New to Mango Trees: Is this normal?

[pdang]

To start, I would just like to say that I am very new to growing trees. To give some background info, I am from SoCal, and the weather has been pretty normal (60-75F) I did a little research and decided to buy a 3 gal mango tree a Sweet Tart from Top Tropical. It arrived pretty quickly, and I unboxed it and potted it into a 3 gal container. Following directions, I put some pebbles on the bottom of the pot and added a bit of peat moss/perelite on top. I put the root ball in and I backfilled it with some more of the peat moss. I did not water it because the root ball was already dark black, and looked like it was already soaked. This is what it looked like after all had been done.



I did note and sent an email to TT about the top part of the plant turning black. They said it was completely normal and got dried out during transport. I followed the directions that were given and they said put the plant in a shaded area where it can get filtered light, so I put the plant underneath the patio.



After about 4 days, I looked at my mango tree, but this time all of it's leaves were droopy.



Another day passes by and then the leaves start curling up and a white substance starts appearing on the leaves. The leaves are becoming drier and curling up. I thought it was because I did not water it initially, so I did water it a little bit yesterday, but the condition of the plant remains in the same state.







I am afraid that my plant will die soon or lose a lot of its leaves. I am unsure what's causing this problem, and I am lost at what to do. It could be me overthinking the problem, and this is shipping stress, but I just don't want to waste the $$ I spent only to kill a tree 5 days after getting it.

-Paul

[demingcr]

Could easily be transplant shock from the roots being disturbed.

It's a little hard to tell from the angle, but:

1) it looks like the crown of the root ball is a bit exposed and planted a little high relative to the pot, leaving some feeder roots exposed
2) make sure you don't over-compact the soil when you plant in a pot. For newbies the tendancy can be to 'pack' the pot with soil but its actually counter productive. A loose blend is good.
3) Pure peat will be hard to water when it dries out as its hydrophobic. A high quality store bought mix will be fine, or better yet (if you're able) just plant it in the ground.

Mango tend to be very hardy plants. just make sure to water when dry, don't let it sit in water, and maybe take a look at the above bullets. It can be stressful on plants to ship and then be repotted particularly if the roots are disturbed, but it can recover rapidly afterwards.

[pdang]

I loosely packed the pot, I didn't pack it stiffly in, because I wanted the pot to have better water drainage.

I could plant it and I already have a hole dug, but I hesitated because I thought it would shock the plant more. As of now, what I have for a potting soil is to use:

mix of organic red cedar mulch (I couldn't find pine nuggets)
https://www.lowes.com/pd/Garden-Time-2-cu-ft-All-natural-Reddish-Color-Mulch/1000041647 
silica sand
https://www.lowes.com/pd/100-lbs-Silica-Sand/50037046
peat 
native soil

Should I go about and plant it? Or what are some things that I need to adjust. Thank you for the reply!

[Cookie Monster]

Looks good to me.

[pdang]

Sorry, just clarifying, but Jeff do you mean the tree looks fine and will recover? Or do you mean that it can be planted?

[Johnny Eat Fruit]

Your tree looks OK. Relax and put it in shade right now and let it recover. Do not plant it in the ground now.

I bought my Sweet Tart in 2015 like you and it did fine. I sold it a few years later after I had finished using it for grafting stock.

Johnny

[pdang]

Thanks, I will update on the condition on the next couple of days!

[lebmung]

The nursery didn't sanitizer the tree so good.
That black on the top it's a bacterial disease that will leat to die back. The tips were infected.
I also can see signs or antracnose.
Cut the black parts with bleached scissors and spray the tree as soon as possible.

[pdang]

Yeah, I emailed TT with a concern about the black tip, but I noticed the buds at the top were also black. They said it was "normal", which I thought was them just denying the fact that the tree had any problems. I was concerned about the white spots that were starting to appear on the leaves, so I did spray a weak mixture of copper fungicide on the leaves. Most if not all the leaves have black spots/damage/white spots on them. This is the most concerning part for me because the leaves are essential to the tree's growth. As of now, the conditions of all the leaves are very dry and crinkled. I am afraid that most of the leaves will end up falling off as most of the leaves are in a pretty damaged conditions.

[CA Hockey]

The black on the tree makes me very nervous. It's not so advanced where I would say you have to cut it, but I think if you doncut you would get rid of the black as well as produce a good point for branching. This is what the black ends up leading to. Whole branches will spontaneously shrivel and die and this can consume the entire tree. Sometimes the only clue is that the apical too of a branch starts to wilt, other times you will see whole segments of a branch are black even though distal ends are green and still growing. Don't be fooled. If you cut into the black the wood is brown and dead. The branch will dieback within 1-2 weeks and whatever the disease is spreads proximally. These are pictures of my biggest lemon zest and I just didn't catch it in time and so I'm having to lopnoff entire branches and probably still have to do more.

Seems to happen just at the end of winter, march-april.

[pdang]

Wow your Lemon Zest is looking good! I bought one from Champa about 2 weeks ago, and it's start to poke out new vegetation, but no where near to where yours is at.

Here are some more pictures from today, the other pictures I posted were 2 days old. Here it is, the leaves are pretty all scraggly by now.



The bigger issue that I've been noticing is the presence of the icy/white vein running down the middle of the leaves. It's starting to spread to each of the leaves one at a time. I cut off 3 leaves that were much worse than this fearing that it was a disease of some sort, but today I checked and I saw that other leaves were displaying the same symptoms:





Anybody have any clue what this is? Is this a disease?

[murahilin]

The nursery didn't sanitizer the tree so good.
That black on the top it's a bacterial disease that will leat to die back. The tips were infected.
I also can see signs or antracnose.
Cut the black parts with bleached scissors and spray the tree as soon as possible.

No, the black looks like sooty mold which is relatively harmless. It should not be cut back.

[pdang]

Anyone have any ideas on the white parts/spots that are spreading? I can't wipe it off with my fingers, and it seems to slowly appearing on the other leaves as well. It starts appearing from the tip of the leaves and gets wider as it spreads more towards the stem.

[murahilin]

Anyone have any ideas on the white parts/spots that are spreading? I can't wipe it off with my fingers, and it seems to slowly appearing on the other leaves as well. It starts appearing from the tip of the leaves and gets wider as it spreads more towards the stem.

Your leaves look like they are drying up. You may have damaged the roots or not watered it enough.

How often have you watered it since you have transplanted it?

Also, why did you leave so many roots exposed at the top when you transplanted it?

[pdang]

I have only watered it once since I've gotten it and I used probably less that half a gallon of water. I didn't mean to expose the roots like that, I think I may have packed the bottom too high, so the roots came out higher than expected. I didn't want to overfill the pot with soil, so I left the top of the part uncovered.

[murahilin]

I have only watered it once since I've gotten it and I used probably less that half a gallon of water. I didn't mean to expose the roots like that, I think I may have packed the bottom too high, so the roots came out higher than expected. I didn't want to overfill the pot with soil, so I left the top of the part uncovered.

I think it needs more soil and more water. Why would you only water it with a half gallon of water?

[pdang]

I just added more soil to it, I didn't water a lot because the root ball was very moist/damp when it arrived. I used one of the cheapo meters that measures (light, PH, and moisture) and it indicated that the soil was very moist. I wanted to wait until it got drier before I watered it because I didn't want to over-water it and kill it.

This was my first experience buying and having a tree shipped, so I ran into some newbie mistakes. I just tried following the planting instructions from TT.

[dross99_si]

It's good to leave the crown or root flare exposed when planting. You may have left a little too much exposed and possibly some of the roots died. That tree didn't look the greatest to begin with, but don't give up hope. I'd add a bit more potting mix and just water it when needed. Give it time and it should come back. I would not continue to cut off leaves.

[pdang]

Yep, I think this is going to be more of a patient game than anything. I watered it with some SuperThrive hoping that might help with the transplant shock. I know that's kind of throwing a dart in the dark, but fingers crossed!

[pdang]

Here’s a quick update, but not really any good news. Starting to lose a little hope in this little tree. Leaves are pale green and look like they are turning brown. Leaves still curled and dry to the touch. Lately, it’s been raining a lot in SoCal, so it hasn’t been getting much sunshine.

Superthrive seems to have no effect as far as I can tell. As of now, I’ve had the tree for almost 2 weeks, but still hoping for signs of a recovery.

[brian]

One of my two TopTropicals trees did exactly this.  It dried up and died shortly after arrival as if it was never watered.  The other did fine, no idea why.  Both sapotacae