Mango Madness

Posted on Sat 07/02/05 in South Florida

We bought our house from an older Jamaican couple about a year ago. One of their prides was twenty-five foot mango tree in the backyard. They claimed this to be no regular mango tree; they said it was the kind called Julia, a very sweet and difficult kind to grow.

For purely practical purposes I gave the tree a heavy pruning about six months ago, but I recently found out that pruning helps to produce a LOT of mangos. Well, we have a LOT of mangos on our tree. For over a week, I’ve been pulling off nearly 15 per day, and I’ve been cleaning up more than that off the ground from during the day when I’m at work.

If we were in the Tennessee, we might have trouble finding people who’ve even heard of mangos, but here in South Florida, the latinos and island immigrants love them. My neighbor, who is from Hatti, lets me use his homemade mango grabber, so I let him take all the mangos he can reach from his yard.

My personal preference for mangos is as follows:

  • When they are ripe, I put them in the refridgerator for a day.
  • I remove the skin and cut the fruit into thick strips from around the seed (which is quite large).
  • I put them back in the fridge.
  • Eat a couple slices for snack or put on cottage cheese or with yogurt.

I also like to put a few strips on some vanilla ice cream, make mango smoothies, or have Beth make some of her famous mango salsa.

Last night we were at the pharmacy for about an hour fixing an insurance problem, so Beth brought a bag of mangos for the pharm techs (they were really being nice)... they all went nuts and told me they could tell they were the good kind. I bring bags in to work and they are all eaten.

Below is a picture of our tree. The picture on the top right is the pickings off the tree yesterday.

When the fruits are ready to come down, they start to turn a bit yellow and juice might be overflowing from the top. If you tug just ever so slightly they will pop off. If you have to tug harder than that, leave them be.

Attn: Mango Lovers
We still have about forty left on the tree, so come over if you want some.

Pictures of Our Mango Tree

Something to add?

# trip1 wrote on Sun 07/03/05 at 09.05 AM:

You and Red should start an Mango Posse and take over the world.

# chris wrote on Tue 07/05/05 at 02.08 PM:

That awesome. Mangoes rule. We get them here, but they’re imported. I really like mango smoothies, mango ice cream, mango salsa, and mango sauce. Someone told me once that you could use mangoes in anything that you can use tomatoes in. I dunno about it, but when I had mango sauce with broccoli and garlic (disgusting, right?), it was really good.

# el conquistador wrote on Sat 07/16/05 at 04.05 PM:

between me, you, and red, we could do some serious mango chuckings. I like heaving them into traffic from red’s yard. from where? his yaaaaaad!

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