Tropical Fruit Seminar - April 10, 2021

Been here all my life, down south. I grew up in Palm Beach County, where I lived and survived as a kid on caramel and mangoes that I stole from people's trees. And so I've always had a passion for tropical fruits. It’s just a wonderful thing to be able to grow these things here in our own yards and to enjoy them. Just by show of hands, how many people here are native Floridians? Got a couple of them. Okay. We're outnumbered, guys. Anybody here that's just recently moved to Florida within the last year? Wonderful. Good to have you guys. Welcome. Florida's a very unique place. There's a lot of fun fictional books based around Florida and all of its eccentricities.

I wanna talk to you about tropical fruit today, obviously. The way I run these seminars is that I'm gonna hit on three of the most common tropical fruits that people grow here, and then, I'm gonna hit on three very uncommon fruits that you can grow here. As we touch on things, feel free to ask questions if it pertains to the specific fruit I'm talking about. At the end, I will remain here for as long as need be. I've been here till one o'clock sometimes just talking. If you have individual specific questions like what's this on my Lychee tree and why is this doing that? I'll try to hit on everything as I go.

I'd like to start with a big one, mangoes. Everybody loves mangoes. We are right at the beginning of the tropics. We're really subtropical. Unless you're on the beach side, we're pretty much a subtropical zone. So it's kinda that nine b ten a area where if we get a freeze, your trees might be in danger. I do a whole other lecture on saving your trees during the cold protection and things. All the trees that I'm gonna talk about today, for the most part, if we get a hard freeze, something that's below thirty-two degrees for more than ten hours, there could be some issues. But most trees, if they're large enough, will be fine. And there's ways to save them. I can talk about that individually, but probably not now because we're coming into the summertime. We just wanna get them in the ground.

Mangoes, I mean, I grew up on mangoes. Most of the time when you get a mango in the store, it's a bad representation of what a mango is. Mangoes honestly tip right. Am I right? Mangoes, they're stringy. They don't ripen properly. Sometimes the seed gets ripe first and then it gets jellied on the inside. That's because some of the best mangoes to ship are not the best mangoes to eat. Oftentimes, you'll find what's called a Tommy Atkins mango, which is a Florida standard, a little bit stringy, but they can pick them and they handle rough handling well and that's why you see them in the stores. It's like four nine five nine or something like that on the code. Then we have the little Altufo mangoes, the little champagne, whatever you wanna call them. They're okay, but they’re hit and miss.

Some of the mangoes that you can grow in your own yard, you can just take and cut with a butter knife. No fiber. They have overtones of coconut and pineapple and cinnamon and peach. Those are the kinds of mangoes that are available today. There's a guy named Gary Zill. If anybody has seen the old Florida fruit books by Lewis Maxwell back in the fifties and sixties, his family kind of created a lot of new varieties. Recently, it's interesting as they took because you'll see some new varieties coming out of mangoes. It used to be the typical Hayden and Glen and Kent and Edward and all those varieties which are fantastic mangoes, very reliable. But now you see weird ones like pineapple sorbet or coconut cream or spirit of seventy-six and wonder what these things are.

What Gary did, just to give you a little briefing on how people create mango cultivars, he planted out about ten thousand seedlings or so. From that, he has enough knowledge that he could go around and smell the leaves and know if these seedlings, because typically mango seedlings, will revert back to their turpentine mango, which is the original. It's hard to eat, stringy, tastes kind of piney. He could smell the leaves themselves and tell whether they've reverted back to turpentine mangoes. The ones that didn't, he let grow. That was probably maybe eleven or twelve hundred mango seedlings. They grew out and he kept good records of what he crossed to get that. From those are all these new varieties that are coming out. We're kind of in this mango boom right now of fantastic varieties. There’s some like lemon meringue and lemon zest and orange sherbet that literally tastes like sun-kissed soda, like an orange soda. They're amazing.

You’ll get your standard mango flavors. Some of the standard ones are great, but some of the new ones coming out are exciting. It's neat to see new varieties come out. When you go to the store, what’s that? Are they as hearty? They're all about the same hardiness. That’s a good question. She asked if they're all the same, if they're all as hardy. Yeah. About thirty-two degrees and if you’re on a small tree, you wanna cover it. They'll start to get leaf burn. Anything lower than that for a longer period of time, you’ve really gotta protect it. But for the most part, it's worth protecting a tree for a couple of days in our winters for ten, twelve, fifteen years of great mango production. It's just when they're young that you need to protect them. They're all about the same hardiness. I'm not seeing anything that's changed the hardiness of mangoes.

I say all that to say, there's some fantastic varieties. You may go out to the store and go, I have no idea what’s over here. I've never heard of a Carrie mango. What is that? Sometimes, there's excellent documentation now, both in the form of books. In fact, if you want it, I think on the handout I passed out, there's a book by Charles Bonning or Bonning. He has a fantastic book on tropical fruit trees. He lists several varieties in there. In addition to that, he lists salt tolerances of all the trees and those types of things. There’s some but in addition to the books, on the internet, we have the internet now, it's fantastic. On Facebook, there are tropical fruit growing forums, and tropical fruit, you get a lot of questions answered through that. There's so much information out there now.

If you choose to plant a mango tree, some of the most reliable trees, what’s one thing you have to look at? There are three main things you wanna look at when you're looking at a mango tree. Number one, how big does it get? Because some mango trees get this big, and those aren’t appropriate for most yards. Right? So how big does it get? How resistant is it to anthracnose or mildew or rot, with the spots you get on there? And number three, how good is it? Is it just a great mango or an okay mango? What is most pleasing to everyone?

So those are three things you look at. What I suggest, and I think I have them written down in there, is that, well, let me add one more thing to it. If you have room for more than one tree, you wanna be able to have mangoes all through the summer because there are some varieties that'll give you fruit in May, and there are some varieties of mango that you can have on a Thanksgiving table. So, what I would suggest, personally, if someone were to ask me, because I'm not seeing the longevity of some of the newer cultivars, like the ones that Gary Zill's putting out. I don't really know how big they get. I don't know what their resistance is. I don't know what their out years, how you know, what but they're good. But the reliable ones, I most commonly refer people to a Glen mango. A Glen mango is a quintessential mango flavor. A lot of the new guys that are on the forums on the internet are like, those are passe. They are old school, but they are reliable. And everybody loves a Glen Mango. And they're consistent producers, and the tree is manageable. You can keep it within fifteen or twenty feet. So that’s a great one.

A lot of the mango varieties that I have in my yard, I've seventeen varieties, and I'm only on half an acre. But I planted densely together. I've a Kerry, which stays relatively small. Kerry is a great mango, has a little spice to it. I've a cog shawl, which originated in the nineteen forties in Pine Island on the West Coast of Florida. It's a great mango, and I've it in the ground for probably fifteen years, and it's no bigger than ten, twelve feet on its own. So, there are many varieties of mango that are called condo mangoes. They stay smaller, and so it's easier to place in the yards, and you can get a couple of varieties in.

So to answer the question, what should I put in? I'd say a Glen would be my number one. Another great one if you like Southeast Asian mangoes is called a Namdok Mai, n-a-m, dok, and then mai, m-a-i. And that's a really good one. It's got a very strong kind of peach overtone. It stays to a nice compact tree. But there are so many varieties out now. You really have to determine what you want for your yard. Do I have a lot of room? Do I have a little bit of room? Do I want a couple of mangoes that are gonna give me fruit all summer? But for the most part, they're all gonna have a wonderful mango flavor cut like butter these days and some will just have some neat overtones. The one that blooms later in the year is called a Kit, k-e-i-t-t, Kit Mango, and they're pretty large mangoes, and I've had them as late as October, probably down south, probably as late as November. There are a lot of varieties like in the early ones, Pickering, p-i-c-k-e-r-i-n-g, is a fantastic mango that is a really early mango. That's a great one.

She asked, how can you identify a mango if you move to a house and you're not sure? Sometimes the long skinny leaves will give it away. Some of the more Southeast Asian mangoes have longer leaves, but it's really hard to identify them from one to the other. Let me get back. What was the question about someone just had a question. I didn't get to it.

How long before it fruits? No one's gonna wanna hear this, but when you plant a mango tree, say I plant this tree right here. This is a Kent tree, probably a couple of years old after graft. What happens when you have these are all grafted mango trees, right? So does everybody know what a grafted mango graft is? You basically have a root stock, just like citrus, and then you graft in what's called a scion. It's a piece of an adult tree, the tip of an adult tree. You put those two together and then they start growing. But the problem is that the top of the tree thinks it's mature and wants to bear fruit, but the bottom of it can't support the fruit, right? So yeah. Everybody's like, oh, my mango tree's blooming. It's got all these fruits on it, and it's this big. And what that's gonna do is it's gonna cause the tree to set back. You wanna the first couple of years when they start to fruit if they don't drop on their own, pick them off. Think about the energy it takes to produce a large mango. All of the nutrients and all the water, it just taking away energy from that tree, which is a young tree, becoming established into the ground.

So as much as it's hard to bear, that's why some people will buy them a little bit bigger, buy a seven gallon. It has a better chance, but nonetheless, you really wanna get that thing set up. To answer the question, when will it start, fruiting? It'll probably wanna fruit right away, but I wouldn't let it fruit right away. Give it a couple of years. If you're dying to have something, get it a little bit bigger. Let one or two fruits and then let it come. But you gotta let that thing establish itself into the ground? Does that make sense?

Everybody loves to grow mango seedlings. There are two kinds of seeds, mono embryonic and poly embryonic. Polyembryonic has a better chance, probably a ninety percent chance of becoming true to the mother plant. Monoembryonics, for the most part, will revert back to the turpentine seedling, which is gross. It tastes and doesn't taste good. If you do happen, like I have a bunch of Nam Dok Mai, which is polyembryonic seedlings growing. Only, it is gonna take about ten to fifteen years for that to start producing. Seedlings just like an avocado, and we’ll get to that in a second. You can grow an avocado tree, but it's gonna take about fifteen years, for the thing to actually fruit. Does that make sense?

A lot of people are just like Brazilian pepper, allergic to the sap. But I've heard that people if someone can peel it for them, they can eat the fruit. As far as being any different with the response to the sap from it, they're all about the same from what I've experienced.

Some of the things that happen with tropical fruit trees, they get weird spots like my mangoes. I have one I just put in called the spirit of seventy-six. It's one of Gary Zill's new varieties. The whole one side, it all got this black sooty mold. It's not gonna do anything; I'm not worried about it. I didn't even treat it and it's fine now because the sun started moving this way and then it got all fine. A lot of these things can be self-managed. Some things like mangoes would benefit from a copper fungicide if we get a really rainy season so that the blooms will set. There are a few things you can do, but those are questions and things I can answer individually.

So, mango, avocado, and star fruit are great trees to grow. I could talk about so many more uncommon fruits that do grow well here: sapodilla, which tastes like a pear dipped in brown sugar and cinnamon, or even lychee. It’s really exciting to think about all the possibilities and to know that you can have these wonderful fruits growing in your very own backyard in Florida.