The Tropical Fruit Forum

I was just at a nursery for work and we were talking about challenges with antracnose on tree species. The nurseryman there started describing how he has been using agrifos ( derived from phosphoric acid) and pentra-bark as a systemic fungicide on trees. The overspray is harmless and essentially a fertilizer and boosts the trees immune response in the soil.

Penta-bark is an interesting additive that appears to let whatever solutions it is in pass the bark barrier of the tree through the lenticels, and absorb into the tree. His thought and research is that then the fungicide gets into the tree and circulated throughout to combat the diseases from the inside out, as well as from the foliage application.

He says he has seen great results and has started using it as a preventative on his high value trees (and sells trees up to $20,000).

I picked up this combo to spray my sycamore with anthracnose but looked at the label for agrifos and saw they lost treating mangos




Just wanted to share

Hi all,

I am in need of 6 +/- mango scions for my cocktail tree here in SoCal. I was planning on purchasing from tropical acres because of the selection and I got seedlings from them, but sadly they are not offering scions right now.

I was hoping to get any of the following, Super Julie, ST Maui, Val-Carrie, Venus, Peach Cobbler, imam passand, Orange Essence, O-15

If anyone in SoCal or who can ship to CA that would be awesome.

If you have a variety I didn’t list that you have scions of and they perform well in CA I am open to that as well.

Thank you very much

Hi all, today I broke up concrete adjacent to my home as it was not really functional, and I would prefer less concrete and more trees.

This results in a planter bed 3.5' wide and 17' long (I will remove the the rest once gas company verifies line). The area is on the north east side of my home so trees recieve morning sun and afternoon shade in summer, until they grow into the sun. I think this will work well based on mango in trees around here (and that mango trees I planted in the full inland sun require shade cloth to grow well.)

I have seen several very mature mango trees planted right next to homes and walls with no structural damage and feel comfortable planting this close to my raised foundation, is this something I should second guess?

Plants are spaced 8' on center  in photo, from left to right 7' tall manilla seedling, 4' tall grafted Mallika, 5' tall multi branch espada seedling. Does this seem appropriate for socal?

Soil is clay/sand and will remain so with top few inches removed from the concrete replaced with amended soil, and then several inches of mulch to bring level with driveway. Iron/ sulfur and gypsum will be showed to soak in over our (hopefully) rainy season.

Anything I am overlooking? Thanks

Hey all.

I am located in Riverside And am growing some Mango trees. I have a 6' tall Valencia Pride and a 9 foot tall Criollo seedling. Criollo seems to be a Mexican catch all for local mangos grown from seed and I dug it up from a friends house that was moving last fall and transplanted it into my yard. I was a little nervous because I didn't think I got enough of the root ball for it to be successful and it was moving from my friends sand yard ( a breeze to dig in) to my Clay yard. It has survived the winter un protected and got a bit scorched during the heat wave. In the past few weeks I have done a lot of reading and found my trees really need a lot more watering than I was providing (and I was providing water too inconsistently) I have set up a drip irrigation and timer and have automated the watering and ever since both my trees (and all my other fruit trees) have been putting on new growth and looking good. MY Valencia Pride had dropped all fruit from previous flowering, but luckily we had a cold spell and it flowered again and she appears to be holding fruit and putting on vegetative growth with the new watering schedule.

I was going to wait and graft the seedling next year, but with all the new growth I was thinking I would jump on it now. Is this advisable or should I wait a year?

Secondly, do any of you socal (Ie Local would be great) forum members have trees I could get some scions from I have no problems paying. I don't want to order from Florida.

Thirdly, how should I approach this, see the attached image and you can see this tree has an odd structure.

I was thinking I would just graft to the limbs available and then cut back the others after grafts have established themselves. Would I be better grafting lower then cutting off C and letting A and B grow out. It's weird because it's not the same structure I've seen in videos about top working.

Thanks a lot

Hi All,

I am new to the forum but have read posts over the years. I have seriously took the plunge into Mango trees a bit over a year ago. I live In Riverside, CA and am having issues with my trees I hope you all can help with. I believe my Mangoes are suffering from powdery mildew and would like to make sure that I have correctly diagnosed this so I am not wasting my time fighting a condition that does not exist.

Here are photos of what I believe is the powdery mildew.

This is the damage caused to my new growth : https://drive.google.com/file/d/13-WeffDBd5eHRe4n83fv6ldIrjssXxOC/view?usp=sharing

What I believe is Powdery Mildew on old growth leaves: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zvwvK6xyRQ-Wio5C9-ZfGLSeu7WDJdy2/view?usp=sharing

Powdery Mildew on branches and Leaf bases, located on ends of branches : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1o4N6YNa2tMkZDbDpkZ78dLCfLcGlAZED/view?usp=sharing

Magnified View of branches: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1277N-GgwyQSwXwNj2ZMlXYOYZNNDteiI/view?usp=sharing

What appears to be Powdery Mildew Spore: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sCiH6TZzREN93wpmctA4qBKVEl4wKOZ3/view?usp=sharing

Actions taken:

For one week I sprayed with neem oil every other day later applications included sodium bicarbonate

After no effect I sprayed with liquicop (a Copper fungicide)

1 week later still present so I Hosed off trees to remove some off neem oil then applied liquicop again next morning (4tsp per gallon mixed with wetting agent and sprayed thoroughly till run off) a bit more than a week later and I am dealing with the issues as shown in the photos above.

Is this Powdery Mildew? My trees are about to push out more growth and I don't want to lose it as well.

My next course of planned action is picking up some wettable sulfur fungicide and praying that tomorrow morning (It has been 3 weeks since I sprayed neem oil and I did rinse trees off so hopefully no phyto toxic interactions.)

Is this the proper treatment? Nurseries around here don't have much experience with mangoes. Nursery owner has never had to deal with Powdery mildew on his trees and my professor who called it out as PM told me to use copper which has not worked.

Thank you very much