You can grow it out for sure. Champagne is Ataulfo and they are used in SoCal for rootstock because they grow well for us here.
We have issues with grafted trees because the hot and cold cycling causes them to flower too often. We end up with not much growth on the trees. Maybe its better more inland but I don’t know any mango growers there. Many of the grafted varieties are also on Turpentine rootstock from Florida and they don’t do well in our soil here.
So the strategy is to grow an ataulfo or manilla seedling to a large enough size that it can support fruit, and then graft better varieties onto them. My ataulfos are just on their second year but my friend gave me a bigger one that I planted in my mother in laws place. Will be a couple years before we can consider grafting onto them.
sorry for all the questions, but why wouldn’t a mango grown off the original tree taste better than a grafted one? Couldn’t I just add grafts to the current tree? I don’t really know how to turn my tree to root stock and I’m not sure I really want to since it’s the tree that started this whole journey for me
Our weather is pretty moody but probably not as much as coastal areas. Would grafting onto my tree rule out any potential champagne mangos from happening on the tree?
@etalos1
I operated a fruit tree nursery (among other things) in Rancho Peñasquitos CA from about 2005 to 2012. I bought inventory from wholesale production nurseries including Dave Wilson and LaVerne.
The tree pictured in the beginning of that thread was from inventory that had arrived in 2010-11. Upon receipt, it was in a 5 gallon pot and a total of 4.5 feet tall.
At the beginning of 2013 I donated the vast majority of my inventory to the CRFG, but retained about 100 for personal use. These I up-potted and moved to my new residence in Vista CA.
Nowadays that Mango has been in the ground 9 years. Heeding warnings from others, I have been watching its growth characteristics carefully and consider any attempts at pruning as an experiment.
I can also tell you about one of my customers trees that went into the ground back in 2011. This person is native to western India. They purposely have never printed the tree. It is 20 feet high and wide, and rains mangos at the end of summer.
You are making me smirk so much as I read this! Do you have some black currants to trade? If so I’d love to!
I have made jam out of Oregon Grape before and that was really wonderful…
I have never even had black currants.
I do have a Jostaberry, but the past two years (since I moved into my house) some sort of caterpillar has been getting to it and devouring most of the greenery.
I’ve proven several times that they will not tolerate my climate. Being part Hungarian, I’m not pleased with the outcome. So when people without a Martha Stewart budget start talking about growing Mango in CT, I can sort of empathize.
On the other hand, European black current plants such as Titanium Black are available online in the U.S. If your climate is suitable, I recommend you grow 3 shrubs!
I think I’m going to piggy back off @Richard good advice here. I have 2-3 mango seedlings (good varieties lemon zest, mahachanook, ndm) and a grafted ice cream. For the reasons he said about how they grow, it’s not so simple to prune them. I will keep my ice cream but I foresee a day when I cannot manage to protect it with my small greenhouse. Although it is a true dwarf, moving it in a year will be rough, as they grow out, so hard to get your hands to the pot without breaking fragile growth.
Now I’m focusing on things that don’t need protection, or things I can protect easily (like citrus). There are no solutions, only trade offs. I haven’t seen anyone else say it so I will, you will never taste a fruit off of your mango seedlings. It’s not about the amount of time, it’s that in 10 years when it could possibly bear, it will need to be 10-15ft tall and wide and idk anyone who can keep that in a pot and move it. I’m not saying don’t zone push, I do plenty of it, but only push one zone, not 3. Being zone 9a, I try nothing zone 10b, very few things 10a. 9b? I give it a whirl sometimes. Now if you planted it in the ground and build a huge structure around it to protect it, you could do it. But in that case you’re already spending thousands so I’d shell out the extra $100 on a nice grafted variety. Mangos and Avos in pots (unless you live where the pots don’t need to be moved) seem like a wasted effort. But good luck, I don’t want to discourage you, only temper your expectations.
. My friend’s turpentine tree is over 10 years old with like a 2 inch trunk. Its a real struggler.