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 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?

I've been having a great dialog about my underperforming Angie tree (http://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=16712.0). I've decided to topwork it into a Maha Chanok and am looking for budwood. Anyone willing to share some? I'm in the Orlando area and will pay shipping and a small amount for your trouble. I'd also be willing to trade - I'll have a significant amount of Angie budwood, as I intend to pug the tree to prepare it for topworking. I will soon have seeds from lemon z, coconut cream and sweet tart fruits I've purchased I could trade as well.

I'm deciding between these three varieties as replacements for a mango that isn't working out for me. would love to find a fruit to taste before I plant a tree. Anyone have any to spare? I am in the Orlando area and would happily purchase the fruits and pay shipping. Not looking for quantity, just a sample to find out which I like most as I only have a spot for one tree.

Does it matter what time of year I remove a lychee air layer? I started my first one on 7/13/2014. It has been feeling pretty form, so I pulled back the foil to peek today, and there are lots of roots. So my question is, do I separate it now, or wait to do it in spring?

So it has come up in another thread that my Pickering might be different. So thought I'd start a thread to track the progress of mine and see what others think. I went and looked in my garden book - bought it from pine island in 2010, and the label shows the nice golden yellow fruit. Last year however, I had 4 fruit, none of which was yellow when ripe. The insides were dark orange, and it was extremely sweet with a lot of coconut flavor. The fruit was huge! But they did not ripen until august. The tree is very small and seems to exhibit the dwarf growth habit I expect. So now som pics

Fruitlets and young fruit were markedly reddish


As they grew they got more and more green


The fruit were huge! I used quart sized jugs to protect from raccoons



Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures of the inside of the fruit, but they were fully ripe.

Here is what the tree looks like this year



And this year's immature fruit


Whatever I have, it is excellent! But am very interested in others opinions - is this is actually Pickering?

I'll post more pics as this year's crop matures. Be very interesting to see if they turn yellow this year!

I'd love to see pictures of well formed trees.  How do you shape them to keep them strong, productive and short enough to hand pollinate?

My tree (Gefner) was snapped off about 8 inches above the graft last year by a storm. This year it has put on some excellent growth and the trunk has thickened up nicely. I selected and trained a central leader and it made a number of nice primary scaffolds. Here is what it looks like now:



I won't be doing anything to it until spring, but if all goes well and it suffers no freeze damage, I want to know how to shape it further for best fruit production. I am thinking that I will top it, taking off the top two vigorous  shoots that are both vying for dominance. Then I'm thinking I should take 6-8" off of each primary scaffold to induce it to branch. Any advice?

And please show me what your producing trees look like - I'd love to see the structure they have!

I have a screen room that is 10' tall. It has 2 in ground planting spots with dwarf Pygmy palms. They looked great, but are now too tall and pressing on the screen, so they have to go. Those are the shortest palms, so I need a different plant. I'm wondering if there are any dwarf fruit trees that would produce in a screened in room without the benefit of insect pollination? I'm not willing to hand pollinate. Is anything self fertile? I know bananas are, what else? Would love put a lychee there, but suspect they need polinators. Any ideas?

Today's severe weather took its toll. My poor atemoya tree was snapped off about 10 inches above the ground=( Here it was last week:



And here it is all broken off=(
 


Here is a close up of the break



Luckily, the break is about 8 inches above the graft, so hopefully after its severe and unintended pugging, it will send out some new shoots.

So questions:

Would you have pruned the "before" tree? It seemed to me that it was taking on a pretty good shape with well placed branches. But it was not strong enough to hold itself up and I had it tied to a bamboo pole. Strong winds unfortunately broke the ties.

How do you encourage a new tree to grow a strong enough trunk that it doesn't need a support pole? Or do newly grafted trees tend to need them for a while? When I bought this tree it was only pencil thickness. The trunk is now about 3/4 inch in diameter. So increasing, but not fast enough to support its own weight. I'm interested to know if it would have been better to not have allowed this tree to get so tall before its trunk thickened up. Opinions?

I now have an "opportunity" to try a new shaping strategy, so advice is welcome...

Thanks for looking,

Angela

I am vacationing in ft meyer beach. Is there anywhere near here to buy tropical fruit? I know pine island has a mango festival later in the summer. Are there growers there that sell fruit to the public at other times? I'd love to find lychees or early mangos. Any suggestions?