re: Louisiana Tropical Fruit Gardening - Experiences and Updates

Same. It decomposes fast and contains tons of potassium.

Awesome. Dwarf Hawaiian is a little chlorotic but nothing a good fertilizer and foliar feed won't fix. Pickering looks great. From what I have observed so far Pickering is a very curious combination of both robust and small. It's just a strong arse tree, which usually means wild growth. But it stays small. Mine was dragged from Miami to Louisiana on 04/06/25 laying down in a truck bed, bare rooted, and repotted into a wildly different soil medium. It didn't drop any fruit and it's pushing new growth despite the repotting process happening on 04/15/25. Nine days. Didn't even blink.

Yeah in the fine print everglades tells you that the size of their plants includes the pot. So a 3 foot plant is a 2 foot plant in a pot. Everything I have ever received from them has been small but sometimes they are the only source for unique things. Plus mangos grow fast anyway compared to something like citrus.

ETA: at this size, you REALLY need to watch some videos about how to selectively prune young mangos. You need multiple scaffold branches. People instinctively prune them into a lollipop with a single origin of branches at the top of the trunk and it creates a very weak tree. Don't do this:



To be fair, that is a Valencia Pride and will grow upright and gigantic anyway but I use the picture to illustrate the principle. You don't want all the growth originating from a single point. Wiltz, correct me on any of this if I'm wrong.

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I’m officially an old man. This thread is exciting as hell.

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Yeah, so the next thing that happens is your wife catches you on your phone at 1AM in the study and you have to find a way to explain that you're using Google translate to decipher the Facebook posts of a bunch of Vietnamese people in Houston who grow atemoyas and sugar apples. And then she wishes you were just talking to another woman.

That video was straight fire. So much knowledge dropped. Soon I'm going to ask you about how many fruit I should let my Pickering hold. Will post pics. My own judgement cannot be trusted but I'm pretty sure I'm not gonna like the answer.

OK man, how many (if any) mangos should I let this Pickering hold? I have already removed 75% of the fruit with only 5 remaining. But I need this tree strong for a zone 9a winter. My instinct is 0-1 but I want to hear your opinion. This is a 15gal recently uppotted to 25gal.

Thanks man. I left 3. Hope I can get them to maturity. If I do I will spam this thread for days with pics.

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It will shoot out replacements in no time

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When you said in no time I figured you meant a couple of weeks. I trimmed off all but 3 undamaged leaves on Friday then went out of town until yesterday. Came home to a 1' shoot coming out of the top that wasn't there before.

Got my soil in today ..probably needed 4th bag ..58qt resin containers (lots of drain holes, on bricks now, will put on casters)..wife said no go by the pool with plain black pots lol. I also did some reading on how hot nursery pots get in summer time here. My backyard gets 12-14 hours of sun per day, so opted for a cream color. I amended with my own Gary mix for the little left I needed to add. Top dressed with some fox farms, gardentone, a sprinkle of azomite and one spoon of osmocote..plan to keep them in this spot for a couple
Of weeks to shade them from the harsh afternoon sun, while the plants settle in, I did take a fair bit of the organic material from the root ball they were growing in. Hope it works !

Here’s to a couple years of waiting lol

Looking good! You can and should go heavier on the osmocote. Gary's is basically sterile. No nutrients at all in the mix. All your fertilizer is going to come from that surface layer and whatever you choose to water with. Follow what the label says. One spoonful is not enough for that soil volume.

Lol so how heavy are those pots with the Gary's? Insane, right?