What kind are you looking for? This time of year, at least here in Florida,new buds are pushing bloom. It is best to await a vegetative cylce to take scion wood.

Harry

Really any... Carrie or an Indian variety would be nice. Thanks for the follow-up!!!

BTW- My rootstock aren't quite ready yet. I'm growing them inside and they are currently about 4" tall and growing very fast. I've heard that they need to be at least a foot to graft.

A foot is a good. However, you can actually also graft when 2-3 weeks old (aka epicotyl grafting) with a fairly high rate of success :-).

You'll get a higher rate of take in the summer.

Jeff

Thanks for the advice! I'd probably wait until summer anyway.

Is there anywhere I could find this method online? I've never tried it.

Jeff, you can graft a 3 week old sprout? why do they forgo this method in nurseries?

I have a Carrie and would send you scions later in the season. Don't know much about grafting. The scion have to be sent next-day-delivery...very perishable

You definitely can - and with a decent measure of success (upwards of 90% take). My brother-in-law who is a researcher at the national school of agriculture in El Salvador just conducted a study on it as a feasible means of propagating mangos. For the spanish speakers, the pdf is here. I've also done it myself.

It hasn't gained much popularity with the commercial growers (here in FL at least) for a few reasons:

1. For one, it requires a bit more labor. In order to match scion to sprout, you obviously need thinner scions. A tree will naturally produce some thinner branch sprouts, but to get commercial quantities of these, you must tip all the branches of the scion tree about a month before grafting (ie, around the time the seeds are planted).
2. Secondly, it severely limits the grafting time frame. Since mango seeds lose viability fairly quickly, a commercial grafter would have to figure out how to graft up huge quantities within a very short time frame.
3. Another drawback is that there are better means of propagating the mango. The bigger shops like Zill's use shield budding. It's very successful and has many advantages over cleft grafting (one of them being that a single scion can yield 5 to 9 buds vs 1 per cleft).

For the backyard grafter who simply wants to produce a couple hundred trees, the aforementioned issues are moot. It's also not an issue for 3rd world countries where cost of labor and scion wood is cheap. But, if you're a commercial grafting house like Zill's (and needing to produce 10's of thousands of trees per month), efficiency is paramount.

Jeff

thanks for the explanation, Zills trees definitely do look more established when small then PI's and fairchild, PI sells 3 gallon whips that establish in the ground well but take a season to grow out. now i know why.

Thanks Zands! How much would that cost?

mango_kush, I totally agree. Zill's trees are top notch - no one else can compare in terms of quality. If they shipped or sold retail, they'd clobber the market :-).

Jeff

"Thanks Zands! How much would that cost?"

The scions are free but you have to pay for overnight delivery or second day delivery from Florida. You can email me at--->> kangaroomile AT gmail dot com

Another problem is the hot weather that will make the scions even more perishable

Thanks sooooo much zands! I'll make sure to email you when I've made my final decision.

Thanks Everybody for the Great advice. My rootstock are now both about 5 inches tall!

Rootstock are now hitting the 6" mark!!!!!!