re: Louisiana Tropical Fruit Gardening - Experiences and Updates

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Trimmed up my Pickering and got it staked a bit, it has good structure, but the younger branches haven’t lignified enough to hold the canopy upright. In that process my lone mango came off barely touching it. Guess it was time! Small but wasn’t expecting much this year.

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Looks good. Plan is sound. It's all about building for now.

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DH pushing also, not as vigorous, I think it had some fungal issues early season, but looking better now.

Plan to push growth through this season then hopefully it gets to a good size.

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Also looking very good. Off to a great start.

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I know mangos don’t need much nitrogen, but should I add anything other than osmoocote? 15 gal pots. How long can I keep these going, kind of hoped another year, or is that optimistic?

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At this stage, osmocote alone is absolutely fine. The most beneficial thing you could do additionally right now would be foliar feeding. Mangos respond extremely well to it.

When you get to flowering, fruiting, harvesting, then your fertilizer regime will become more important. My general schedule looks like this:

Post-harvest (mid-summer): the one time I give extra nitrogen. You always prune immediately after the last mango comes off, then you want the N to build next year's fruiting branches. I use 8-2-12 granular slow release with micros and will give fish fertilizer at this time.

Fall: Stop fertilizing except for applying the first dose of langbeinite (slow release 0-0-22, also called K-Mag). This gets the tree ready to flower strongly when the cool weather arrives.

Winter: I usually do not have to feed at all during winter. Watering is also infrequent unless weather is hot. Flowering begins.

Spring: Flowering is in full effect. I give a maintenance dose of the 8-2-12 slow release. Not a lot, just a sprinkling to keep nutrients in the soil. We do not want to overstimulate with N. Once fruit begins to set I give another dose of K-Mag. No more N applications from this point forward until after harvest. I also apply gypsum to make sure the soil has plenty of calcium for proper fruit development.

Summer: Fruit are developing. Nothing except maybe more K-Mag if the fruit appear to be stalling. Water consistently during fruiting.

Year-round: foliar feeding. Do this every few weeks.

You've got at least another 2 years with those pots, maybe even 3. For right now I'd do exactly what you're doing just add a foliar feed. With easy varieties like Pickering you could also go total lazy mode and just do osmocote alone. But hell we're doing something pretty niche here. Don't see the sense in half assing it.

Such a fun process. Blows people's minds when they see a mango tree on your back porch.

maypop
I have tons, I can pot up a root (or ten) for you if you want. I had about 8 potted sprouts but I planted them all a few weeks ago

or if your neighbor is cool with it, feel around at the base and find a stem, then gently dig around it with a screwdriver until you unearth a root, then clip it off and clip off about 6” of the stem, pot it up and keep it watered then when you see new leaves, plant it

edit: here you go LOL

Thanks

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or if your neighbor is cool with it, feel around at the base and find a stem, then gently dig around it with a screwdriver until you unearth a root, then clip it off and clip off about 6” of the stem, pot it up and keep it watered then when you see new leaves, plant it

edit: here you go LOL

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This is what I plan on doing. He let me get after a bunch of Chinese parasol trees with a chainsaw so digging some maypops won't be an issue!

Busy day yesterday. I received scions from Marta at Really Good Plants on Friday. Every single one was excellent quality. I started rooting the following mulberry cuttings - black prince, chicken claw, tice, and maple leaf. About 2 months ago I rooted 12 red mulberry cuttings I collected from trees in my yard. I grafted all of those yesterday with DMOR9 and Australian green. Attempted 1 cleft, 1 veneer, 1 chip bud, and the rest were all T buds. I also stuck a few T buds on my older in-ground red mulberry trees. This morning I grafted a potted loquat seedling with argelino and big Jim white - 1 cleft and 2 veneer grafts. Last week I started rooting about 15 various fig cuttings. My rooting Tupperware is chock full of fig-pop method figs and mulberries now. Hopefully I’ll be posting successful pictures in the next several weeks so that we can document graft method/time of year success or failure rates.

You want between 3-4 main origin points from the trunk. Then tip every 12-18 inches of every branch thereafter.

I think I'm about to have to do what you did. My above the ring cecilove cut produced 2 branches. If I don't see new budding soon I'm sacrificing it all and starting over.



ETA: these plants don't think I would do it. This isn't 2020. Not my precious angels anymore. Work or die.

In other news, first ripe Pickering came off the tree today. It needs a few days on the counter.

Set 12 fruit. The first 2 were jelly seed. The last one was 25% jelly but the rest was the most amazing coconut bomb I've ever had. We'll see how the rest goes.

This one had internal breakdown too. I think this is heat injury. All the jelly parts are where the sun was hitting the skin and it's been mid-90s for the past couple of weeks. Should not be calcium related since I supplement.

May move the tree into the shade for the afternoons and see if that helps.





The normal parts of the mango were amazing. Super sweet, strong coconut flavor.

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This one had internal breakdown too.

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That’s disappointing. My Pickering have just started doing color break in the last week. With Pickering I really try to let them fully ripen on the tree. Like yours I’m not seeing as much red blush as I’ve seen in years past.

Nice result. Very healthy. What varieties of figs and loquats are you cloning?