I Didn’t Kill My Mangos!

[Xerarch]

So I sprouted two supermarket Champagne mangos about 5 years ago and have kept them in pots ever since, moving them out during summer and in during winter. This year they were just about getting too tall for the sun room that I keep them in in the winter and for sure after another season of growth they would be too big. 

So a couple months ago I cut them all the way back to just 2 or 3 feet of stick, I wanted to do it before the fluids started flowing for new growth. They hadn’t budged all this time, it’s what I expected but still the longer they didn’t move the more I wondered if I had killed them. I gave the same treatment to my fig and it started to push new leaves a couple weeks ago. 

So anyway, the below pic shows the first sign of new life, I can see three new tiny buds on this one. I’m very happy. 

[Bennz]

That's a good sight, but man the whole thing is harsh! Any reason why you didn't just tip prune it a bit and get some fruit? 

[Xerarch]

Part of the reason for the hard prune was that I needed the trees to branch lower on the trunk then they did naturally. They branched at maybe 5’ and that would be too difficult to manage when I need the whole thing to stay under around 7’. This way they are now branching at two feet and I can make a nice small tree/shrub out of them and have a lot of branches below 7’. 

I could have forced them to branch at a lower height by pruning sooner (and less drastically) but at the time I had hope that I would have had the opportunity to live somewhere warmer by now and have them in the ground. For now it looks I’ll be stuck in a cold climate for at least a few more years so I better get real and plan for keeping my tropicals indoors in the winter.