So since I moved into my new property a couple months ago, I've been working on my goal of getting a lot of mango varieties in the ground.  I bought 5 at the Fairchild mango festival and another 19 from Pine Island.  Several of them have been under attack, and some are doing great.  The Vallenato I bought from Fairchild is doing great, flushing and no damage at all.  The Angie has been in the ground the same 6 weeks and any new growth has been attacked. 

My longan caretaker was here Saturday and showed him the damaged plants still in pots and he immediately said "son caracoles" (snails).  He said they come up at night and feed on the leaves and new growth and are back in the soil in the daytime. 

Some of the leaves were curled like in some of the pictures I see here.  He said he was going to spray them for me (he was fumigating the longans for ants and whitefly).  I had to leave so I didn't see if he actually  was able to.

But I went to home depot and bought this snail bait today.  Does anyone have experience with this being effective?



I was out trimming the grass around the trees and putting down the snail bait at dusk today and what did I see on the Alphonso mango I planted yesterday but this snail on a top leaf of the Alphonso, confirming his diagnosis.



Here's the Angie that I'm still hoping is going to make it after being ravaged.  New flushes have been killed off almost immediately.  The green grass around it are just freshly cut clippings on top of the mulch ring.

Beautiful tree.  I hope my new pickering fares half as well.

I'm harvesting a lot of carambola now and juicing some.  I use the Omega Vert juicer and is one of the best out there.  I've been using it for 4 years now.  It gets a high yield, leaving very dry pulp.  It's very quiet, low speed, with a single auger and basket to grind and press the juice.  It's great for fruit, leafy greens, roots or anything else.  It will even handle wheat grass.  It's easy to clean also.  I can clean it in a couple minutes.  Being low speed, it does minimal damage to the produce being juiced with almost no oxidation.

It's not good with pulpy fruits like mango or pineapple, but neither was my high speed centrifugal juicer.  Celery needs to be cut into smaller bits to avoid clogging the pulp ejector with the fibers.

I appreciate the tip about trimming the green edges off carambola.  It was news to me.

Here's a link to the juicer if anyone is interested.

http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=omega+vrt+350hd+juicer&tag=googhydr-20&index=aps&hvadid=34433817008&hvpos=1t1&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=9302718754028246740&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=b&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_2xgm5upqa9_b

Also don't plant the mango trees that produce large reddish or purplish  attractive fruits on your perimeter, near foot traffic etc. This is where you plant mango trees that produce smaller green mangoes that go yellow a day or two before ripeness. That can even be picked with a little yellow and brought inside to ripen

Two examples would be Fairchild and Philippine

Yeah I agree.  It came with the property and was the only mango tree in the grove in the worst possible spot out of 6 acres.  I'm planting 30 mango trees now that are well hidden.  In 4 years or so when the new ones are producing I can axe the original mango tree.

I bought a 3 gal PPK Saturday at Pine Island.  There were 2 left.  It was a hunt and a surprise to find it since it wasn't on the available list.

I was at Pine Island today and saw several Manzanillos in 3 gallon containers.  After reading up on it I might go back and get one on Monday.