What great pics. I'd be in heaven with all the mangosteens and rhambutans. Thanks for sharing.
Karyn

I am looking at that DREAMY field of dragon fruit... :) Am I seeing thick trunks or is that what they're staked to?
Thank you! To die for!
"off to re stake my dragon fruit'.

Heathen. All DF's are growing up a post. I've seen them over there on wooden posts as well as concrete posts. I've even seen a few that were so big and heavy it snapped the concrete post in half. Must have missed a scheduled pruning!

Wow! Awesome! Thank you!.

Thanks for the information about how far back they trimmed their mangoes. I'll be using it when my mango tree gets out of reach.

Barbcoleus...most residents allowed their mango trees to get really big. I questioned this because of how difficult it must be to harvest any fruit at those heights, as well as if they had to do any preventative measures. My take on fruit trees are to keep them at a height that I can easily take care of and pick the fruit. For them, fruit isn't the only goal. The trees are beautiful when big and they provide shade as well. The downside to that is they stop producing a lot of fruit or quality fruit. Therefore they severely prune them back. It's almost like starting over for the tree.

I thought the mango trees were very interesting too. I'd never seen them pruned like that but it does make sense; here in SW Florida they get huge but have small fruit which is inaccessible so it falls and makes a mess. I'll keep that in mind for when ours get bigger.

I saw some cuttings of dragon fruit last month at the Rare Fruit plant sale but had no idea what to do with the fruit or how to grow it. There were just some 2 - 3 foot pieces so is it easy to root?

Suzanne

Suzanne...rooting up DF is very easy. Get some rooting hormone powder but be very careful with it. Heed the warning label. Wet the bottom inch or so of the DF and stick it in some of your potting soil. In a few weeks or so, you will notice some top growth. Let it go a while longer and then you can plant it out. Look up on the web for planting ideas. Just keep it simple. They will grow really fast in your area. Make sure you get some good cultivars that are sweet. Sometimes the plain white fleshed one is really bland.

Suzanne & Ohiojay
I had a large mango tree which provided nice shade but it blew over in hurricane Charlie. Fortunately it didn't hit my house or the house next door or the fence so that's one reason why I'm interested in keeping mine small. Also I went to a conference earlier this year and the speaker said you can keep your citrus tree trimmed from the top so fruit are still within reach. It never occurred to me that you could do that.
Barb

Thanks for the dragon fruit information - and who knew you could prune citrus trees like that too?? Good ideas!

Suzanne

My husband just came home from south of Miami, he said after I told him about the way mangoes were pruned he was noticing the ones in the groves down there were pruned the same way.

Ok, maybe it's not amazing but I've discovered something that was there all the time!!

Suzanne

It's amazing what we can discover once we are aware of it! I never knew of the pruning of these trees until recently either. Of course, my only exposure to mango trees have been either in Thailand or Forida. My mango in the greenhouse will always be kept quite small. From what I've been told, once severely pruned in such a manner, it may take a year or two before the fruiting is decent again. I should have asked, why they didn't they just keep the trees at a certain height to begin with?