Here is my Nam Doc Mai mango tree. I bought it online this past summer. Which I had no idea you could do! It was re potted in the fall and should do well this year.
January 2025
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Congratulations!
Be aware that mango are structurally different from more familiar fruit trees, e.g. Prunus. A completely different mindset is needed for successful pruning.
From the ground up:
- Hopefully there is a single trunk with an obvious graft scar. Perhaps there are suckers below the graft which need removal.
- If no graft scar, then you are dealing with a seedling. If there are two trunks, then one might be true to type and the other is not. You can’t know which is which until the plant has produced several crops and the fruit size is at least 6". In all likelihood you are dealing with an n-th generation seedling which has drifted significantly from the original cultivar.
- What appears to be branches are not, at least in comparison to Prunus etc. Instead, Mango develops nodes at the ends of shoots. Each node becomes the focal point for inflorescence shoots. They will produce racemes of flowers. The shoots lignify over time.
- A maturing mango is a network of nodes and lignified shoots – which can become quite large in diameter. An unpruned mango tree in the ground here is 40 feet tall and wide in 25 years. There are no true dwarfs, but there are cultivars that mature slower and thus appear to be dwarf for the first decade or so.
- Be careful with those nodes. Removing a wayward green shoot is usually not a problem. Trimming off a year-old lignified shoot can inexplicably cause the entire node to die.
- Learning when the fruit are ripe in non-tropical climates is a matter of trial and error. Some fruits on the tree will be ready to pick before others. They become very productive after 4-5 years and you’ll have plenty to experiment with.
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You should also get orange sherbet, Mahachanok, and lemon meringue 
i got the mango bug and a few more plants coming in too lol.
The nam doc mai i had the last few years doesn’t stand up to lemon meringue or Mahachanok. Maha is my queen right now and I love the fruit and plant so much, I’ve been pondering getting a 2nd and 3rd tree
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Thank you so much Richard for those tips! Yes there is a nice graft on it. I Fould a network of grafted ones on that site. Currently I have Alphonso, Nam Doc Mai,
Orange Serbet and Sia Siam. I have been looking and I will have to trim, hopefully not for a years years. or build a bigger greenhouse! LOL
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March 14. Happy little mango. It looks like it got the right chill hours. I know it shouldn’t hold any fruit just yet.
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Mangos have zero chill hour requirements.
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Hey Richard, Thanks for clearing that up. There were a few people on here last year talking about 45 day chill cycle.15C (60f) or lower. They suggested it a reason why another mango didn’t see any flowers last spring. Then strangely flowered in November. Long as they grow everything else can be figured out in time LoL!
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