Hi, i was wondering what are the factors that directly promote the thickening of mango trees trunk and scaffold branches?
I read somewhere that the thickeness of a trunk (or scaffold branch) is proportional to the number of "distally situated branching points",(as i understood it , it is the number of branching points from the trunck to the tip of the most exterior branch). Basically, the more the canopy branches out, the more the lower branches get thicker.
Does the increased weight supported by a branch or trunk contribute to thickening it?
Does bended branches (from the weight of the canopy) thicken up faster than vertical branches?
Do you have experiences with spectacular thickening of a trunck or scaffolds following a particular event? (pruning, particular fertilizing, etc...)

Hi. I am thinking about planting a second mango tree. I already have a kent planted last year. Do you think that Irwin makes a good companion to kent in terms of crop period? or does their crop periods overlap? I have only the choice between irwin and osteen.
Is Irwin a vigorous grower?

I was wandering around in the forum when i found a very interesting article shared in a thread 2 years ago. It helped me a lot to understand the science that stands behind the vegetative vs flowering flush of mango trees and how to orient your tree to each direction depending on your objectives.
http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S1677-04202007000400007&script=sci_arttext
The main information i retained is the differences between florigenic promoter and vegetative promoter factors.
One question got in my head concerning flowering non mature trees, and the fact that we have to wait till little fruits are forming until we prune it to avoid having a second flowering flush.
Does this wait actually have a scientific link to the fact of aborting the fruits in order to move on to a vegetative mode? or is it in reality linked to the temperatures at which the pruning is made (which are generally warm when we wait till the fruitlet stage)
Thus we can distinguish two cases
when we wait till fruiltets develop, we find ourselves generally in april or may, => automatically the the temperatures become warm => the Vegetative promoter enters in action on the new shoots which turn out to become vegetatve growth
 But
when we want to prune the panicles at their early stage (to gain time for vegetative growth), we are generally in january/february => still in winter (cold temps)  => florigenic promoter still in action on the new shoots which will follow the panicle pruning => another panicles develop instead of vegetative flushes.
If this is true, the pruner of a  flowering non mature tree should monitor the expected (warm) temperatures following the prune instead of automatically waiting for fruitlet development before pruning?
what's your opinion about this reasoning?

Hi everybody : my kent tree is blooming and i am planning to not letting it hold fruit, i was wondering how much time (approximatively i mean, 1 month?, 2 months?, 3 months?) does it take from the beginning of the blooms to the formation of pea size fruitlets (the stage at which i can take off the fruitlets and tip the branches to start vegetative growth).
Thank you

Hi everybody, i planted 2 papaya plants 3 weeks ago, it is my first time growing papayas. I was wondering should i start fertilize them now? if so how much amount? and is pigeon manure suitable as fertilizer? By the way should i cut the dying leave or leave it on the plant?

                   

Hi everybody
Here is one of my 2 guava plants i planted 2 months ago.(i live in tunisia, 10b). It already started to grow and produced 2 new set of leaves at the tip of the branches. I covered them with a speial cold cloth in order to prevent them from the cold wind.



1- I am wondering can i trim the tips of the branches now (beginning of the winter), in order to let them branch out and start forming the canopy? or should i wait till the begginning of the spring to do that?
2 - if so, how many set of leaves should i cut back in order to ensure a good branching? is it necessary to go down till i reach a woody part or i can cut the still green tips?

Hi all;
I live in Tunis, Tunisia, (Zone 10b)… (but in my mind we are in 13b lol). So I as you understood, I am trying to push the zones away, notably with mango and soursop planting  This thread will talk about my soursop experience, I will launch a second thread about my mango experience, so that may profit to future zone pushers (as I profited from the thread of Pancrazio with his mango experience in Italy).
So I got a soursop fruit from ivory coast last june, I planted some seeds on the ground, and 40 days later, some of them sprouted.

I built a wood structure to cover them (I will wrap it with 2 layers of plastic bubble film and one layer of anti frost cloth (with an air space of 3 cm between the layers).



I planted the seeds too close to each other, I am wondering would’nt they disturb each other? (the roots). My first priority is the optimal growth of the most vigorous seedling of them, My second priority, is to keep a second seedling as a backup under the same greenhouse in case one of them dies. Do you think I should let them as they are for now and wait some time (how much) before transplanting any of them? Or do you think they are too close and I risk to have crossed root systems which will be difficult to separate later? (in this case I will now transplant the three less vigorous seedlings no matter the risk for them as my first priority is the most vigorous seedling, especially knowing that one seedling is broken and beginning to sprout multiple leaves from its extremity and another seedling has the seed still stuck in the leaf place)