Hey gang.  Here's at least one part of a 1 1/2 hour tour that Moshe Weiss, former CEO of the Exotic Fruit Assn. of Israel, gave me on Dec. 28, 2013.  I'm not only lacking knowledge on most of the fruit species we visited and discussed, but also am a video-taking amateur, so you'll have to bear with it.  And as Moshe said to me at one point: You have only one religion - Mangoes! 

He seems to worship all and every kind of fruit and has the knowledge to prove it.  This particular orchard was started by a Jewish immigrant from Iraq - Abrahim Hassadim I believe was his name - who met us there and served up some pitaya (dragonfruit) which I had never had before.  To me it tasted like a mild kiwi, but now I'm wondering if that actually was the fruit he served us because Moshe gave me some dragonfruit he had raised in his own yard when I left later.......oh well......it's about 7 minutes long. And i'll continue to post others on this thread.....

I want to give my grateful thanks to Moshe for the generosity of his time and wisdom and Sheehan for turning me on to him....


Gary

http://youtu.be/2WXeguTx_DE

I don't know - felt like a little walk-thru was in order during our slow winter period, post first cold snap!
Really not a lot to show on this,  Just some frost cloth and sleeping trees.....Gary

MangoFang's Yard Video 121313 001

I read I think in the NY Times (the occasional sophisticate that I can be  ) that you South Eastern
Coast folks have had only had 2 mild hurricanes in a above-average predicted season ranging from 9-11.

How lucky and wonderful!  Which means I expect to see words like "bountiful", "large", "above average"
and similar for your mango harvests next spring and summer......ooops, but I forgot about winter chill.....
well, at least half your battle seems to have been won....

Is the "H" season officially over yet?


Gary

What do you guys suggest to treat this splitting in the mango tree below - it's my Glenn
and it seems like it will only get worse.  I don't believe it has anything to do with watering,
but heat and sun (maybe).  It's only a 3 year old tree, and actually is starting to happen on
another one or two, and now I worry I should be doing something with all these tree trunks....

I would think if I had painted the bark with white latex or wrapped it in this tree wrap stuff
I've seen online it would have helped...and I saw a little blog about this trunk repair material you
can buy and swab into the wound....but someone else said that is apparently really bad for the tree once its more toxic ingredients penetrate into the tree's interior.....

Anyway, what would you guys do?


Thanks, Gary

So….. This last Tuesday, July 23rd, I sponsored the first annual Desert Mango Tasting event at my place in Palm Springs, CA.  In attendance were JF, Behl, Null Zero and his girlfriend, Christina.  We had 10 mango varieties to slice up and eat (though 11 were present on the table):

Rosigold
Manila (from my neighbor’s tree)
Duncan (grown in Florida)
Edward (grown in Florida)
Pina Colada
Glenn
Maha Chinok
Nam Doc Mai
Valencia Pride (Improperly labeled tree?)
NDM/Mystery mango (Improperly labeled?)
Kent(one was partially ripe)
Keitt (none ripened in time)

It was 100 degrees outside, but we all sat in my mister-wrapped gazebo and were quite comfortable as we sat down with our drinks and pretzels, readying for the competition!  Nullzie took the photos of each mango variety as we cut them open. 

We judged the mangoes using a 0(low/bad) – 5 (high/good) rating system.  The 5 categories examined were:  Fiber, Shape/color (appearance), Taste, Flesh-to-Seed ratio and Texture.  We had a 6th category, Aroma, that was used for a number of the mangoes, but then we kind of decided to throw that category out as it just didn’t seem so important, though Behl had the best nose and was raving about certain varieties – he probably having the longest mango history among all of us having grown up with them as a kid.

Anyway, the final tallies of the tasting are as follows, remembering that these in no way are representative of these varieties grown elsewhere in our state (or around the country for that matter) as I am still learning, changing and adding, major and minor elements, compost, various fertilizers, water, etc. to my trees that I would think do have some bearing on taste:

Overall Ratings based on the 5 categories (Forgot to add up the totals for the Kent, which was only partially ripe, and the neighbors’ Manila were just plain bad!):

Rosigold
Maha Chinok
Glenn
Pina Colada
Valencia Pride (?)
Edward
Nam Doc Mai
Duncan
Mystery Mango (from a NDM labeled tree but not even close to the proper shape)

And then we did a cumulative rating based on Taste only, as we began to feel that if it didn’t have good flavor, then the other categories really held less meaning.  We kind of agreed that next time, we’d weight the “Taste” category on a 0 – 10 basis, thus doubling its influence on our rating system. The results based just on Taste were:

Edward
Rosie and Glenn (tied)
Pina Colada
Valencia Pride (?)
Maha Chinok
Nam Doc Mai
Duncan and Mystery Mango (tree labeled NDM)
(Kent and Manila not included)

Christina and I seemed to enjoy the sweeter varieties placing secondary importance on various complexities, where JF, Behl and Null Zero appeared to like more of the “in your face”  type mangoes with sweetness probably farther down their list of preference.  For example, what we called the “fake” Valencia Pride (so-called because of it’s small size and high fiber content) was really enjoyed by those 3 as it had a bit of a kick to it, and Christina and I turned our noses up a bit as we “munched” (J) on our pieces of fruit.  The "Mystery" mango looked, and tasted perhaps, somewhat like my Manilas on my tree (fattish and oval) but the tree was purchased and labeled as a Nam Doc Mai.  The Nam Doc Mai tested was true to shape but a bit overripe. The Florida Edward was a hit overall (even with the signature Florida anthracnose spots on it) while the Florida Duncan must have absorbed all the recent rains there as it was completly watered down and bland.  The Glenn had a large bad spot on it, but still soared and scored well with the tasters.  80% of the mangoes tested were picked off my trees with just a bit of color on them, still hard, and ripened by wrapping them in newspaper, placed in a box and put in a warm place a week before the contest.  Maybe with more tree-ripening before picking the tastes for some of them might have changed.

One of the biggest surprises was the beautiful Maha Chinok fruit, which really failed to live up to the overall hype it has gotten here at the forum, really turning in to a run of the mill variety during the contest.  Frank had sampled a Florida Maha two days before the tasting and testified that it's a superior variety for sure.  He thinks I will figure out all the soil additives, and I will see it respond better to the taste test in the future.  I still have some thought that, perhaps it simply doesn’t do well out here in the desert.  Guess we’ll see.

So a big thanks for my SoCal friends for coming out and enjoying a few hours of laughter and slurping mangoes with me.  We’ll definitely do it again next year and the year after as long as the mangoes keep saying, EAT ME! 

Gary (MangoFang)

(Apparently, in our excitement, we only photographed 5 mangoes!  Also, Nullzie, if you could post a picture of the participants since that was not in the link you sent me)



Mango Array



Rosigold



Florida Edward



Glenn



Florida Duncan



Maha Chinok

Gang - here's an amateur video of my backyard.  Soon - you all will be doing this!
It was fun and weird at the same time....Thanks to PJ for getting an assist on
the 3 pointer.....

 

Fang

http://youtu.be/9d0PBfFJEl8

I just updated the link to embed.

Hey guys.  I've had a fish pond now almost 10 years and the goldfish are big enough that I need
to rinse the fabric filter out daily (sometimes more) and what I've been rinsing off for many years into a sort of low spot between some bushes is the scum of probably fish poop and whatever's been stirred up from the bottom of the pond by their general activities.

And  it occurred to brilliant ME the other day, that I could instead rinse this stuff into a bucket when I clean the filter, add some water to it diluting it further, then start a cyclical plan of watering the edible trees and plants I've got spread around the house.  I've figured it would take me several weeks till everything received a watering can dose of the stuff and then I could start over again.

I went online and sort of found different answers for this - some great some not so good.  Just wonder if anyone has heard anything about this or has any experience with this method of fertilizing plants, because it just seems like there would be, besides the obvious nitrogen content, a lot of micro-nutrients that could be of great benefit to the plants.  Besides saving money over the years and certainly getting an "A" for recycling....


Thanks in advance - Gary

Hi Gang:

This is probably a "as-long-as-we're-waiting-for-the-mangoes-to-ripen" kind of question,
but would anyone have any idea why my grafted Navel Orange tree produces such
large gorgeous fruit, but the juice inside is a watered down shadow of what it should be.
It is like someone had added equal amount water and orange juice and pumped it into
each orange.....

Now before you jump on the watering part of this equation, I have cut WAY DOWN this year on the watering and yet still.......the results are the same year after year....It WAS a grafted 4-n-1 citrus tree
but I cut off the lemon and mandarin orange branches.  The lemon was way too aggressive and I already have a mandarin orange tree.

Anyone had this happen before....or....any tips on how to change it?
A certain fertilizer....minor elements...MAJOR elements....?

 


you guys are the BEST!    Gary

(it's a crappy picture - just took it and this time of day it's in the shade....)

Well, it's going to be half ass because I wrote the WHOLE post yesterday only to have it bog down with an
image upload and that punched me off the website losing all I had written.......grrrrrrrrrrrrrr......

Anyway, my Palm Springs desert haul this year is as follows:

Manila - around 106 (some still on tree but I counted those)
Manila #2 - about 9
Rosigold - 5 I believe
Alphonso - 6
Maha Chinok - 2
Pickering - 2
Valencia Pride - 2 earlier

Now, as far as taste this is how I rated the ones I've eaten so far:

Rosie
Alphonso
Manila
Pickering
Maha Chinok
Valencia Pride
Manila #2

I couldn't believe how less than average the pickering and maha chinok (picture following - it fell off the tree, so that is the
bruise you see) tasted. A slightly "off"flavor, not that sweet, great on the lack of fiber but that was about it.  But...I guess the rule is "taste twice" before you know for sure, so we'll try them again next year.  The Valencia Prides from last month that fell off - just not good at all....Sorry, I just wasn't motivated to take pictures - the heat this summer
has been pretty intense and whether that had an effect on the taste of the fruit as well, I don't know.

The last 2 pictures are of my Miracle Mango (Chou Anon - Harry's spelling!) flowering once again in the summer....very strange, we'll see if it holds any fruit but I have my doubts.  The second Manila tree has much smaller fruit that my big one, and lots more fiber - not too tasty - definitely a sort of crap shoot it appears in these Manila seedlings sold by Lowes/Home Depot....

Another thing - every single type of mango matured within a couple weeks of each other - like the early/late thing didn't even apply.
My Keitt from last year, yes, that did ripen late into almost December, so at least I'm going to have one that will stretch out my season.

Again, sorry for the minimal effort - heart really not in it - might be partly because my dog of 18 years died about a month ago...
  - yeah, it was sad, but I'm feeling much better now....

thanks, gary

I know that guy at Fairchild Gardens only recommends adding Pottasium for established trees,
but is that because it improves the quantity or the quality (or both) of the developing
fruit?

Or is it something else?

(the question is asked knowing that ALL the elements - nitrogen, phosphorous and many others
interact in non-specific ways when it comes to the overall success of plant life)

  !


Thanks, MellowFang

I don't remember seeing a lot written at the other forum about growing organically, these subtropical fruits we all talk about and grow (I puruesed the "Topic" section and couldn't seem to come up with anything directly related to actual methods, or I perhaps didn't search correctly).  Anyway, I've decided to try that route as of the beginning of this year.  I've purchased a tumbling composter, 1000 red wigglers and some kelp powder to get me started.

Is there anybody out there doing that now, or anyone who has done that in the past have some good tips, or an excellent book to get me going on the right track?  What I've read so far is that growing organically gives your plant the healthiest means to grow and fruit...and...the healthier and stronger the plant, the less that diseases and pests will bother it.  And of course the obvious benefits of no remnants of pesticides or chemicals that might be ingested.

Besides the fertilization process - although I'm thinking with compost being added at regular intervals and worms scattered everywhere that perhaps one does not NEED additional NPK (?) - there is the other art of organic insect protection/treatment for those trees that do become infected.

Any advice based on experience, especially if it's been done with our tropical fruits, would be muchly appreciated.  And this idea of providing "micro-nutrients" - would that need these plants have, approach any kind of satisfaction with this method of growing?

Thanks, gang....


FangoftheMango

I'm on board with you guys now, as JF told me there was an exodus happening - the second coming
of the Jesus Mango shifting without commercial breaks...

But I had to change my name - it's now MangoFang...but it's still me....MDog...


I'll check this new place out later.....so....are we abandoning the other forum, toot-suite??



mangofango