Mango mania

Every year in October the Brisbane Fruit and Vegetable Market hosts a unique event - the annual charity auction of the first tray of mangoes for the season.  Last year's winning bid was $35,000.  Not bad for something that usually wholesales for around $24!

Mangoes are a real Queensland thing - in fact the backyard mango tree was recently listed as one of the top ten icons of Queensland.

This is our tree, currently in full flower and with the promise (perhaps) of a real feast at Christmas.  I say 'perhaps', because in seven years it has so far never provided us with a single fruit we could enjoy.

I have to admit this is the one tree in our garden that we have totally neglected.  A stunted specimen that had been planted before our coming - behind the garage in indifferent soil right on the boundary of our property (that's the neighbour's garden shed right behind) - it has always remained out of sight and out of mind.  Too hard to water and not worth the bother of fertilising.

So I was surprised last year to see it had set a handful of reasonable fruit.

From time to time I checked on their progress.  Apparently our resident possum had been doing the same, because eventually all but one had disappeared.  When I visited again, hoping that it may be ripe, I found this freshly chewed stone lying under the tree.

If a decent crop sets this year it may be worth netting the tree, because even if the possum doesn't finish them off, it is very possible that the roving flocks of fruit bats could take a fancy to them.

I had never tasted a mango until I was in my twenties, and then I wasn't at all impressed.  Someone had once remarked that they have an after-taste of kerosene and I had to agree.  I also knew a couple of people who were highly allergic to the fruit (I have read that as many as one in fifty people may be allergic to mangoes) and that too, put me off.  But many years later when two of my children developed a passion for the fruit, I tried one again - and was pleasantly surprised. 

Now I am hooked. 

Comments

[Darla]

Strange enough I thought I commented earlier. I thought I even checked to see if my comment was there.

Anyhow... I like mangoes in any form, fresh, dried and in things like ice cream.

I only recently discovered there was more than one kind. The fat one with the red blush (I know best) and my recent discovery of a smaller thinner yellow one sold here as a Phillipine or Champaign mango.

Go net that tree!

Darla

[Val]

My husband and sons are MAD about mangoes, but here in Melbourne they are still rather exotic. That doesn't stop them from buying a whole tray of them though. Lots of luck with your crop this year, Jude. And I see those dreadful fruit bats have reared their ugly rodent-looking heads. Did you see my post on the orange-shooting bazookas taking on the bats in Melbourne?

[tjilpi]

The only way I can eat a mango is sitting in the bath with a tootpick to remove the strings.

I adore mangoes...always have done. When living up in north Queensland, I was in heaven. In the grounds of a motel I was managing at one time in Cardwell, there were 21 Bowen mango trees growing and producing! Yum!

[Lee]

Sorry...I posted this mango comment without logging in.

[DellaB]

Our house is surrounded by huge mango trees, although not one of them is in our own yard, I must get some photos. I love the trees and the mangoes, I grew up with Bowen mangoes in the yard in Townsville, in season you could lean out a window and pick them, but here the flying foxes beat us to them unless we pick them green - mind you, stewed green mangoes... hard to beat!