The Tropical Fruit Forum

The yellow sand I was talking about is the prevalent type of sand being sold as fill from the upland scrub on the Central Ridge.  The primary areas that are currently being developed for new residential communities near me are Apopka, Minneola, south Winter Garden, and Groveland. I’ve seen many large sandhills excavated along the turnpike north of SR 50, 429 both north and south of SR 50. I just pull up to the excavation sites with my trailer and ask if I can buy a few yards. That type of sand is fairly comparable to the fill excavated from the coastal ridges where I used to live in Brevard County.

Mine is small as well, definitely low vigor. I got mine as a 1g from TAF in June of 2023 and I planted it in ground last August as a small 15 gallon, maybe 3.5 feet tall with 5 branches. It flowered really well last month and has lots of bb to pea sized fruit on it. Didn’t see any PM or anthracnose on the flowers. I’m still on the fence about letting it hold a fruit or two if all of them don’t drop.

I’ve only seen a few fruit in person @ TAF last summer and they were smaller fruit, but someone beat me out buying them, so no taste test.

Grotto from OHP and Cueva from Certis are the softest types of copper, and the REI is only 4 hours.

Andre—I am nearby you in North Orlando. What are your top 3 Indian cultivars of the ones you listed for central FL? Like you, I love the Indian mango flavor profiles, but want trees that will perform well in Orlando.

Most of my Indian cultivars are in the trial phase. Powdery mildew of the flowers is my main issue, so I’ll be evaluating all the potted trees this year and next before making decisions if and when I’ll plant them out or top work them into other trees. I’ve only seen minor amounts of PM this spring and sprayed some of my more PM susceptible trees with sulfur, like Phoenix. Many of my in ground trees are now big enough to hold reasonable sized crops… Zill 0-15, Lil Gem, and Phoenix are currently holding a lot of fruit. My Amrapali is a smaller tree but has a lot of bb sized fruit on it, and I never saw any PM on the flowers. My in ground M Vikarabad and my large 25 gallon potted MV flowered partially and are holding some bb sized fruit. Hoping they’ll retain a couple so I can verify their trueness. My sizable 25 gallon Kesar held a handful of fruit last year and the flowers again have PM this year, but have already set a nice amount of ball point pen tip sized fruit. So PM isn’t gonna be a factor with that cultivar. Of my potted collection, Pedda Rassam, Imam Passand, Arka Neelkiran, Buxton Spice, and USDA Himsagar have all flowered quite heavy for smaller trees and no PM on any of those cultivars flowers.

I’m planning to source Bombay and a couple others this spring. I’ll have a lot more info this summer on how all my Indian flavor class mangos do here in CFL.

DocTropical reach out via pm any time.

They pretty much grow everywhere as an understory tree in Virginia. I visit each August/September, and hike any trail networks that run close to any river or stream edges, that’s where you’ll find most wild pawpaws. It’s a total gorge fest!

Looks like a typo in my first post, guessing I rooted somewhere around 250k guavas over 6 years.

What I found with several hard to root species such as guavas and olives, you're rooting percentages go down substantially when the soil temps drop below 70 degrees F.  Its very common to only get 5-10 % take when the temps are below 70, but easily over 50% when the soil is kept 72-75. So I highly advise maintaining your root zone temps above 70 degrees F, as best you can.  Simple heat mats can help with this, if you're doing it at the hobby level to small nursery level. I can provide more info if anyone's doing it at professional levels. 

Cuttings were fully expanded single node green cuttings with the lower portion of the cutting being rigidly green to semi green. Leaves were typically reduced to one to two leaves per cutting and each leaf was cut in half.  Cuttings were then dipped in rooting hormones.  They were stuck in trays with media similar to ProMix or Sunshine Mix #s 1 and 4. These mixes have peat to perlite ratios of 60:40 to 80:20. Prior to sticking the cuttings, its a really good time for a hot water dip or pesticide dip to kill sucking/piercing insects, mites, larvae and eggs.  Cuttings were placed on mist beds, with the traditional 10 second mist durations with anywhere from 20 minute to 60 minute intervals depending on your prop area humidity, PAR measurements, and seasonal air temps.  Intervals decrease with higher temps, increased light levels and typically increases as the season changes from summer to winter. These adjustments can't be given but must be learned through multiple seasonal rotations in your area.

I've used domes with decent success, but when working with high tray counts, the daily/weekly chore of removing the domes for air exchanges, misting the leaves, and putting the domes back on can be labor intensive.     

I don’t like propagating guavas, but when I used to grow professionally for a couple large nurseries here in CFL, I had pretty good success at rooting cuttings. Just a ballpark but figuring I have rooted at least 50k guavas from cuttings. They aren’t easy, but I know the tricks for getting higher percentages.

I've used 100 and 50 gallon high volume sprayers, 20 liter Dramm cold foggers, portable Dosatrons, and numerous manual and electric backpack sprayers to apply pesticides when I managed greenhouses in Apopka. My preferred spray tools, while maintaining a 3-5 million plant inventory was the Dramm cold fogger and a portable Dosatron.  Small waterproof electric fans (aquarium fans?) were always put in the tanks to maintain agitation. 

This will be my first year putting out sulfur to control PM on my 1 acre mango orchard.  I'm planning on using a portable 3/4 inch inlet Dosatron and a hose sprayer. I couldn't imagine using a backpack sprayer even an electric one.

Of the Indian cultivars, I’ve got Amrapali, Mahmood Vikarabad, Imam Passand (aka Alampur Baneshan), Panchadara Kalasa, Arka Neelkiran, Dasheri, Prince, Pedda Rassam, and Kesar in my yard. Then there’s the FL selections that are of the Indian flavor classes, like Carrie, Buxton Spice, Angie and Beatrice. I’ve sourced most of them from Alex and Becky. Arka Neelkiran, Amrapali, Kesar, Beatrice, Carrie, and Arka N. are all starting to or pushing flowers here in Ocoee, FL. I’ve also got USDA Himsagar, and other than Beatrice, M-4, Pickering and Zill 40-26, it’s the most precocious fruiter. 

Andre

First time on the forum in quite a while.  All my in ground mango trees are now large enough to carry fruit, and have started flowering here in Ocoee (I'm very close to the SE corner of Lake Apopka).  I plan to start my preventative sulfur sprays to control PM, since its the only flower disease I've seen over the last few years.  Pretty much affects all 25 in ground cultivars, plus my 15g and 25g potted collection.

I can get sulfur pretty cheap through my Southern Ag account, just curious if there's a better sulfur product versus SA's line?
A quick search gave me Microthiol Disperss micronized wettable sulfur and Acoidal micronized wettable sulfur.  I'm only interested in 25+ pound bag sizes, so curious what you guys with/or access to large mango orchards are running? Cookie Monster, Har, Alex....

Andre @ Tropical Liners

I’m looking for Manzano banana and Dwarf Puerto Rican plantain sword suckers.

Sweet Tart is an upright grower and doesn’t require spraying at my house west of Orlando. Orange Sherbet and Fruit Punch are lower vigor growers for me. There are loads of low vigor mangos that will work for you.