A farmer friend stopped by for a while the other day and noticed my mangoes.
“They’re too close!” he informed me.
This is true. I planted my mangoes only about 6′ apart, three in a row.
Why would I do such a thing? Could I not see the 80′ mango towering over the neighbor’s house, far above all reach?
Of course I can. But I have something I like to call “pruning shears.”
I’m not scared of my fruit trees getting too big. I’m going to prune these three and see if they’ll work as a mango hedge. They are all grafted trees from a government nursery, and I paid a mere $2USD each for them. Why not experiment? It’ll be fun to see if I can keep them within reach and have all three of them produce.
Yo yo yo you gotta prune your plants. Gotta fight that apical dominance.
By the way – Happy Valentine’s Day!
Get married. Have babies. Prune your trees.
You can have greener thumbs by this weekend!
8 comments
That’s great! Love your blog! I’m getting into urban permaculture and it’s great to think outside the box
Thank you, Nancy.
Aloha David!
Just a quick note to say Mahalo Nui Loa to you for your humorous, clear and inspiring blog and books! I am presently converting a three acre private botanical garden in Omao, on Kauai into a permaculture Eden with your timely help! I have three spring fed ponds and a stream on my land which I would love to dredge for compost! I’ve been just slopping the bottom muck and overgrown tropical water lilies around my young fruit trees and covering with wood chips from invasive trees. I’m hoping to sheet mulch some hillsides with it and cover that with the tons of Royal palm fronds lying about. Can wet pond muck be used in this way? It smells very ‘alive’ but not rotten or stinky. Mostly leaves and fronds from surrounding biomass. My area is zone 11A, my soil is volcanic loam. Any advice would be appreciated!
PS: I think there might be dinosaurs living deep in my jungle! The centipedes are enormous! Ick!
Sounds marvelous. I would use pond muck to feed trees for sure.
Mango hedge should work fine. I live in the lower Andean equatorial region and the other week I had noticed a neighbour had hacked his mango trees down almost to a stump. Shocked, I asked why (as he had said we can help ourselves to them) and it was to curtain their height, he does it every few years to keep them small so he can pick them as he is too old to be getting them from a tall tree.
That is awesome. Thank you for the field report.
Please share a link for the government nursery that you got the grafted trees from! I moved from Dade county to Citrus county & I crave homegrown mangoes! Pretty please with Barbados cherry pie?
The government nursery is on the island of Grenada – not in Florida.
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