Fruit Sales Tomorrow!

The medfly quarantine is ending!
We will sell mangos and other fruit 5-6pm tomorrow, September 1.

We have a good supply of ripe and green mangos of several varieties. Also available are longans, carambola, one small jak fruit, and sugar apples.

Please spread the word.

Selling Soon

The USDA/DPI are planning a press release on Wednesday (Sept 1) morning. They anticipate that the quarantine will be lifted at that time. If the quarantine is lifted on Wednesday, we will open this week only Wednesday afternoon 5:00-6:00, Thursday morning 9:00-10:00, and Thursday afternoon 5:00-6:00. Of course we will also be open Saturday morning.

The Last Peel?

Hopefully tomorrow will be the last Saturday Morning Mango Peel. (The quarantine is supposed to be over in this area on Thursday, September 2.) At the moment we have a lot of mangos, longans, carambola, jak fruit and sugar apples. Our current mango varieties available include Kent, Petegrew, Palmer, Valencia Pride, and Mallika.

We will be open 9 am to noon. If possible, please bring your own knife.

Thank You!

Thanks to all the people who showed up Saturday morning to cut up mangos!
Next Saturday should be the last time to cut up fruit on our property. Supposedly on September 2 we will be able to sell the whole fruit, and we will definitely be open early in the morning and in the late afternoon on that day. Yes, we will still have mangos, and we will also have carabola, sugar apple, and maybe some jak fruit and longans.

Saturday Morning Mango Bee

The end of the mango-cut-up season is fast approaching. We should have some kind of celebration on the day we finally move our picnic table out of the breezeway, but for now we will use it for a couple more sessions of mango cutting. If all goes as planned, we will be able to sell whole fruit starting September 2. Stop by tomorrow morning to enjoy the excellent varieties we have now. In twelve days the available varieties will be quite different, and the supply limited.

Fortunately our jak fruit season is late this year, so we should also have several jak fruit after the quarantine is lifted.

Now for some real work

Most varieties of mango trees have finished fruiting for the season. Beverly, Palmer, Petegrew, Neelum and Keitt will be our last varieties this year, and will probably be available after the quarantine is lifted. I just started to pick Kent, but the mangos on those trees look like they will all ripen within the next two weeks. Valencia Pride might be available for about another week.

So what happens every year after the fruit is picked?
Pruning.
Another project at the end of a long mango season is not a welcome thing, but the work now saves lots of time down the road.
My goals for pruning include keeping the trees small, improving air circulation and light penetration, encouraging optimal branching, and preparing the trees for fruiting next year.
This weekend we pruned about a third of the mango trees, and I am very tired.

With Fond Thoughts of the USDA and DPI

Since we have more mangos than time, we try to limit what we bring in the house for baking and freezing, etc. Even so, I threw out 4 buckets of overripe fruit today. I'm pretty sure I'll be able to keep up with the fruit once I give up sleep. But for now I even dream about mangos.

This week I picked the first Kent, Keitt and Beverly mangos. The Valencia Prides and Carries will last another week or so. Several other varieties are almost finished fruiting. Ealier today I noticed our first jak fruit ripening, and we have carambola and sugar apples now also. It's likely that all will be available this Saturday morning for tasting and/or cutting up.

Another Newspaper Article

While I was out of town last week, this article appeared:

http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2010-07-28/news/fl-drf-medfly-0728-20100728_1_quarantine-fruit-movement-female-medfly

Storm clouds are rolling in, so I'll dash outside to take advantage of the relative coolth. Thoughts on the medfly, the USDA, and tropical fruit can wait.

Personal Preferences in the Land of Mangos

Some might think I put too much mango in my mango bread, but I love it when it borders on mango bread pudding. As you might have noticed in the recipe notes, I often don't add any sugar ...just go with the sweetness of the mangos. (If you're using store-bought mangos, this modification probably won't work.) Yesterday's batch didn't have added sugar, but had tons of 'Dot' mangos, and pecans mixed in with the typical walnuts (because I ran short on walnuts). I thought the combination was extraordinary.

In the past two days I've picked lots of gorgeous Dot, Bailey's Marvel, Valencia Pride, Carrie, and Spirit of '76 mangos. We also have some Cushman, Haden, Mallika, Florigon, Zebda, Baptiste, Lemon Meringue, Pickering, Duncan, Fairchild, Mulgoba, Tommy Atkins, Irwin, Van Dyke, Choc-anon, Graham, Bombay, Alphonso, and Gary ...and we still haven't started picking Beverly, Neelum, Kent and Keitt.

We sure hope lots of people show up Saturday morning, knives in hand, to peel and cut mangos!
Sample whatever you want, and peel as much as you can. We'll weigh the finished product and charge you $2 per pound.

Mountains of Mangos

A few days back I strained some muscles carrying a rather large rock. Even injured I had more energy for rocks then than I do today for fruit. But this morning I picked mangos. Old habits. Perhaps this afternoon or evening energy will surface and I will cut and freeze mangos... maybe even make mango bread. (Click on "Recipes" for recipe.) Picking up rotting fruit will have to wait for an entirely different level of ambition.