DickTater

Got around to potting my new mangos and kari starfruit up yesterday.

Starfruit got a a full rootball wash, was much more established.

Mangos, not to my surprise had obviously just been recently upsized to the 3g pots. Plan was to leave 50% of rootball, but when I dumped it out I was left with a one gallon or smaller root mass. Kind of annoying to pay for dirt. The cecilove also dropped the new light yellow leaves it had just flushed due to shipping stress and rubbing in the box I imagine.

Anyways they’re in a good mix, good pots and in the shade to recover for a week or so!
50 gallons of mix!

Got a 45lb sack of pumice from pumice store.com that amounted to 10 gal of rock







Avocados doing fantastic
Stack them behind the guava and mangos for afternoon shade

They’re in a 3 gal pot, about 24” right now
Definitely just barely year old trees.

My lone Pickering. Finally cut into it after sitting a few days to ripen. Obviously something was going on with it. Seed pod also didn’t develop.

Flavor wise, very encouraging. The little bit of ripe in the center was great. I could definitely taste the coconut!
Looking forward to better years!

So when you’re talking about the cecilove and getting it to have good structure, it put out 2 shoots. You want 3-4 in opposing direction, would you just cut those new growth all the way back to growth whorl and hope it pushes again how you want it ?

If I cut mango mid stem, between the growth rings, will it push out from there new multi stems or is that only at growth rings?



Also, I have a Pickering budwood stick (just pruned, in fridge) available for free if anyone is nearby. Geismar

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.

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.
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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One thing that never gets brought up is how bad small pots can be for trees. They get very hot, very cold, and very dry FAST. Small pots are at the whims of nature while larger pots maintain things more evenly. Obviously the ground is the ideal situation but that's not what we're doing here. Large pots also allow you to grow large canopies which will eventually shade their own pot.

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This is something I honestly haven’t thought about. I think that matters so much more for our climate. We have large temp swings daily, and the larger pots allow that air temp swing to be mitigated more.


Any particular good shape for a starfruit, mine has a very strong central leader with laterals spaced well..do you tip prune it to encourage more branching ?

Okay been doing some digging.
Utopia trees out of California is getting a big restock of mango on Sunday. They ship. I’ve previously bought from them (Reed avocado) very nice tree and actually solid soil grow mix.
Not sure what sizes in what varieties, but from their online shop they have over 50. They will ship 7g.

So think I’m going to wait and see what they offer then.

I think im going cecilove over cogshal or little gem, as it seems the flavor profile is squarely different than my 2 other varieties.

Laff, online reviews seem to say it’s even slower growing than any other dwarf variety, what’s been you’re experience, big difference in potted vs in ground?

You got me wanting a Cecilove now. Where did you get the 3, you have. I know one was rough shape to start. But it seems to have a good flavor profile as well as disease resistance for our climate and dwarf habit ..

So I ended up ordering and (luckily) getting a Shirinui (aka Sumo Orange) budwood stick from the CCCP.

Ordered only 3 buds, but they sent a whole stick! So planning to chip bud a few to my other trees, Cara Cara, Owari, and also plan to cleft graft a section to my golden nugget mandarin. Hoping redundancy will lead to some success.

I’ve been playing around with chip buds and got a Cara Cara bud to take to my lime tree lol. Everything I’ve read is just about practice more than anything.

I lost the 2 remaining Reed avocados that were on my tree last week while I was gone. They were marble sized, but I guess tree wasn’t happy and aborted them. Another year with no fruit :( oh well. Potted avocado trees look beautiful, so maybe that’s the way I go instead of dealing with the in ground plants.

I did end up at a Thai market in Ft Walton and tried some mangos they had, NDM and other yellow large, non names from Mexico. I had never had a mango that wasn’t fibrous. Wow. Custard and sweet with citrus undertone! Happy to find some of those!

Looks like many have this unique intruder lol.
I guess need to email LSU and see if they have any input.

When you say thin guava to one per branch..you mean one to each branch off of a lateral scaffold branch?
I’m assuming bc I only have about 5-6 major scaffolds.

Mine is definitely loaded down with fruitlets. Don’t want so-so fruit.