Articles written by Darryl McCullough (unless otherwise noted)

Sunday, July 24, 2016

A Twice-Told Tale of Two Mangos

My Ice Cream variety mango produced a fruit this year, its first, prompting me to tell its tale. Actually, the story of its acquisition appeared back in 2014, on the previous MRFC website, but since that site is no longer visible, I will repost it here. Next week, we'll learn what's happened since then.

June 1, 2014. Last winter I would head out early on Saturdays to the Sarasota farmer's market. Mainly I liked to hang out at Charlie Crowley's booth. Larry Atkins was generally to be found there, and some of the town's other fruit tree enthusiasts often dropped by. I could learn from these founts of horticultural wisdom, while enjoying the Gulf air and the sights and sounds of market day.

On a warm March Saturday, one of Sarasota's most reclusive collectors came by. He mentioned that he was looking for a good home for a mango tree, an Ice Cream. I was quick to speak for it.

Along with it came with my first tour of his collection. More than thirty varieties of mango, along with lychees, longans, citrus, avocados, jackfruit, one of Wayne Clifton's Dream cherimoyas, and on and on. For many years he's been mulching with free wood chips from the guys in the orange trucks, and now has a foot-and-a-half layer of rich soil on his entire grove. He irrigates with two 450-foot wells. Surrounded by a high wall, this secret fruit tree paradise sits within walking distance of downtown Sarasota. Sweet.

The Ice Cream variety is a fine-tasting dwarf mango, said to be ideal for container growing. The free tree was in a 10-gallon nursery pot, and at more than four feet tall with a stout trunk, is ready to produce. Quite a bonanza.

My host had another 10-gallon mango to give away, a Tommy Atkins. For some reason, the hefty main trunk had been cut off, but it sported a vigorous sprout about three feet tall growing above the graft. The Tommy Atkins variety is known as a trouble-free reliable producer, but it wants to be a big tree. And most people consider its fruit to be only mediocre. With so many wonderful mango trees to have, I can't spend the space for that. But it's still a valuable tree and I said I would take it too.

We managed to cram them both into my '98 Taurus, and back at my place I muscled them out. I figured I would to keep the Ice Cream in its container, perched on a couple of concrete blocks in an otherwise useless spot of flood-prone low ground. But what to do with the Tommy Atkins?

Pal Kevin lives on a handsome five-acre spread about a mile from me. He has a fine collection of fruit trees, but is nowhere near needing all that space for them. I proposed that he use the Tommy Atkins as a trap plant. That is, put it out on the periphery of his property and forget about it. It will become a big, beautiful tree making lots of fruit for the wild critters, and the idea is that they may settle for that instead of the gourmet stuff that requires venturing near the house with its canine patrols. Kevin liked the idea, and we planted it the first day of spring.

Two mango trees have now found their purpose in life.

No comments:

Post a Comment