I’m planning to make my first attempt at mango grafting this year, and couldn’t find a thread on here specific to mangoes.
I know some of you have mangoes (either in greenhouses or in suitable climates), so I just figured I’d ask a few questions and hopefully we can end up with a thread that will help other people looking to succeed in their first mango grafts.
Questions:
Are there particular types of grafts that work better (or worse) with mangoes? (cleft vs W/T vs T-budding vs bark grafts vs something else)
Is it better to graft onto small seedlings or should you wait until they are larger? How small is too small?
Should budwood be completely dormant, or should the buds be starting to emerge somewhat? (online how-to guides disagree on this point)
Is there a time of year that works best in particular climates? If so, would this matter in a greenhouse setting?
How long can mango scions be stored, and what’s the best method of storage?
There are some conflicting videos on YouTube on some of these questions, and most of the top results in Google look like AI-generated SEO sludge of questionable accuracy, so I would prefer personal experience to online references, but of course share any apparently reputable resources.
For example, this how-to guide from the World Agroforestry Centre seems pretty trustworthy, though it was made primarily for the growing conditions in Kenya: mango-grafting-manual.pdf (4.2 MB)
Based on that guide, cleft grafts using scions collected at “tight bud stage” is their recommended method, so that is probably what I will try unless someone recommends something else.
To give a little context to this question, I’m wondering if I can graft onto this 7-month seedling that is extra small because it’s spent most of its life in a cold winter greenhouse:
The small seedling looks too small. The bigger one would be better but to match scion size you might have to graft high.
The scions I got last summer were about pencil size. I grafted onto similar sized rootstock wood and they all failed. I’m not sure what went wrong but I’ll try again this summer. using the cleft graft covered in your link.
I haven’t tried to graft mangos before, but I have read over on the Tropical Fruit Forum that in cooler climates, mangos will tend towards reproductive growth rather than vegetative. This is what I have seen in my own experience as well: I planted a ‘Mallika’ mango at my parents’ in coastal Southern California over 10 years ago, and it’s now just approaching 5 feet tall. Flowers profusely every spring though.
The way some people have been getting around this is to plant a ‘Manila’ seedling and topwork the tree after several years of growth. The rationale being that as a seedling, the rootstock is too immature for cool temperatures to trigger flowering and will grow instead. Once it’s topworked, there are enough stored carbohydrates and a large root system to enable the scions to push a lot of growth.
I don’t know what the temperature range in your greenhouse is, but I would definitely wait to graft your smaller seedling and maybe the older one as well.
Yes, I posted a similar question on that forum and that was the main response I got there.
In my mind, slower growth is almost a benefit in a greenhouse, though, right? I’ll remove flowers if they form, but I want this tree to fit inside a greenhouse for as long as possible, and it can never get taller than 8 feet or so because then it’ll need to be pruned back. If you remove flower panicles, does a mango not switch to vegetative growth in the next flush like most other trees do? Will it just keep trying to flower over and over?
As far as temperatures, it gets plenty warm in the greenhouse in summer, but it’s very cool in winter and I’m sure a grafted tree would flower in the spring as a result. Here’s the most recent year of greenhouse temperatures (ending today), which is pretty typical:
I think it’s partially cultivar dependent. I used to have a Kent that would pretty much only make inflorescence after inflorescence and never grew more than 6 inches in the time I had it. Mallika seems to flush normally after flowering, but until recently it seemed like it didn’t have enough energy left over to elongate the new shoots much, let alone hold fruit.
I agree that slower growth isn’t as problematic in a greenhouse. The main issue is that young trees will spend a little too much energy flowering instead of building good limb structure. An inflorescence on a 2 foot tree is energy that could have gone into producing more leaves. My Mallika is just now finally starting to come into balance and be able to mature fruit.
Your temperatures look pretty good actually. Definitely warmer than coastal California. I think it’s the lack of daytime warmth that really hampers growth.
That’s what they, people in CA with long cool winters, claim. Your GH is very cool. In FL they hope for a week with lows below 60F to trigger flowering. Your GH is that cold 24/7/365. And your seedlings aren’t growing much. I’d pay attention to what they are saying.
I agree, those are likely too small. I’ve grafted small seedlings/scions for many things but the issue I had last year with mangoes was that I couldn’t find scions small enough. Like @fruitnut, mine were at least pencil size.
Cleft graft seems to do fairly well although my issue last year was not shading the grafts. The Texas sun really cooked the trees and I wasn’t successful and even lost quite a few trees. I have some rootstocks that are a bit larger now so hoping to have better success this year and also plan to cover with a 50% shade cloth. I’ve also got newer seedlings so maybe some will have sized up enough this spring to graft later in the summer. Looks like we’ll finally be getting some sustained warmer weather so maybe I’ll get them to thicken up enough with a few months of good growth.
There is a grower in South Florida with a youtube channel where she has quite a few videos on grafting mangoes which may be helpful: https://www.youtube.com/@TrulyTropical
I don’t know if I’d agree. Lows are below 60F nearly all year long. My greenhouse will be much warmer day and night all year long. And it will still be cooler than mango areas of FL.
Sarasota is roughly low 80s and low 60s this time of year. That’s August Sept here and July in Seattle area.
Still new to growing mango but one thing I’ve heard is that it’s better to remove most of the panicle but leave just a small amount. Apparently, if you remove all of the panicle, the tree might try to flower again. Leaving just a little is supposed to suppress additional flowering.
I was under the impression that warm temps during the day help offset cool night temps, but I could be wrong. In SoCal, the mangos a few miles inland definitely do better than on the immediate coast.
many cultivars will bear just once a year(even in the tropics where it is warm year round), while other varieties will try to produce two crops a year, the so-called everbearing mangos. One-a-year bearers can be induced to bear fruits within same year by foliar spraying with potassium nitrate, but that is another story( trees may “respond” with a bumper crop–then die) Anyway, panicles are often preceded by several internodes of leafy growth. If growing in sub-tropical/borderlne temperate conditions, weather patterns(which include rainfall) will affect inclination to flower and may just have vegetative growth.
Full sun is a must with mangos to encourage fruiting/minimize fruit-drop
I think I’ve settled on grafting onto my smaller potted tree later this year, and keeping it in a larger container in the greenhouse to see if it’ll ever get big enough to warrant planting in the ground in there, or whether it’ll enter a flowering death spiral as some have warned. That seedling has just started to bud out:
I’ll allow the larger already in-ground seedling to continue growing ungrafted, and wait until it flowers and fruits on its own to decide whether to graft it over. That one has had slight swelling of the terminal bud, but no growth yet:
I’m hoping to try grafting again this year too. I have a few potted trees with some decent size so will hopefully be more successful than last time. I’m starting quite a few more seedlings this year too in hopes of grafting them next year.
It’s very small, less than a year old, but I’ll probably wait until summer to graft it, and hopefully it’ll thicken up enough to match scionwood by then. I’d love to see updates on your grafting as well, once you start up again!
Will do! Just posted an update on the seedlings. Since I lost many last year due to the hot, dry weather and failed grafting attempts, I’ll be trying to get quite a few more growing this year. These probably won’t be ready to graft until next year but I still have some from previous years and a few that I started over the winter that I’ll try again. I did get one small scion about a month ago and tried grafting but the trees weren’t pushing growth and the scion died off. Hopefully, I’ll have more success in a few months.
