Nice collection. Good luck with the soursop. Don't be surpised if it's taller than you by the end of the year.

Alexi:

Looks like your plants are well on their way to being settled in your new yard. If I recall, you were previously in West Pembroke Pines, right? Where did your family move to? I am very interested in your mamey as you seem to have done a whole lot better with yours than I have ever done with mine. Didn't you have blooms or fruit on yours?

Harry

Nice job, you are off to a great start in your new home.

-Ethan

...looks a great beginning Alexi - isn't the sandy soil a blessing? Back in Upstate N.Y. it was all hard pan and clay that I remember when digging my garden oh so many years ago......

Yeah, ALL the trees and plants will love to spread their roots into and through your new soil.....

DogMango

Pepperot: Thanks. Yeah, the soursop is growing very quickly. I planted it in a location where I can easily protect it from temporary winter frosts and freezes.

Harry: Yes, I lived in chapel trail, west of 184th and north of pines blvd, close to the Chapel Trail Elementary school. Now, I'm 7 houses east of north douglas, north of johnson street and south of taft. Still in pembroke pines.

When I planted the mamey, I mixed in some miracle grow potting soil around the sides of the root ball and filled the rest of the hole with the native soil. I also poored used coffee grounds (bustelo espresso) around the trunk of the mamey on the surface of the soil. It helps, but at the same time it really hurts the drainage. The water would sit on the surface for a while before entering the soil. So I had to make small holes with a bamboo stick to help with the drainage. After a while, the soil was constantly penetrated in and out of the surface by ants, so they really improved the drainage. The mamey stayed the same for about a month without any growth and a few weeks ago, the leaves began to turn yellow after a few days without watering. When the dry weather period came to an end, we got a large amount of rain and the leaf buds at the tip of the branches began to swell. From then on, it kept on growing as we kept on getting nice downpours. Then I thought(if all my trees respond so well to rain water, it could respond nicely with natural well water). I have a well for the sprinklers in the back yard and it has two hose outlets. The back yard sprinklers are busted but the front ones are still decent. So I attach the hose to one of the well hose outlets and water all my trees with well water, instead of city water. They all seem to love it, even more than fresh rain water. Harry, if you have a well, I strongly suggest that you use that instead of city water, if you are using city water. Everyday I wake up, I notice that the new growth has progressed on the mamey and new flower buds are developing where the old ones were.

Depending on the variety of mamey, some may give fruit sooner than others. Pace is one of the most precocious, best tasting, and cold hardy mameys. There cold hardiness is 25-30 degrees. Also, make sure the mamey tree gets full sun.

Red Sea Me: Thanks!

MangoDog: Thanks and yes, it is a blessing. :) Even though the sandy soil is not one of the most fertile soils around, it's pretty decent. The top layer is greyish-black, and further down, it's white.

Alexi:

Unfortunately, or fortunately for other reasons, I am on city water and do not have a well. I have one mamey tree currently. It is supposed to be a grafted Magana. A friend of mine (a self proclaimed mamey expert born in Cuba) grafted it for me and I planted it out about 12 years ago. It has remained compact and has never flowered. About 16 years ago, I had a Pace mamey from Lara's. It grew nicely, got some size and did flower and fruit. Unfortunately, a week of standing water after one of our tropical storms killed it. So when I replaced it with Magana, I planted the Magana higher up, on the beginnings of the house pad. I figured that mamey wouldn't mind the fill soil (rather than the much that is found elsewhere on the property) that makes up that raised portion of my property since these trees do well in South Dade where the soil really stinks. I am not sure why this Magana is taking so long to get to flowering size. I may try some bloom booster to see if that has any effect on it. Magana is such a large fruit, so it might just be that the tree needs to get more size before it goes through the ordeal of fruting. In any case, a warm welcome to you and your family to more Eastern Pembroke Pines. You are now a couple minutes from my office (Pines and University). If you are going to be in the area around lunch time, feel free to stop by the office. We have mango tastings almost every day during the season. If you or anyone else on the Forum wants to stop by the office for one of these tastings, feel free to drop me an e-mail and we can set it up. I'm always interested in seeing reactions to some of the more unusual mango varieties that I have.

Harry

Cool. Thanks Harry!

That's weird. Magana is supposed to be precocious. But, unlike pace, magana does not have cold tolerance. Maybe the cold spells affect it? Not sure. I got my pace from a nursery in davie called Spykes. It depends on the season, because the pace I bought was the very last mamey they had in stock. Then when I bought a large sweetsop last year in November, I saw a whole line of 3 gallon pantins. I had a grafted magana back in 2003/04 and it actually had a medium sized fruit, but it fell off. A landscaping company made a big gash at the base of the trunk, but it healed and kept on growing. Not long after that, it just started dying back for no reason. When I pulled the tree out with my bare hands, I noticed that the tap root was curled up like a fist from not being able to penetrate the rocks. 12 years and not even a blossom? Sounds like this so called expert grafted an immature tree onto a immature rootstock... Not even a seedling mamey in healthy soil would take that long. Magana is a slow-growing and small tree, while pace has a tall growth habit. Here's a link that has info on mameys. http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/mg331

Does your magana look healthy?

Alexi

I apologize. I missed the part about the guy that grafted the mamey for you being a friend of yours. Thought the guy that grafted it for you was a stranger.

Alexi

Alexi

Great looking collection. I wouldn't say Maganha Mamey is just as hardy as any other variety. I've had one in the ground for two winters and it has withstood 33F a couple of times. Here is a pic. It flowered last summer not this year. I had three lower branches, about three feet tall, screwed up this spring by my dogs but it has flushed two times so far this year. It would call it hardy for Socal.

JF

Thanks jfernandez. Your mamey tree looks great! So the magana does have some cold tolerance after all.

Here's my Magana. Growing with a very dwarf like habit. So far, no blooms. Its at least 12 years and counting....might even be closer to 15 years. Time flies when you have no mameys.

The tree tops out at an altitude of about 4 feet. Comments?

Harry

Looks pretty good to me. If anything, I'm pretty shocked about how small it is, based on it's age. Usually grafted mameys are pretty big at that age and have produced a pretty good amount of fruit, even maganas. Magana is supposedly a precocious tree. Do you still have contact with your Cuban friend?

The only thing I can think about is the soil that the mamey is planted in. If it's very rocky and the roots seem to have no where to go, it might give the tree it's dwarf stature. From my personal experience, I think that's the problem. At my old house in west pembroke pines, I had builder's fill(oolitic limestone packed together). The drainage was poor and it was a pain in the you-know-what to dig. Back in 03-04 I had a decent sized grafted magana mamey. It bloomed a lot and even had a grape sized fruit. Right after that, the branches began to die back for no reason. The ground wasn't excessively wet and it was in a raised portion of the yard. It was in the ground for about two years. When it died, I ripped the whole tree without much resistance and I noticed that there was something weird about the tap root. It looked like a big fist or a tumor. It wasn't able to penetrate the rocks. Yes, they do great down south in the Redlands where the soil is very rocky, but these are in a farm where they prep the soil and grind-up the limestone. It's more of a marl type soil instead of muck. Have you also noticed the brownish-reddish tint the soil has down there?

The branches of your mamey are thick enough to bloom and set fruit. Here's a pic: http://i1018.photobucket.com/albums/af304/culov/IMG_0647.jpg?t=1264735684

Harry, you should make a thread about this. I'm pretty sure an expert with lots of experience about mameys would help you out.
In my own opinion, you should buy a grafted pace mamey and plant it where your other one was. But try to make a decent sized mound so it won't flood at the base of the tree like what occurred with your old pace.

I'm also thinking that the root stock has something to do with the weird growth habit of your magana. Overall, I think that it could be that the ground is too rocky, or the root stock is affecting it's growth and fruit production, or a little of both.
Honestly I'm quite familiar with mamey trees, but I'm not an expert. Even though I've seen many mamey trees throughout my life and had a healthy one that struggled in the extremely rocky ground in west pines like I mentioned above. I apologize if my advice about your mamey tree wasn't that helpful. Just trying to help you out as much as I can.

Alexi

Wow that's extraordinarily odd. A 4 year old grafted mamey sapote should have a trunk as thick as a coke can and reach about 8 feet into the air. At 15 years you're looking at a towering beast. It does look like it could be for want of good drainage. Here's what IFAS has to say:
Mamey sapote are intolerant of constantly wet or flooded soil conditions. The wet soil conditions decrease the oxygen content in the soil, causing roots to die which weakens the tree.