I have a question (actually, quite a few questions) about two mango seedlings I have, both of which were started last summer.

I'll start by saying that, having read that mango scions should be grafted during the summer, I pretty much just kept these two guys in pots over the winter, watering them regularly and fertilizing them occasionally.

One grew rather quickly and then stalled; after a little bit of growth this spring, it had reached about 19 inches. Another came out with plenty of leaves, at least for its size, but as of today is only about 10 inches tall. I'm not sure what my hopes for that one have ever been, but there's a nice swath of city-owned property in back of my house that no one other than me ever goes into; I figure I might as well unofficially annex it and plant my don't-know-what-else-to-do-with stuff back there. So I at least have a Plan B, if not yet a Plan A.

Background out of the way, this is what the bigger of the two looked like on March 21 (you can see a larger version of a photo by clicking on it):

Here it is on May 6:

And here it is today:

(Note that a couple leaves have just started sprouting out a bit less than halfway up.) The same thing happened to the smaller one, only earlier. The photographic record for that one is less extensive, mostly just cos I figured it was dying. I left it in its pot for a month or so and forgot about it. Then, one day, it looked like this:

That's the least bad of the photos. But you should be able to see the bit of green sticking out to the left near the top. As a comparison, here are the before and after photos. Before (again, March 21):

After (today):

By way of a description of the relevant photos above: Basically, both looked as though they had dried out. Which doesn't make sense, as they were watered pretty frequently--not every day, but probably at least four or five times a week. They were fertilized lightly once every couple of months--lightly since I didn't want to overfertilize--and I never sensed any cause-and-effect relationship between fertilizing and drying out. On the smaller plant, the trunk (or maybe "stem" is a better word at this stage) has become gray; more recently, the tip, where some leaves had been about to sprout, has turned almost black. The larger plant is still green for the most part; still, you can see what happened to its leaves.

So it seems these are both coming back. But will they make usable rootstock? I've never grafted anything, so I'm a bit leery of that endeavor. My plan, then, has been to plant both as is and do some topwork later on. (According to a video on the Fairchild Botanical Gardens site, I should leave the plant otherwise intact, just in case the graft doesn't take; in that case, I won't have killed the plant.)

If these plants will work, what should I do? Should I cut off the top of the small plant? Should I lop off the top half of the bigger one? Should I wait until they have more leaves until I plant them? (They've been in their pots for a long time, so I was really hoping to get them in the ground this summer. But if that's not the way to go...)

Any help anyone can offer would be greatly appreciated. If I seem like I don't know what I'm doing, that's probably true.

Thanks for reading all this and for any advice you can offer,

Danny

Stuart, Fla.

P.S. I apologize if the images here are too big, or rather, if the file sizes are too big. It's my first time posting here, so I'm learning the etiquette. Please let me know if I've made a gaffe :).