I have a farm like that. On the topic of mango
trees, permit me to digress: First, although NOBODY ever seems to think of this, they are not native and I think they
should be considered invasive (because they spread from dropped fruit, and because they very effectively displace other species by shading and self-mulching). But they are so lush and give delicious shade and they seem so venerable in their gigantism at old age, they transcend our brief human span (at least, the span we spend as their senior caretaker). So if you are determined to cohabit with an old mango, here is some information.
They are extremely drought-tolerant. It is not that they don't notice drought, but they just are not bothered by it. In fact, it is often a trigger for them to produce fruit(!). In parts of India, to encourage mango production, orchard managers will ring the trunk of half the trees each year, so they produce an extra mango crop (and they heal from this treatment quite quickly so it can be repeated in two years). Some have said "to make a mango produce fruit, beat the trunk with a chain" - bark damage perhaps has a similar effect to ringing? Having read these bits of lore and having a four-foot diameter mango at the ridge top on my Dominican Republic farm, in 2015 I climbed as high as I dared (about 20 feet), and cut two-inch wide rings in all the major branches of the tree. In the following years, these branches first produced some poor-quality mangos, then gradually lost leaves. Now, almost 9 years later, most of the upper branches are bare and very dense new growth has sprouted below the cut rings. Only a few yellowish leaves persist on the upper branches (which I find pretty miraculous so long after being completely cut off from the
roots). Over the next decade or so, I anticipate that the upper branches will finally begin to succumb to termites and woodpeckers. Some big chunks of deadfall may come down in storms by about 2027 or 2028.
I identified a couple of trees that simply needed to die. I cut a two-inch ring around the trunk in 2021. These trees were about three-foot diameter. They still have full
canopy of leaves in 2024, but the canopy is more sparse - the leaves look like late-summer. I maintain the cut rings about every year, or the tree bark will regrow from above (the bark above the cuts is notably thicker than below now). A couple of smaller mango trees only a foot or less in diameter have received the same treatment in 2022. These trees also remain fully leaved, and produce new leaves after rainy periods, but they are starting to look a bit unhealthy to the discerning eye after two years. They only produced some fruit right after the initial cutting of the ring.
Native trees and some other invasive species are sprouting in the shade of the disabled mango trees. Even though the mangos still provide considerable shade, they are thinning and the forest seed load is awakening to the added sunlight.
Mango varieties arise randomly, and seeds of a good mango will not grown to an identical producer. The "good" mango trees I have encountered - that are productive and make good fruit - tend to be smaller. It is hard to know the provenance of an old tree, but often they are "gusaneros" - worm farms - with stringy and meager fruit.
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