Oh mango tree, Oh mango tree - Tropical live Christmas Trees

We have a family tradition, begun our second year in our Maryland house, of buying a live landscaping tree/large shrub as our Christmas Tree to plant out after the holidays.  The first year in the Maryland House my trusty Norfolk Island pine, my live Christmas tree for 6 years, was decorated with ornaments, tinsel and presents.  Then it croaked in a sudden violent shedding of all needles as soon as we returned from Christmas at my parents.  So the following year we got a real tree and moved it  outside wrapped in a sheet in a sheltered and warmish location while we visited the grandparents.  We eventually accumulated a spruce, japanese maple, mountain laurel, deodor cedar, and a white pine.  And then we moved leaving our odd little specimen forest behind.  Now of course on Oahu we are surrounded by Cook and Norfolk Island Pines grown to heights that would never fit in our house.

In 2020 the live Christmas tree was a mele kalikimaka banana.  Which died back in a slosh and then resprouted this summer, smaller even though it is now in a pot twice the original size. 

In 2019 we skipped the tree tradition because of travel.

In 2018 we bought a Florigon Mango (Mangifera indica) which flowers from May to June.  In 2021 it dropped almost all of its leaves, apparently due to an ant infestation in its pot, and it has since recovered even leafier than before.
Mele Kalikimaka Mango Tree! December 2018.


According to Plant It Hawaii (the nursery that produced our tree, which we purchased at Home Depot), the Florigon is anthracnose resistant, which is important in Hawaii since it tends to be rather humid during the flowering season and anthracnose makes a mess of the fruit.  The planting recommendations from Holistic Orchard apply: ring of gravel 20-30 inches diameter from the trunk and then a foot diameter of mulch outside of that.  Within a year or so, start planting the food forest understory in the mulch, adding mulch around the plants and expanding the mulch circle by 6-12 inches each year. Short lived green manure and pest repellent plants in the first couple of years, then the shrubby understory which will get biggest once the mulch is their mature canopy width from the mango trunk.  Neem oil is the preferred treatment for pretty much everything that ails the Mango.

2017 in the Navy Lodge we had a table-top sized Italian Rock Pine from Whole Foods.  It is now potted on the back lanai.  Apparently it is one of the main pine species used in Italy to produce pine nuts (YUM!).  It likes dry conditions in USDA hardiness zones 7-11 (just barely cooler than us at 12).  I'll surround it with blueberries (Home Depot Pearl City sells 4 varieties that supposedly tolerate Hawaii well).




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