Here's a closeup of the leaves.

WATER! That would be my first question - how much is it getting, Dan?????

MDoggie

The leaves are fine. The REST of the tree is totally messed up :-)

First things first, it looks like your tree is in serious need of some pruning, it's not going to hold any fruit with those V-E-R-Y --- L-O-N-G --- S-P-I-N-D-L-Y limbs. It also looks like some branches nearer the ground (about 3-4 of them) should be pruned off eventually.

I'd trim the upper branches severely back 1/2 to 3/4 of the way or more down, leave the lower as "nurse limbs" so the tree doesn't die, then remove the lower limbs AFTER the upper limbs sprout new branches.

After you prune, each of the branches will sprout 2-4 new branches from each branch end and the original branch will fatten up. When it does fruit you'll get more than 4 times the fruit and the limbs won't break.

New growth will flush from the ends of every branch you cut. Trust me.

My neighbor has a HUGE tree just like yours, and I showed him how to prune it but when he finally pruned he did it not FAR BACK enough and he cut just the tips, if it ever does fruit it will break the branches.

PS it's a good idea to get the grass well away from the trunk so lawn mowers and weed whackers don't damage the trunk. Also the tree won't compete for water without grass there, you can mulch it then too.

Thank you for the responses.

MDoggie; I admit the tree hasn't been irrigated much by me (off and on) but we live in the moonsonal-esque region with very wet summers and dry winters. I have been watering it some weeks during this winter so far. Oddly enough, it had no leaves and only sprouted them when I fed it some full-strength Miracle Gro some months ago, without irrigating much at the time. I didn't think it was lacking for water because the leaves weren't drooping, rather perky even...

Gnappi, I agree the branches look sort of...straggly (the tree has been through a lot), but I am a bit reluctant to prune this tree. It did not have leaves for a long time and only did so when I fed it as mentioned above, and has not put out any flushes in a good few months. Do trees that have not been flushing usually sprout limbs when pruned?

P.S. Gnappi, I agree with the grass. I've been in the process of adding mulch to my different fruit trees, putting some newspaper down to kill the grass and so forth. Here's a picture of the tree with "aged" horse manure and newspaper added. I have fertilized this tree with a full spectrum CRF a few times over the past few months, but the lighter-than-I-would-like leaves makes me wonder whether the grass has been hogging the nitrogen and water...

A closeup of the mulch...

(I will eventually take that center part of grass out, there were biting ants there when I tried so I put down some ant-killer and will do it later)

Also, interesting that you mention a huge tree gnappi, as we have a large one about 15-20 feet away. Has never been pruned as the family is not knowledgeable about tree culture at all, and I as the son am only just learning.

I will add a picture, what would be your recommendations for pruning this one? I wish to greatly decrease the height of it, and some of the branches are scraggly like the other one so they should probably be pruned back to thicken up. I will not do any pruning until after harvest with this one though, as it's flowering now. Don't know the variety but it's some sort of Indo-Chinese or other low fiber hybrid/seedling ;o)

On mango, new growth is encouraged by pruning. If you don't prune the tree expect little growth. Where will it come from?

You should look up mango pruning on the web. The UF site has a few PDF files you really need to read, your "reluctance" to prune a tree is unwarranted.

From:

lee.ifas.ufl.edu/AgNatRes/Pubs/Pruning_Mango_Trees.pdf

"Moderate pruning (removal of 25 to 30% of the canopy) is often done to reduce the canopy height or width of large mango trees. Moderate and even severe pruning does not injure mango trees"

Hullo again gnappi; I did prune the small one but it hasn't put out any new growth yet, could this be due to the winter season? My sapodilla few feet away has just put out a new flush.

Also I've started fertilizing some of my containers plants with some Ammonium Sulfate granules (21-0-0) dissolved in water. Particularly my peppers have responded very well to this; do you think the in-ground trees would too?

Not a good idea to give the mango extra nitrogen. It causes weak growth. If you're in the tropics and it's your dry season, that is when mangos normally initiate flowering. Nitrogen is not good for flowering. Mangos are usually tip pruned during harvest, and hard pruned after harvest. A couple of things with hard pruning, the idea is to reduce size to make the fruit easier to reach. Also to open the tree out to get sun in and air movement. So generally the centre of the tree is cut out and side branches allowed to spread out. A "huge" mango tree is around 20 to 25 metres tall, rather difficult when it comes to harvesting fruit.

interesting that you say extra breezent, as I thought not there not being much to begin with is the issue, my soil is quite poor.

an update, the tree has leafed out a bit, I'll reapply the mulch since it's just about broken down and lay down some fertilizer under it this time. I want to try grafting one or two varieties onto it

Poor soils are the most common ones in the tropics. Organic matter decomposes rapidly because of the higher humidity and constantly high temperatures. Normally dry season lack of rain would prolong the life of organic matter but in a garden that's when you do all the extra watering. When the wet season comes the nutrients are washed away, It's a good idea to use slow release fertiliser under your mulch. That way you don't lose all your fertiliser in the first big downpour of rain. Keep a good layer of mulch on the soil. Heavy rain breaks down the structure of the soil and virtually makes it useless. Mulch breaks down the impact of the heavy rain.

I am planning to use a slow release fertilizer thanks; any particular type of mulch you recommend for my situation?

Does it get enough hours of sunlight? Low light makes for scraggly growth. And when you fertilized I would have made sure it was getting enough water to go with.

it gets full sun nearly all day, and we've had a good amount of rain in the past few days and I did make sure to water the mango a couple times when I fertilized it. I am confused by its scraggly growth myself as I feel like i am providing everything needed for good growth...a young sapodilla tree 10 or so feet away is doing very well

Curious. I just don't know, then. Did you grow it from seed or buy it as a young plant? Could it be the variety?

it's my mother's but I think it's from seed. I'm planning to graft a bearing variety onto it but I was just trying to get it to be a bit healthier first...

I'm thinking I would start over with a known variety if it were me, but then I'm not one to talk--I have an Alphonso mango and I also am trying to sprout a seed just to see if I can and to see what it might be.

we have had this tree for a good few years now and it would be hard to cut it down sentimentally but I understand where you're coming from. thanks for the help

Sentimental matters too. Definitely. I would prune it back a bit to get it to flush growth like the others said and see what you get. I have a rose bush that was here when we bought our place that we nearly cut down because it was straggly and sick and pretty much a nothing plant--and now it is absolutely glorious every year. Good luck!

I've already pruned it back but I'll we lol

I notice you mention you wanted to graft a bearing variety onto that tree. The root stock plant should be very strong. Afterall, that's the purpose of doing a graft, to promote much better growth. If the root stock is weak then you'd be 'under powering' the plant you're grafting onto it. You'd be better off getting a good root stock plant for grafting and leave that one.

Give it some urea and it should flush. 0-0-46 NPK .Also cowdung would be good.

noted tropic, I just fed it some soluble fertilizer tonight, and I'm planning to apply some slow release and then mulch it intensively and see it that helps. some of the leaves are a nice green and it is pushing growth so it is trying

bangkook I have not seen urea available here but i have applied manure thanks

Hello, here's an update. I have not fine tuned yet what was responsible for its lack of vigor as I've been a bit neglectful of it. Certainly haven't fertilized not watered in a while but we've had a lot of rain recently an msn its putting out new growth so maybe it just wasn't getting enough water? I will try to put a heavy layer of mulch down and see how it responds.

That looks beautiful! Much better, thank you for the update!

a woody mulch can help a lot... - wood chips...

i would use a good compost at the bottom, then woody mulch on top.

rain will slowly drip through the compost, adding nutrients, but most important, adding microbes, as your soil is probably devoid of most of them.

you can try Mycorrhizal fungi, OR - get 2 shovels full of good soil from under a large old tree in an empty lot,, or area that hasnt been cut down in the last 20 or 30 years. - add it under the mulch. the rain sill soak it in.

Then... feed it fish emulsion. This feeds the soil microbes. Chemical fertilizers can have their place, but having life in the soil can only be a good thing.

Update: It's doing a lot better! this picture is a few weeks old and it looks even better now, i was walking past it yesterday and was taken aback a bit by how green and big the leaves were looking, getting a nice full bushy look too.

I haven't done much in the last month or two, a foliar spray of nutrients and some ground fertilizer as a soil drench or granular a while back but that's it. We did have terrific amounts of rain in late summer and early fall so perhaps it responded well to all the water. Either way I'm planning to mulch it and feed again and hopefully keep up this nice growth. Once it gets healthy enough I'd like to graft some fruits varieties onto it as I believe this is a seedling.

Comparison between then and now:

Beautiful!