You've found the famous Dave's Garden website! Join this friendly global community that shares tips and ideas for home and gardens, along with seeds and plants!
Check out the DG homepage for a brief overview of what you'll find in this gardening mega-site.
Login
If you don't have an account yet, visit the registration page to sign up.
My Brookslate mango tree is pumping this year. It looks like it has to many fruit. My concern is the tree branches might snap. Should i sacrifice some of the smaller fruit for the betterment of the larger fruit and the tree itself?
My mango seem to thin themselves out by dropping quite a few fruit as they start to get larger - they are also large, older trees and we have never had any worry about snapping a branch with the weight. If your tree is a young one with slim branches I would be inclined to thin them too, just as Hetty says.
Last year was a bumper crop for us here in Kihei, not so much this year as we had rain almost every time 5 of the trees put out blossoms - three times so far this year! Still enough fruit on two of the trees ( later blooming) to keep us happy - wish they would hurry up and ripen!
I pick up small fruits that have been dropped, and they soften and sweeten in a few days. I've been nibbling mangoes since they were three inches long.
The big mangoes on one tree are just barely getting some color, but are sweet and ripe, still hard to touch on the outside. And they are sprouting roots, inside the fruits!
This tree is perhaps 15 years old and is relatively small compared to my other giant old mango trees.
The tree is freekin loaded.
It appears the tree flowered twice in succession. Therefore, the smaller fruit is about as long as my thumb. The larger fruit is a little larger then my hand. The fully mature fruit of the Brookslate is perhaps 6 to 8 inches long..
The Brookslate tree matures in August, and continuous through September and October.
One year i did have one of my mango trees loose a huge branch because it was over loaded with fruit.
I've got over 500 mango trees but they're mostly Kensington Prides and R2E2's. Never had any problems with overloading branches breaking. There's always masses of flowers, then masses of small fruit, but they always thin themselves out. Some branches sag but I only cut them out later if they are get too close to the ground. If a branch is in too much shade it can grow thin and weak, but usually is has fewer fruit. It could be something related to the variety you have. Have you checked around locally with other people who have the same?
It's a wonderful sight to see a fully loaded mango! Hopefully some of the larger fruit will ripen before the next lot increase in size. Are you in a windy area? The trades do a good job of thining in my garden!
What do you do with all your ripe fruit? I freeze some and make lots of mango leather to send to my grandkids on the mainland as well as the usual mouses, pies, and curds. Last year there were so many mangos in Kihei that even the food bank would turn boxes away daily LOL!
Good luck, and let us know if you decide to thin the tree or not.
to bravheartsmom and Molamola.
The last 2 years my three giant mango trees (chinese mango [this tree is huge and could be 100 years old], Perie mango [old and probably 70 years old} and common mango [unknown age but at least 50]) vomited probably a ton of mangoes on me. I made lots of mango butter, mango pies, frozen mangoes, gave as many away as i could. this year my giant trees are resting...thank gawd!!!!. Its the baby tree, maybe 15 years old that is over loaded. These Brookslate's are probably the best of my eating mangoes. I will be freezing as many mangoes as i can, giving them away and we will just be turning into mango pigs.
To tropicalbreeze.
This Brookslate tree is quite a small tree. maybe 20 feet tall with relatively spindally branches. I went out and propped up some of the branches. I pulled off quite a few of the tiniest mangoes.. hopefully that will help some years ago my Perie tree got so over loaded a branch the length of a city bus broke off because of over loading. It sounded like a cannon going off at 2 in the morning and it hit a car.
Thank you everyone for the help aloha from Kauai/Hawaii
Our largest trees here are usually Bowen Mangos which have been abandoned or left go as shade trees. For fruit people mostly use grafted trees which normally don't get so high and are lopped back to 4 metres, or 4.5 metres at most, to keep them more manageable and the fruit more easily harvested. I haven't seen a Bowen loose any limbs, and they get quite huge and have tonnes of fruit. So most likely it's a characteristic of the varieties you have. Mangos are biennial, in that they produce more prolifically every second year.
