Fruit quality and root survival are two jobs

A mango, avocado, citrus, or grape that tastes right may die on your soil. A root that lives in salt or Phytophthora may carry poor fruit. Grafting exists so those jobs can split. Buying a scion because the fruit is pretty, without asking what is in the ground, repeats the same failure as buying roots with no buyer.

Write both: the fruit the channel pays for, and the root that survives this water and this disease. Compatibility, union height, and true labels matter as much as the cultivar story.

If trees look rich above and rotten below, you asked the fruit line to do the root's work.

In this series

• Name the defect before you buy a famous cultivar
• Do not plant one clone as the whole orchard
• Fruit quality and root survival are two jobs
• Clone the winner and retest — the best tree may be the best soil
• Rank trees over years, not one heavy crop
• A trial is only as honest as the labels on the plants