Can you please expound on silicon's role in mangoes, and how to use it to improve disease resistance, our productivity and crop quality?

Silicon would be considered one of those beneficial rather than essential elements.  Works on some crops, but not on most.  I bought Dyna-Gro's Pro-tek but see no real world value on the crops I've sprayed with when it comes to disease pressures.

You know I sing the praises of Keyplex 350DP.  Here's a good read:

Zinc and silicon help increase the effectiveness of mechanical barriers, making it difficult for sucking insects to penetrate the outer walls; this in turn minimizes the spread of disease. Copper is an important catalyst for the chemical reactions that take place within plant cells and it can neutralize the damaging effects of oxygen radicals and hydrogen peroxide to healthy plant tissue.

https://www.keyplex.com/knowledge-base/pest-management/the-role-of-plant-nutrition-in-plant-resistance/

If you're not careful and start believing everything you read, especially if it comes from a site or vendor who stands to profit from it, you become a bumbling idiot staring at labels, talking to the bottles.  I hate when that happens. 

I've noticed this as well. Full sun in my area, hot summer above 100, burn the leaves and reduce yield. This year, I'm gonna put some light shade cloth over them.

PITA, just give them a spray of Surround WP, a sprayable kaolin clay dust.  It not only is a great sunscreen but pesticide too. 

Excellent read on mangos.  Not much of this (disease pressures) would apply to me or the hundreds of Texas mango growers but this is great discussion.

Until the freeze my LZ did exceptionally well.  Trunk is still green so there's still hope.  You guys have me scared about LZ's vigor though.

Besides natural vigor one thing not mentioned is internode length that greatly contributes to tree size.  Although my observation was limited (again thanks to the freeze) my Cotton Candy had very short internodes and was tidy in comparison to Pineapple Pleasure which had triple the internode length and grew lanky.

I'm still not 100% sold on the idea of citrus being impossible to grow here. It is indeed averse to our high ph soil and has a number of diseases and insect pests, but I think the main reason we don't see them in dooryard situations is because the state came out with chainsaws to destroy them all. I'm back to growing citrus again myself, and it seems that with regular fertilizer application, they can do fairly well.

Grown citrus for decades in high pH calcareous soils.  It's all about your rootstock.  IMO yours should be on Sour Orange, it's a perfect match for your soil profile.  The limiting factor for Sour Orange might be tristeza.   Not a problem in Texas, is a problem in Louisiana.  Citrus likes a 5-1-2 NPK with a good micro hit. 

Mark

Wow those pots are awesome along with those roots!  More roots = More cados

Yep, and it better.  You don't know how many hundreds of shovels (it seems) it takes to fill up that void. 

Time to get to another one, my Frankencado which so far is only pushing from the rootstock.

Wow, now that's service!  Thanks for the care.

All orders that were paid (as of morning of Mar 8, 2018) were harvested today, sealed, packed, and shipped (Except Mark's per his request, that will go out on Monday). You should receive emails directly from Paypal over shipping status. You may start receiving it Saturday thru Monday (In CA) and by Tuesday-Wed out of state.  Please note the following:

1. All budwood open ends were dipped into wax and sealed, USDA employs this technique in sealing budwood and it works great.
2. No need to remove wax, simply graft the normal way you do, make sure to wrap the wood with buddy tape or whatever you normally use.
3. Added moist vermiculite and moist paper towel to retain moisture, sealed in sandwich bags.
4. I mixed sizes so you have choice. Some varieties wood may be thin by nature, but every wood has exposed nodes that are plump and ready to push.
5. In some cases where a variety was short, I substituted with another top tier. Some were contacted and got consent from them. If you are not happy about what you get, let me know and I can either refund OR send again in 2-3 months.
6. Included some freebies.
 

Would love your feedback on quality of wood and condition you get them. Happy grafting 

I have a lot of weeds in the hoop house.  Big surprise I know.  What do you guys think about spraying with a pre emerchant?  I hate to spray chemicals in there but I wonder if I kill the weeds and sterilize it with pre emerchent that weeds will stay gone?

You're not growing in the ground so it's a moot point.  I am, and I use glyphosate on weeds that grow right up to the pots which are bottomless.   Contrary to the Monsanto haters' drivel....... microbes feed on glyphosate and it's rendered benign upon contact with soil.

Having two in a pot doubles your root mass too.

Update:

I had prepped branches and last two days we warmed up so wood is ready to harvest. I will ship to those who ordered shipment goes out tomorrow. Others please order ASAP to benefit from prime wood.

Will do, thanks!

if you think of it, please don't ship mine until Monday.  I'd hate for them to get stuck in a post office over the weekend.

My local nursery gets stuff from Pine Island and it usually always looks great (except Lychees). PlantOgram always sends awesome trees too. I won't publicly hurt someones business but I'll PM you the name.

You're not hurting Top Tropicals, they are doing it to themselves.  There has been plenty of complaints about those bunch of garden carnies.  They sold me a crap Nishikawa avocado and didn't make good on it.  And the way they misrepresent their stock, mis-label, I doubt if I even received the variety I ordered!

https://davesgarden.com/products/gwd/c/2785/0/

There is no excuse for this.  Growquest was another shyster.  Think they finally put him (Chris) in jail where he belongs.   Word is he's busy watering the warden's daisies..... always maintaining an upright position. 

84 positives
12 neutrals
44 negatives

Everything I ordered from this place came looking like sh*t.

And who would that be?  I need to start all over.  Guess I've been in a state of denial, hoping for a miracle, but yesterday I confirmed all my mango trees are toast.

I've had great luck with Pine Island nursery stock.  My intent is to stub whatever I buy above the first node and graft to the shoots that arise.  Did that last year and had a beautiful cocktail tree of 4 Zill varieties on 8 branches.   

Thank you.  I'll try to get permission to do that on several trees.  I don't have mango trees myself.

Welcome and good luck.

Just a note about cold hardiness.  Texas has 1,000's of fruit growers, many are growing citrus and mango outdoors and what always nails us is the sudden and wide swings in temps during the winter which is typical of Texas weather.  We could be having 78F one day, have an Arctic front blow thru and by morning have 24F.  The tree hasn't had time to shut down, to acclimate.

Which brings me to my next point of why maybe some of my very frost intolerant trees like my key lime, Lemon Zest, Reed and Gwen avocados made it, are starting to push.  For days our outside ambient temps were in the 20's. The day of the big 18F my greenhouse temps were around 35-37F being the heater's day setpoint is 35F.  This acclimated the trees such that the short hit they took at 18F didn't nail all of them!

Tex first you say it can’t be done and then tell people how to do it.

Big difference between tropical versus temperate plant material Tonto. Guess you missed the signals, uggggggg.  Don't lose that tube of Bengay.

What's fascinating is the difference in types of plant material cold to warm regions.

My new mango I had shipped has a dark brown portion on the main stem while the rest remains lime green. Anything to be concerned about?

Looks like phomopsis and yes, could be a big problem is it spreads.  You could spray it with a broad spectrum fungicide and/or cut below the damage.  If it's mechanical damage due to shipping don't worry about it.