Fairchild or Honey Kiss?

[sunworshiper]

I have had some good success topworking my Angie mango to a variety I like better (Maha Chanok) and have improved my grafting skills (see http://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=16712.0 for the thread about that tree).

Next up, I'm going to topwork the Cogshall I planted. How come? I've had trouble getting it to set consistently, and when it does, the fruit are hard to ripen properly (jelly seed, anthracnose etc). Thanks to some great tips from forum members here, I modified my pruning technique, changed my fertilizing strategy, and picked them green and let them ripen on the counter. All of these things produced a good fruit set this year that were greatly improved. But even so, they were still only acceptable, not excellent. They were great smoothy mangos, but still ripen too unevenly to make them great for eating out of hand. The trouble is that the nose and interior near the seed ripens much faster than the stem end. So it is impossible for me to get one fruit to be ripe all at once. Either the nose is overripe and the stem end is perfect, or the nose is perfect and the stem end is underripe. The other factor is that the tree is hard to keep dwarfed. I'm in 9b and need to frost protect, so I am ruthless about maintaining the size of my trees. Here is a picture after pruning last week, when I harvested the last of the fruits:



It is 6' tall after pruning. So for those of you considering a Cogshall, it can be maintained small. Forgot to take a before picture, but I took off approximately 6' of height, taking out large uprights, with thinning cuts removing them where they connect to the main trunk. But it is much easier to control a tree that grows 2-3' a year not 6'! But if I could get the fruit to ripen better, this is in the acceptable range for pruning to stay small.

But based on the ripening issues, I'm going to topwork. I'm considering either Fairchild or Honey Kiss as the new variety. Which would you choose and why?

[CapeCoralGuy]

Why not try to top work both varieties? They both are really good mangos.

[Vernmented]

Fairchild is delicious. I had a Honey Kiss last year that was ok but it was past it's prime. It is supposed to be really late so that is a big plus. Are you looking for a low vigor cultivar?

[bsbullie]

Fairchild is delicious. I had a Honey Kiss last year that was ok but it was past it's prime. It is supposed to be really late so that is a big plus. Are you looking for a low vigor cultivar?

Both are lower vigor and IMO, I tend to favor the taste of Fairchild.   A properly picked and ripened Honey Kiss is good and yes, tbey are late seasom but by that time of year, I am basically mangoed out and while I could eat a few of perfect  prime picked HK, I wouldn't want a tree of them or even a half tree.

[Squam256]

Fairchild is better imo.

[sunworshiper]

Thanks for the great input!

Fairchild is delicious. I had a Honey Kiss last year that was ok but it was past it's prime. It is supposed to be really late so that is a big plus. Are you looking for a low vigor cultivar?

Yes, I'm seeking trees with good flavor that can be maintained productive at around 6', since I am zone pushing a bit and have to cover them most winters. That reduces the choices considerably. I am looking for varieties that ripen consistently, without being fiddly to get to ripen properly. Do these two varieties tend to ripen all fruit at once, or a few at a time? I like eating them fresh best, so having them ripen a few at a time rather than all at once is better for me. I've tried to select varieties so that they spread out over the season. I have a Manilita (ripens for me in June), Pickering (ripens for me in August) and Maha Chanok (not yet fruited). I know Honey Kiss is very late. When does Fairchild tend to ripen for folks, say in comparison to before/after/same time as Pickering? 

Both are lower vigor and IMO, I tend to favor the taste of Fairchild.   A properly picked and ripened Honey Kiss is good and yes, tbey are late seasom but by that time of year, I am basically mangoed out and while I could eat a few of perfect  prime picked HK, I wouldn't want a tree of them or even a half tree.

Mangoed out? Is that possible? Small trees also mean smaller yield, so thus far too many mangos hasn't been a problem. Extending the mango season out into September is tempting. But point taken, once all my trees are fruiting at full capacity, perhaps I may one day be mangoed out by August=)

Why not try to top work both varieties? They both are really good mangos.

I hadn't been considering a multi-variety tree, but maybe I should. Would these two varieties play nicely together on the same tree? Is there any significant disadvantage to having more than one variety on the same tree?

[Vernmented]

Cotton Candy is supposed to be excellent and less vigorous. I haven't tasted the fruit myself but I'm sure it's great. All of the cotton candy trees I have seen have had decent sized internodes so I am interested to see the growth rate on these things in ground.

If you can graft you could just put whatever low vigor varieties together. I am planning on putting Honey Kiss, Cotton Candy, Pickering and Amrapali on the same tree. I wonder how Fairchild would do on there instead of Pickering. My friends tree is huge but he doesn't prune much so that doesn't mean anything.

The main struggle is keeping the cultivars balanced with each other. I would just go for it with whatever similar vigor cultivars you want. I love pruning.

[Jose Spain]

For compact CV, this post by @starch gathering descriptions of all varieties by forum members was really useful to me:

Honey Kiss: http://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=17443.msg221132#msg221132

Fairchild: http://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=17443.msg221130#msg221130

The whole list: http://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=17443.msg220341#msg220341

Regarding cocktail trees, here I've learnt that varieties must have similar growing profiles and similar harvesting seasons, the former in order to avoid one CV growing over the rest, the last to avoid the tree to die because of being all the season producing and ripening fruits, too much effort for one single tree and not time to accumulate reserves. Obviously this is not maths and surely there is a point of equilibrium between all the variables that we just find with the time and the experience.

[sunworshiper]

I've definitely been perusing the compact mango listing - thanks so much to @starch for putting that together!

Jose, good tip on matching not only vigor but ripening season in a cocktail tree. Seems to me that Honey Kiss and Fairchild might not work well together then since their fruiting season is so different, over time exhausting the tree.

Vernmented - That will be quite the cocktail tree! How large will the overall tree be? Seems hard to keep a small tree that has enough scaffolds to support that many varieties.

Thanks for all the great input! I think I'm leaning toward Fairchild. It is too late this year to do the topworking, I'll be doing it in the spring, so I have all winter to waver back and forth on my choice - lol!

[CA Hockey]

I don't have any experience successfully multigrafting mangoes or anything other than stonefruit but from what I understand with stone fruit it is conveneient and encouraged to graft varieties that ripen at different times so that you can enjoy the different fruits over an extended harvest period (see videos on multigrafting and home orchards at davewilson.com). I don't know if this same strategy would apply to mangoes but one could argue that doing so allows the tree to spend less energy at any given time during the fruiting season but over an extended fruiting season. The net energy expenditure would be the same. Again, not sure if this applies to mangoes or not but I haven't heard people put the same argument for other energy intensive crops like avocados.

What I have seen is vigorous branches take over the tree and sometimes causing dieback of weaker or less vigorous grafts, so you would have to prune to balance the growth of each variety.

K