most trees are grafted to turpentine mango here. ive also heard of manilla or thai everbearing being used.

they use turpentine because its nematode resistance

the rootstock will not make a tree dwarf, but you do not want one more vigorous than the scion.

Turpentine and Number 11 are both generally considered good rootstocks. I have been using Turpentine for mine.

There's a couple benefits:

1. You generally know what you are getting with Turpentine type rootstocks due to them being polyembryonic.

2. They are vigorous and promote tree growth

3. Turpentine varieties tend to be good producers, so you get ample supply of seeds from one tree if you plant it as a source for seed.

are turpentine early season mangos?

anyone know a source of turpentine mangos in south Florida? Harry told me Thai Everbearing works well too,

i want to plant some seeds for practice grafting.

I have wondered if grafting onto dwarf rootstocks would decrease plant vigor with acceptable production? The same line of thinking with budding citrus onto trifoliate/flyin dragon.

Maybe experiment with some dwarfs like ice cream as rootstock and see what happens?

Just a thought

ice cream is not a polyembryonic mango so an ice cream tree would have to be grafted.

My experience with Turpentine is they are generally early season, but the season is often extended.

There's still lots of old Turpentine trees in Florida (including probably over a dozen in my town of Jupiter), though people don't really plant them anymore now that named varieties are commonly available. My only advice would be to keep an eye out for them, the fruit is usually in clusters and fairly small,yellow, and of course very fibrous.

There's more than 1 type of turpentine though.....one man I know in Jupiter has a variety that is quite edible and decent with minimal fiber. I used seeds from his tree for my initial seedling trees, but also have a couple Ataulfo seedlings and at least 1 Tommy Atkins seedling I plan to graft as well.

One more benefit of polyembryonic mango seedlings....you can get more than one tree per seed if you separate them carefully.

Thanks all for the responses. I see that varieties such as Kensington Pride & Turpentine are used a lot for rootstock. I also see that you are supposed to match the vigour of the rootstock with the scion (don't know why though). Kensington is described as a vigorous large variety, I don't know much about Turpentine. Now if I want to graft a medium sized variety like Irwin or Palmer, what rootstock should be used. Is there any summary of suitable medium size or dwarf rootstocks?
I have Nam Doc Nai, which is polyembryonic, I wonder if it would be good as rootstock for medium size varieties.

David

In Florida, I believe basically all commercial nursery mango trees are grafted to Turpentine rootstocks. Irwin or Palmer would do fine on Turpentine.

Any rootstock is probably fine though.

As far as achieving dwarfing through rootstock choice, to my knowledge that is not really possible with mangos. Different from stone fruits like apples, etc.

I've seen an instance where a grower was looking for ANY seeds for rootstock, regardless of variety. I don't know how often that happens. Might have been a rarity, but I don't know.

Gary

i thought i read somewhere Turpentine was the most resistant to nematodes thus preferred in South Florida.

It should be noted that research done into this, has shown that rootstock has significant effect on, not only the size of the tree canopy, but also production, and quality of fruit!

here are links to a couple trials ,

of course having rootstock that is adapted to local climate and disease resistance, will probably out weigh any advantages it may have otherwise, there seems to be little research into this, but the little that has been done shows there is an effect.

www.cpac.embrapa.br/download/892/t

http://www.google.com.do/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&ved=0CFgQFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.kari.org%2Fbiennialconference%2Fconference12%2Fdocs%2FEFFECT%2520OF%2520MANGO%2520DWARFING%2520ROOTSTOCKS%2520ON%2520HEIGHT%2520AND%2520CANOPY.pdf&ei=4M_HT7XHDYL-ggf8uLCDDg&usg=AFQjCNGSKGdOsWTXr-6zUa4-OKTkTJJB8w&sig2=YHLyjU-8berbv1s6VlFEEA

That makes perfect sense to me. The roots feed the plant. In my novice opinion that seems like an important part of the plant. It makes sense that a large healthy root system would produce a large and healthy tree. The reverse also makes sense. When I bought my trees I ordered them from Florida so that they would be on turpentine rootstock. The growers here in California graft onto Manilla which is a smaller tree. I wanted a large root system to produce larger trees since our cool California summers slow down mango tree growth. Who knows maybe the Manilla rootstock is better acclimated to California and grows better.

Bill

Yes I alot of Seedlings 12 turpentine and two Seedlings Neldika dwarf and Seedlings Haden and another Seedlings mango trees that I call peach two 6 Seedlings I know some of them is polyembryonic only two give me more out of 4 out of 6 I will break them up soon and Seven forigon Chinese flavor I have 7 out 1 look to be polyembryaonic and I super turpentine all 8 is polyembryonic and I 8 Seedlings pineapple 2 was single out 8 give me three in one and two five in one planning to Grafted all of them the one is older enough Marcus