Garden Blog - Top Tropicals

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How to prevent mango fruit drop

Q: My mature mango tree is fully grown 15 yrs old and each year it fully blooms, sometimes twice. Shortly thereafter, all the baby mangos and flowers fall off providing no mangos for the season. I have tried fertilizing, spraying the tree for fungus or other insects, to no avail. I give up, any suggestions?

A: Dropping fruit in pretty common issue with mango trees. There may be several reasons, or a combination of reasons.
1. Fungal disease (anthracnose), and/or powdery mildew. To avoid fungal disease problems, spray your tree when it just begins to form the flower spikes. Treat foliage with Copper fungicide. There is also another one, very effective for anthracnose: Thiophanate methyl.
2. Inadequate nutrition. Feed your tree with a combination of granulated fertilizer Mango-Food, liquid booster SUNSHINE Mango Tango and micro-elements Sunshine Honey and Sunshine Superfood
Check out pictures of our mango tree problems that were fixed within a month by using Sunshine Boosters.
3. Too much rain or heavy dew during blooming and fruit set (see 1 - use preventive treatment for fungus)
4. Cold. Sometimes the cause of premature fruit drop is from the cold weather during bloom and fruit set. Usually the most affected varieties are the early bloomers including Glenn, Haden. The cold damages the developing embryo in the seed. The fruit starts to develop but because of ethylene gas given off by the damaged embryo, the fruit is triggered to drop before maturity. To see if cold temperature was the cause for your fruit dropping, cut open the fallen fruit. Even if there is a small speck of brown in the seed, that's enough damage to stop fruit development.
To learn more how to care for your mango, please read this publication.

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People of TopTropicals. Pets of the day: Luna, Queen of Night and Lil Frank the Possum

We had a friend over for dinner, lovely Mrs Mom Luna the Raccoon. She had a bunch of her baby raccoons! This is the second Raccoon of TopTropicals (see our previous visitor - Raccoon Charity).
Then we discovered a little opossum that had a night time swim... We helped him out in the morning using a pool net. Little Frank, apparently, is our Possum Pete's grandson.
All PeoplePets were fed with cat food and received a big portion of Love!

Luna is learning how to eat out of hand... and Lil Frank just got out of the pool.

Possum Pete - grandpa of Lil Frank, guarding the cat food at night

TopTropicals PeopleCat Club and Zoo

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Perfumed Milky Way Tree

Stemmadenia litoralis

by Onika Amell, tropical plant expert

What is a garden without fragrance? Unknown to so many gardeners because of its rarity, the Milky Way tree or Stemmadenia litoralis is one of those trees that are simply unforgettable. This is without a doubt one of the most fragrant flowering trees you can plant in the tropics or warm greenhouse conditions...
When this tree is in full bloom, masses of large, white, tornado-shaped flowers cover the branches. The fragrance is something to behold… soft, vanilla sweet and musky. Leaves are dark green and sparkly and a striking contrast against the large, white flowers. Even the seed pods are pretty, double-horned and orange-gold, born in pairs and hanging from the tree. This tree is so ornamental!..

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PeopleCats of TopTropicals. Cats of the day: the most unusual and weird.

Biggy and Marco won/shared today's contest of Cat of the Day for being the most DIFFERENT. For eating corn and for sleeping in a tree like a bird!

TopTropicals PeopleCat Club

Thank you for supporting us in helping PeopleCat Community!
Make your kind donation today and receive a surprise gift from us! Every little bit helps. Thank you and God bless you and your pets!