Earle's mangos in Southern California, Part Two: Grafting - Greg Alder's Yard Posts: Southern California food gardening

We revisit Earle here in mid-July to learn about how he successfully grafts mangos. If you want to grow mangos in Southern California, it is valuable to be able to graft your own because many varieties are not readily available to purchase as grafted trees.

Here is how Earle does it:

Take-aways from Earle on grafting mangos

1. Select scions with buds that may be swelling slightly but have yet to expand with actual growth. In other words, the buds look like they are about to start growing.

2. Graft mangos during the warmest months, from mid-May through the end of summer. For this is when mangos do most of their vegetative growth in Southern California.

3. Choose a grafting technique appropriate for the relationship between stock and scion: whip/splice or cleft if the diameters match; side veneer if the stock is bigger than the scion.

How to do these different grafts? There’s nothing unique to mangos regarding these techniques. In other words, a side veneer graft of mango is exactly like a side veneer graft of avocado or citrus.

(But here is a good video showing a side veneer graft done on an avocado, and here is one done on a citrus tree. You would do the same cuts for a mango. I can’t find a good, simple video of a whip/splice graft so I might have to make one. In the meantime, see a diagram and description of the technique in this document on page 10.)

4. Post-graft maintenance responsibilities include scraping off any buds or new growth just below the graft and removing tops from side veneer grafts.

Mango scion sources

To find scions of the mango varieties you would like to graft, I recommend:

Your local California Rare Fruit Growers chapter

Tropical Fruit Forum

Tropical Acres Farms

Here’s my first visit with Earle, where we talk how to grow mangos successfully in Southern California conditions:

“Earle’s mangos, Part One: Growing”

We will visit Earle again at the end of summer to talk mango varieties and harvesting.

My other mango posts:

“Growing mangos in Southern California”

“Captain Bucklew’s California mango trees”

“California-grown mangos”