The Tropical Fruit Forum

Looks great! Are you able to plant directly into the ground in a greenhouse up north? Well done, bud!

My 2 cents on the M4, I tried it for the first time this year we got over 20 fruit from 3 grafts I did 3 years ago. I was excited for coconut flavor but the only coconut I got from the M4 was aroma - there's definitely a strong hit of coconut in the aroma (once you cut it open - before that no smell at all which is really weird if the only mango you know is Haden which has a powerful, heavenly scent when ripe). But in the flavor I got citrus notes, maybe some piña colada especially near the shoulders. The flesh is sweetest at the shoulders and by the skin. Delicious mango.

I would definitely agree that it's sweetest by the skin. My wife picked up on some citrus when it was maybe a day under ripe for my preferences, which I didn't really appreciate and would verbalize it as "subacid". We all taste things differently. I will say to get the maximum coconut flavor I really let mine ripen to the point I see skin wrinkling at the top and even some on the bottom. At that point I almost always have been smelling coconut for about 3 days at the stem. That's how I like it best, and I do scrape along the skin as I eat. To each their own though. Don't know exactly where you are, but you're somewhere super tropical and at elevation so it's cool to see it's producing well in those circumstances too!

How was the M4 taste?  Can you please describe it?

M4 really lived up to its hype for me. I have a tree that was put in the ground 3 years ago as a 3 gallon. I live in marginal mango territory and we got down to maybe 29-30 F this last winter. Problem with M4 is it is sprawling so it doesn’t protect itself. Consequently I had some decent die back…..but out of the grave it came back with a vengeance. Blooms galore (maximum bloom) and set tons of fruit. Ended up with about 20 full size fruit and had to learn when to pick at the right time. For the Tampa area this year ideally I would have started picking no earlier than the last week of July. Smallest fruit were 1 lb and largest was 29.5 ounces. I fertilize zero and spray nothing on the trees.

The flavor was fantastic. Fiberless flesh, super juicy, and the flavor was pure coconut especially by the skin. There was more subacid flavor by the seed. The ideal ripeness that I found was maybe the second or third day that you could smell the coconut at the stem. The flesh wrinkles a bit too. It isn’t insanely sweet, but the coconut flavor makes this thing a winner for me. I haven’t had Sugar Loaf, but man this tree earned its keep in my yard. Besides sprawling a bit doesn’t seem to be too vigorous.

Hope this helps. Not a lot of info on M4, but it is top notch for sure.

Bro, you’ve got a killer yard…great diversity of plantings and premium varieties. Thanks for sharing.

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Looks to me like the graft point is down low like you mentioned. The typical club foot looking thickness.

Dang man sorry to hear about the forecast. Lakeland throws me off because sometimes y’all are warmer than I expect and other times y’all randomly go 4-5 degrees below the forecast. Your property looks pretty stunning based on your videos. Your trees are becoming monsters man. I appreciate the GS seed offer! I’ll message you!

Hope everyone’s garden isn’t too affected or can at least recover. Seems like most places didn’t receive as severe of cold as expected. Obviously not the case everywhere. In y’all’s experience if cold kills lychee bloom can they bloom again like you see in mangoes? Seems like that may not the case for other fruits like stone fruit. I used to hear about late freezes ruining peach crops, etc. Thanks for the info and happy gardening y’all.

Yeah this is gonna suck. Been reveling in zone 10a winters, but it’s about to hit 9b real fast in the Tampa area. My in ground mangoes are too big to worry about covering. I’ve put heat lamps under them in the past, which actually bought me a few degrees and maybe the rising steam made a difference. We had a light frost (34 F) last weekend and the bloom seems ok, which blows my mind. Expecting this weekend to smoke the bloom and maybe some leaf/small limb loss? I don’t know. I built the greenhouses around the trees in the past and it’s too much effort for me. YOLO baby.

I checked out that site and my goodness those prices seem high. I haven’t bought from them before so I can’t judge him/her specifically, but there really seems to be lots of folks jacking the prices up for non-Floridians who don’t have easy access to these trees. I bought from Lara Farms recently and I was pleased with his 1 gal selection and prices were reasonable considering how everything is going up. He’s got 8 sapodilla varieties…not Butterscotch, but other excellent ones. Just saying, I feel badly for these folks who pay insane prices for average tropical trees.

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Yeah, chickens scratching can be counterproductive depending on your situation. Goats love woody growth so they would stress the trees for sure and would likely leave a lot of the grass untouched. Hair sheep or geese (believe it or not) could manage some pasture, but that would likely be extra work you wouldn’t want. At any rate, your property is looking fantastic. Man building up your own place is soooo addicting. I’m rooting for that green sapote too. I wanna see that thing fruit!