Mango Graft Successes/Failures (2 months later)

[Viraldonutz]

Exactly two months ago, I ordered 24 scions from JF, and I tried my very first graft onto a bunch of rootstocks that I had bought earlier for grafting.

I thought it'd be fun to check back and report my successes and failures in a thread here.

A few notes -- two weeks after grafting all 24 scions, I had to leave town for almost a month.  During my absence, I set them up with an automated dripline, and set them out in full sun, but underneath a homemade greenhouse I threw together using some scrap wood and painters-grade plastic floor covering.  I set the covering up on blocks so there was a 10" opening at the bottom to allow air to flow freely, but still capture some heat and moisture while protecting from the sun.  I seemed to work great.

My biggest problem was that when I returned home to check on them, all of them had grown multiple new shoots out of the rootstock material, while pushing very little from the grafted material.  So exactly one month ago, I cut back all the new non-scion growth, and I've been checking for new non-scion growth every couple days and cutting it back before it grows.  I'm sure that if I hadn't wasted all that energy on new non-scion growth, I'd be doing even better right now.

Anyways, on to the results.  I grafted:

2 Coconut Cream scions - 2 successes - 1" growth on one, and 7" growth on the other.
2 Coconut Cream scions - 1 success - 1" growth, and no growth yet, but still alive
2 Coconut Cream scions - 0 successes - both no growth yet, but still alive

2 Lemon Zest scions - 1 success, 1 failure (dead) - the live scion has 2 small pushes of less than an inch
2 Lemon Zest scions - 1 success, 1 failure (dying/barely green) - the live scion has a 4" growth

2 CAC/COC scions - 1 success, 1 failure (dead) - the live scion has a small push of less than an inch
2 CAC/COC scions - 2 successes - biggest grower of them all - one scion has pushes of 8" and 10", the other has 5" and 6"!


2 Manohar scions - 2 successes - 2" and 5"

2 Parson scions - 1 success, 1 failure (dead) - the live scion has growth that's 15" long!


3 Fruit Punch scions - 1 success, 1 failure (dead) - the live scion has growth of 5" and 4" plus two more buds.  There's also one with no growth yet, but it's still alive.

3 Sunrise scions - 1 success - 2" plus two scions that have no growth yet, but are still alive.


All-in-all, that makes 13 successes, 5 failures, and 6 "no-growth-yet-but-still-green" -- I'm ecstatic with this result, given it's my first time grafting anything!

Thanks again, JF, for the good quality budwood!

[JF]

Hi Jake
Great new growth and outstanding job! I’ll have another mango scion sale with my annona scion sale in 3 weeks. Thanks.
Frank

[Viraldonutz]

After another 2 weeks, I've trimmed off all the rootstock leaves from 7 of my 11 trees, exactly one of each of the seven cultivars!

I'm still sheltering and watching the two CC trees, as well as one LZ and one CAC.  They have growth, but it's just really slow for whatever reason.

Also, I ended up cutting off one of the parallel trunk/branches of the CAC in the picture I posted above, despite a super healthy scion take -- it pained me to do so, but I figured it's better for the long-term health and shape of the tree.  Now it's just a single trunk with a single scion grafted on.