss... Grows but is prone to random die back.

Dot - gave fantastic fruit for a couple of years but 90% of the tree died back due to infection. It's hanging on by a thread.

Ppk doesn't like my climate. It's alive and flowers once per season sparsely but it prefers to grow when we have humid monsoon weather from Arizona. It didn't flush at all this season until this past week,  and now it's going bonkers.

Kesar was like Ppk but finally succumbed to die back. I have a new graft on different rootstock and will get a better chance to judge it.

Venus - hard to say. It's growing under a mulberry and so is essentially shaded and suffers from random die back. I think it would do better in full sun.

Orange essence is a problem free aggressive grower and sets lots of fruit. If you are a rookie and want a Florida mango tree grow this.

Phoenix also grows vigorously and sets lots of fruit but does have random die back.

I mention the die back because it spreads rapidly and will kill the tree of it gets deep enough into the trunk.

Furit punch does well and is relatively disease free.

Juicy Peach seems like a dud but I got some wood from Alex at tropical acres and am regrafting it onto more vigorous rootstock. The original Juicy Peach has grown maybe 5 8nches in 4 years.

Pineapple Pleasure also seems like a dud. Hasn't flowered in 4 years. 1 tree has grown several feet whioe another has grown just a few inches.

Cotton candy is growing and did produce good quality fruit. I've only had it for 2 years now.

Mabruka flowers at the end of fall for me and produces fruit over winter and then something or someone steals it as it flattens up in spring.

Mallika died. Never liked the fruit. Giving it another chance.

M4 is also an easy grower and fruits reliably for me. It is later season for me like it is in Florida.

Cecilove is small and hasn't flowered yet.

Karen Michelle is small and hasn't flowered yet

M10 is small and haven't flowered yet.

The fruit taste reminds me of a cooked onion with sugar. it's an odd savory taste. Maybe with natural drying or fermentation it may taste differently,  or under the influence of miracle fruit 9t may taste better but for me it's more of a curiosity. Perhaps there are some better tasting varieties out there.

Hi Bill

Can you please put me down for 12 trees? 3 of each female please.
Orange county,  California

Hey brad

My green gold is a clear champ. Different from yours. Mine grows straight up, strong central leader, sets tons of fruit yearly, basically a problem free tree with lots of excellent large fruit.

Got mine from epicenter.
My hass is alternate bearing because it holds so much fruit every other year.

My Pinkerton is also a champ. I have 2 of them. One is bushy, the other grows upright. Both flower and fruit profusely every year.

Leavens hass and ardith were killed by gopher/vole combo. Same with Rio hass.

We will use same color of label for each variety as we did for last time.
For new variety, we will add other type of colors.

If you run out of color labels or it is difficult to find a different color, just use combinations. Is specific combination can represent a different variety I'm good thank you

Yes thank you so much for putting this together.

Can you please put me down for 3 of each female please and 1 of each male please?

3 wusu female
3 biqi female
3 late growing female
3 crystal female
3 dongqui female
3 black crystal female
3 an Hai female

1 bq male
1 LG male
1 cr male
1 dk male

Total 25 trees

Thanks
Khaled

Let me clarify - yes you can plant now but I don't recommend it. The plant won't grow (much... Some of my in ground are still flushing or started to flower) but the disease pressures are high and it's much easier for me to control in pots than in ground hooked up to irrigation. A few years ago I lost 1/3 of my mangos before spring started. For me it's just easier to keep protected and on the dry side (don't overwater).