The Tropical Fruit Forum

HAHAHAHAHAHA

Thanks, guys!

:-) I'm not so sure about that ... The NDM is a ridiculously delicious mango. It consistently makes the list of curator's choice mangoes at Fairchild. Brix on those babies is in the 20-21 range. Noel rates it as one of his personal favorites.

To be honest -- having a strong North American palate bias myself -- the first couple of crops from my NDM tree didn't impress me that much. It was a mango that grew on me - an acquired taste if you will.

Practice makes perfect :-)

Carambola trees adapt pretty well to shady conditions. In order for the tree to fruit well it does need some sun, though probably not a lot.

Ed, how is your fairchild doing?

I think PI is sold out. To be honest, if you're hunting for a male spanish lime tree, plantogram is the place. My tree was over 5 feet tall and very, very nice looking. It's basically a 7 gallon sized tree.

I was going to try shield budding the male onto my female. We'll see ...

Yah - you can graft the male to the female plant (technically speaking). Grafting the spanish lime is not easy though. If you get 10-15% take, you're doing very well.

The other option is to offer the neighbor a free, attractive shade tree (a male spanish lime :-).

It's grafted.

How sure is he that it is a male spanish lime? Air layered or grafted?

:-) Well - the other other 100 or so trees he carries are much, much cheaper (I didn't buy a Maha Chanok :-). The Maha Chanok is not available anywhere wholesale, so he's paying full retail price for them. If it was me, I'd either do without the MC or, if I absolutely had to have it, sheepishly ask for a discount :-)

a garcinia? My garcinia intermedia doesn't mind shade.

Yep, very true. My wife really liked that D Guam or whatever it's called. She made me graft her a tree .. and I still have no idea where that's going to fit into our jungle :-). There was another one that she really liked and went nuts begging me to find her a tree. I can't remember if that was k savoy or brahm kai meow.

If my wife had her way, we'd have purely asian mango cultivars in the yard :-). I think she'd class the D Guam, PSM, and bram kai meow all in the same top tier category. Personally - I'd agree with your bias and would rate a more complexly flavored mango higher. But, after dealing with so many folks of different ethnicities, I've come to realize that my tongue has a fairly strong North American bias.

I sure am glad to hear that the Fralan is as good as the other asian cultivars listed. I grafted that one up just because it was so 'cute' and small. If I remember correctly, that's the one that's currently blooming its eyeballs out at 6 inches tall. Freak of nature.

Hey Harry, thanks for the explanation. Then I'm officially confused as to why we arrive at two different conclusions. I didn't realize your mango tasting events included such a wide swath of cultures. I was under the impression that that were small events among close friends.

At any rate, I do want to balance out the opinions by providing input from other mango eaters.

I do know that each culture has their preferred mango cultivars. For example, the Haitians love the Madame Francis, Madame Corn, and Madame Blanc. The Jamaicans love the Valencia Pride, East Indian, and of course the Julie. BUT -- when given a PSM or Nam doc mai to taste test, they'll pretty quickly purchase the PSM or Nam doc mai over their cultural favorites.

In fact, the year before last we sold out of PSM in 3gal because everyone that tried the mangoes (graciously provided by Noel) instantly wanted to purchase a PSM tree. At the same time there was a shortage on the wholesale market - Zill's had a run on the PSM and completely sold out of them in 3gal. I ended up having to graft them myself from Noel's tree because I could not find them wholesale.

When I asked my wife what she liked so much about the PSM, she said that a large component was texture - it's creamy. (At least the PSM's from Noel's tree are creamy). It's also sweet - and the way that my wife (and other cultures) define sweet is by lack of tart. As an example, the palestine sweet lime is not sweet (ie, in terms of brix), but the lack of tart makes it qualify as sweet to my wife who happily gobbles them up. Yet, to the American palate, the palestine sweet lime is a very bland, insipid fruit.

The only explanation I can come up with is that the power of suggestion is influencing the testers at our respective residences, or that soil/growing conditions impact flavor/texture. Otherwise, I'm totally stumped :-).