We talk a lot about HLB but i never see anyone with first hand reports.
id anyone find it on his own plants? How did you recognize it?

At my place they need usually 3 weeks. If alive after 3 weeks, you are ok: even if they don't push, they will push at next growth flush.
Regarding removing it, it's up to you. If you want to remove it, however, don't attempt it before the new growth has hardened. I have snapped some scions by being impatient.
To make grafts more secure, you can use some rubber bands. They hold the graft tightly at first but the sun usually makes for a weaker and weaker rubber over the time and they fall pretty son after the graft has taken (my low quality rubber bands hold just few weeks in full sun).

Tommy Atkins?
Isn't heavy crop the whole point of tommy atkins production?

I'm aware of that. 
My hope is that FD will dwarf it enough, even if i'm not really sure on how FD will behave on my deep loam/clay soil. Under 1,5 meters all my soil is sand, but a pretty wet one, so who knows? I hope it will dwarf the scion enough.
I guess the tree won't attain a large size anyway. Every 12-15 years we get a -10°C/15F and more, so probably i'll have to start back from graft point every decade. I hope this will manage to keep the three in check.

Nice fruits Nancy. It's your in-ground plant?
It's nice to see that you haven't had any more of those nasty freezes in last years!

Thank you for your input Tom.
I have been trying to graft miyagawa on FD for quite some time now. This year i have had my first 2 successes but due to some dumb planning i lost both of them.
Grafting on FD seems doable, but of course satsuma on own roots would have a distinct advantage in colder climates.
The fact that even in japan they are usually grafted seems to suggest that they don't behave well on own roots, but one never knows, and home growing is a little different from commercial orchards.
Let's see if we can get some more input.

Edit:typos

Hey Ilya,
seems a solid suggestion.
I did read an interesting topic about it with your contribution on another forum.
Seems so good that it's almost an overkill.
Probably anything around the same hardiness of a bloomsweet would do for my location.

I will graft anything i'm gonna plant on flying dragon because i need a small plant for a small place in the garden.

Yes, it was quite a surprise for me too. Looks awesome and bearing in summer may help to close the "dead zone" in citrus availability.
Now i've got to try it.
I hope to get some budwood next year from Corse.

Encore mandarin may be something you may want to look into.
I do agree with you: citrus to me look like a fruit better enjoyed with warm weather.

Same yearly update.

At the end of our last summer i did manage to get my first self-produced, although small and ugly, mango. 
While i was happy to have accomplished this, i wasn't satisfied by the quantity of the crop.
So far my main problem has always been (or at least, i think it has been) the pollination.

My approach, so far, has always been this one: in order to maximize pollination, i tried to delay flowering as much as possible. This way, i thought, i can get full bloom when the plant is fully uncovered from winter cover and wind and bees will do the rest.
Moreover, later in the year we will have higher temperatures too, so, i though, this will lessen the chances to have the embryo of the fruit abort.
Looks pretty sound right? But so far this approach as proven unsuccessful. The reasons are probably numerous but i think the main one is the combination of shy flowering (Glenn becomes pretty shy at blooming when it's on its third bloom) united to adverse climate on smaller fruit, increasing drop rate.

So, for a change, this year i tried the diametrically opposite. I tried to anticipate bloom as soon as possible/reasonable (without getting too much deformed flowers because cold weather - tricky!) and to keep the cover over the plant for a very long time (i tried to remove it at the beginning of may but this year my plant as it even now, and i won't remove it for at least a week more).
This way, i though, the plant will have a better bloom, and will get a warmer/more protected environment for the beginning of fruit development.

Well, look like i have been doing it all wrong till now, because as for now the plant looks better than ever and if uncovering my plant won't give me any surprise, looks like i'm going for a true mango crop.

End of April:


May:


Few days ago:

Congratulations from me too. All in all, i think your work has been a great success.
Probably we could have foretold it, but we now know it: feijoas do behave way better when they are actively pushing (and are about to push). Sorta like mangoes and citrus.
I guess cleft graft is the way to go, too!

We have had (or are having) a horribly cold and wet spring and the rootstock plants are barely pushing out new buds of their own. Two of them are in a sunny spot and they begin to show some growth, the grafts on these seem to have taken.

WROST. MAY. EVER. I'm hoping to get some warmer nights to uncover my mango, but climate doesn't look like is willing to give that to me anytime soon. I hoped to uncover my plant tomorrow, but they have predicted a new cold front on Monday. 

You are correct.  There are number of very mild coastal locations in California that have very little or no frost but also very little growing heat.  Check out Shelter Cove, at 40N, and still virtually frost free (even the record all-time lows are very mild), but with virtually no growing heat:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelter_Cove,_California#Climate

There are many cities like it in terms of lack of both frost and heat along the coast -- from North to South: Shelter Cove, San Francisco, Half Moon Bay, Pacific Grove, and San Simeon.  But a lot of these have to do with the contours of the coast and the ocean currents, because there are other cities along the coast in between these that I listed that get plenty of frost.  Locations around San Francisco bay benefit from the bay waters, with most locations immediately adjacent to the bay being nearly frost free and also getting more growing heat.

Overall California benefits from the flow of the jet stream combined with mountain ranges, so arctic air very rarely blasts us.  Also the ocean temperatures here are very stable, about 10 degrees F change between winter and summer, whereas on the East Coast of the U.S. the temperatures can change by 30-40 degrees F between winter and summer.

I see what you mean. This is just another confirmation to what i have been thinking in last few years; there isn't a climate really comparable between US and Italy. I have been searching for a place with a rains/extremes/temperature comparable to Florence pretty much in all California and East coast, but to date i haven't be able to find any. This would have been really useful both to me and to the guys living in that place, but i haven't been able to find any.
The best match i have found to date between Florence and a US city is Virginia Beach (VA) which has both summer and winter temperature averages and extremes pretty similar to ours.
But this doesn’t mean that we don't have a climate similar to California in Italy: we indeed have one but it is extremely limited in surface. It's a shallow strip of ground around the city of Alassio. Frost free environment with summer temperatures averaging 75-80°F in summer max temps. Incidentally, there are grown some of the best chinotto oranges, but not so much tropical fruit culture. But as i said it's a very narrow strip, not more than 1500 feet wide. As in cali, mountains to the north, and facing the sea.

Its like Sicily compared to inland Italy..a huge range of subtropical to ...what you are gardening under...chilly mild temperate Med climate. You must see 20's often in winter,every winter.
Mangoes are such rewarding tree's. That they can have sweet edible top grade fruit at 5' tall is amazing.

Indeed i dip in the 20s every winter, and i consider myself lucky and the winter "mild" if i don't dip in the teens. In historical record my city had temperatures going down under the 0 (that is, 0F) in last 30 years. Russian cold spells, although rare, ain't no joke.

Mango are indeed great. My only complain is the high heat they need to ripen fruit, but if you don't consider this, it's a plant that looks like it was invented to allow people outside tropics to grow it. It stands well extremes, is drought tolerant, it flowers repeatedly, with a flower induction triggered by cold/drought, grows nicely in pot. I have found that if you time flowers removal appropriatedly you can pretty much decide WHEN the plant is gonna flower which proves invaluable in colder climate. Having the plant to flower in the right time is very important.