The Tropical Fruit Forum

If the scaffold branches are low enough, I would keep the scaffolds and top work them. If you need to bring down the height of the tree, I would stump the tree and bark graft in Spring. If the bark grafts fail, then I would let a few selected water sprouts grow out and graft them.

By bark grafting immediately, you could save several months of waiting for the water sprouts to form and grow thick enough to graft over. If you do wait for the water sprouts to grow out, I would recommend bud grafting the sprouts as opposed to Z, cleft or other types of grafts. The bud grafts are easy, give you a better union, you use less scion material and you can orient the bud wherever you want your future branches to grow.

I’ve top worked many large mango trees in SoCal and I’ve learned that it’s best to keep as much of the scaffold branches as possible, as long as the branches are low enough and are in healthy condition.

If you do attempt to bark graft in Spring, make sure you add a wick to drain the excess moisture and make sure you cut back on watering if you head back or hat rack the top of the tree. Drowning of grafts was my biggest challenge when I first started top working larger mango trees.

Simon

These buds may be blooms as well.




Instead of individual buds, these buds look more like a cluster or rosette of buds.

Simon

Based on my experience I would Not recommend growing the Pineapple Pleasure mango tree in SoCal. I planted one in the ground in 2022 from a #15 pot and it grew poorly this year and is highly suspectable to powdery mildew. All of my other mango trees except for Lemon Zest did not have this issue. After doing some additional research I removed the Pineapple Pleasure and planted a Parfianka pomegranate tree Instead.

There are too many other mango trees that are far more vigorous and much more disease resistant than PP.  Seacrest, Peach Cobbler, Guava, Orange Essence, Val-Carrie and Fruit Punch are all doing well at my location and don’t have the problems of PP or LZ.

Johnny

Hey Johnny,

I have horrible Powdery Mildew at my place but my Pineapple Pleasure grows fine and fruits fine for me. Last year, I had a bumper crop so this year, I only got a few fruit. The fruit are large and taste excellent. To me, they taste like a giant PinaColada. The Pineapple Pleasure nubbins are smaller, more round and are sugar bombs.

Hey Brad, I’m glad your mangos are getting established and starting to produce. I remember how difficult it was for you to get them into the ground and to prop them Josh’s they were young. Now that they are established, they should fruit well for you. Our cold weather which is horrible for young trees because it induces early blooms is actually a benefit if your trees are large and established.

Simon

Congratulations, that fruit needs more time. I’d wait for the green color to turn more yellowish. I also like to use the technique where you gently Palm the fruit and if it falls off, it should ripen properly on the counter.

Simon

Hey everyone, please post here if/when you notice blooms on your plants. Last year, I had my female blooms open up around the end of January for An Hai and Dongkui. I’m trying to trend this data so that we can match male pollinators with female blooms.

Your location and variety is important information as well. Areas with higher heat units and a higher daily light integral will likely get earlier fruit and the cooler areas with lower DLI’s will probably give us the later harvests but I would like to keep track of these data points.

Since many of our male trees are seedlings, they may have a wide range of bloom times. I would love to track when the buds first start forming, when they open their blooms and how long the bloom period is. Same goes for the female trees.

The regular vegetative buds look more pointed and the flower buds are more oval and have pine cone like bracts that look like mini hops buds. See page 15 of this thread for a pic of female buds from last year.

If everyone tracks their data here, we can trend the data to help everyone grow and fertilize our trees more efficiently and also potentially increase our yields by having the right combination of male and female varieties for best cross pollination and potentially an extended harvest season by planting/grafting early and late season male/female combinations. Thanks in advance!

Simon

Those two seedlings look pretty happy. If you can get them to flush once or twice, you’ll probably be out of the woods.

Simon

Here’s an update of the Summer growth on my Yangmei. I grafted these trees onto M. Rubra, Cerifera and Californica. All the rootstocks were grown in the USA.

















Simon

If you don’t see a graft line, it is probably a seedling. You can take air layers from Yangmei but it can take a while to form roots. You may also consider growing out some M. Californica or Cerifera rootstocks and then grafting some branches onto them if you want to propagate more male trees.

Simon

I also agree those do not look like Orange Sherbet. Sometimes the mangos grown in California look differently than those grown in Florida due to incomplete pollination which causes atrophied seeds which then can alter the shape of the fruit. The fruit formed by the incomplete pollination is often referred to as nubbins and one of the characteristics is that it is generally shorter and more rounded in shape. The seed is normally super thin and has either no embryo or a very small embryo. These fruit are often much smaller and have a very high Brix, when grown in SoCal.

That still doesn’t look like an OS to me, however. It does resemble Sweet Tart. If you post a picture of the fruit and the seed opened up, we may be able to give you a better guess. Nubbin ST usually have very prominent lenticils and the fruit frequently crack so rarely make it to full maturity. Normally pollinated ST usually have a pretty large seed with multiple embryos inside. OS rarely get pollinated in my area because of it being susceptible to fungal diseases so even though it is also Polyembryonic, it has fewer embryos and a smaller seed.

Simon

Thanks for the information Kaz, I was wondering about the name Betty because that is also the name of Leo Manuel’s wife.

Here is a picture of the White Algier





 
Simon

The Bruster lychee fruit I recieved from Kaz near Fullerton about a week a go were delicious and very juicy. About 30-40% of the fruit had a chicken seed or a very small seed. 40-45% of the fruit had the standard large seed. The remainder were somewhere inbetween with a medium seed.

I also noticed the smaller the fruit size was the more likely the chicken tongue was present. The smaller fruit were better with more flesh.

My three yeard old Brewster tree is flushing now so looking foward to more fruit in a few years. Lychee trees love water so I water mine frequently.

Johnny

Johnny, that’s great to hear that Kaz gets a high percentage of chicken tongue seeds on his Brewster, that is not normal for Brewsters. For anyone growing Lychee trees, I thick mulch layer around the drip line of the tree will significantly increase the health of the tree. Lychees also love Iron.

Simon

Hey Kaz,

I got my NV1 from the original source when it came out. Send me a PM and I can send you a cutting this Winter or in early Spring. If you ever stop by San Diego, you can hit me up and get a fresh cutting as well.

There are lots of great tasting figs out there but beware that many figs that taste super awesome are only mediocre when not caprified. Although I have the fig wasp in my area, I ended up keeping only the varieties that are sweet and taste consistently good to excellent when Not caprified.

This is an important consideration especially with the fact that the BFF has been spreading around California and bagging is one of the best ways to protect your fruit from BFF, fruit flies and fig wasps that carry fungal spores.

Not sure if other fig growers have noticed but about half my caprified figs get infected with a fungus that ruins the fruit. I spoke with several other friends that noticed the same thing. Bagging the fruit or the entire tree, if small, is the only way I can ensure top quality fruit.

Without bagging, fruit flies lay eggs in the fruit and it is nasty when you open a fruit full of maggots. Because bagging is becoming the way of life for fig lovers in San Diego, I highly recommend planting varieties that taste great without caprification.

For more detailed (Brix, weight, flavor) information regarding sweetest and best tasting figs, check out this thread.

https://www.ourfigs.com/forum/figs-home/972877-sweetest-fig-varieties/page6

Simon

Anyone have updates on their figs for 2023 in SoCal?

My wild seedling find, called Betty#1 is doing well after I grafted it on my potted trees. I'm getting some fruits for the first time this year, it is very good tasting. I did measure the brix =28, reminds me of fig newton tastes. I will taste a few more next week so I will try to see what other flavors it has. I plan to make more smaller trees of Betty#1 for myself since it tastes so good. Maybe I will sell it on Figbid for $200. Once I taste the Angelito fruit I can see if it ranks in the top 10 here.

Anyone tastes any of the following, please comment on their taste:
- Angelito
- Boysenberry Blush
- Cessac
- Figoin
- NV1
- Exquisito
- NSDC
- Thermalito
- Jamal Al Asfar
- White Madeira #1
- Black Manzanita
- Meteorito

I only tasted the Cessac, Exquisito so far on this list. Need to reduce the number of fig varieties in my yard.

I’ve tasted all of those except for Angelito.

I like sweet figs and my favorites out of that bunch is
Cessac
NV1
NSDC
White Madiera #1
Black Manzanita

Cessac actually gets to a decent size, not huge but a decent size fig and it is consistently delicious and sweet with or without caprification. My issue with Cessac and many other figs that grow in tight clusters of fruit is that it is extremely difficult to bag the fruit.

NV1 is also consistently sweet and top tier.

Black Manzanita stands out because of the dark interior that sometimes gets a black or purplish color. Caprified Black Manzanitas gets huge. I got one that was as big as a large Golden Rainbow.

White Algier, Sicilian 33, Cosme Manyo and Violet de Solliies are also top quality figs.

Simon