![]() It’s not just the ridiculous price I feel a little guilty about, the carbon footprint on that thing is probably also not great. I justified this as my treat for being a good grown-up. Mango details dealt with, you agree we need to grow our own? Get to know these weird and wonderful Thai fruits, as well as the many varieties of bananas in Thailand (some say 20 - some say 100).I’d just been to get my teeth cleaned. 100 feet: Some tree varieties will grow up to 100 feet tall ( source). 500+: There are 500+ mango varieties – though it seems no one can really be bothered to count ![]() 4-5 months: The time from mango flower to mango fruit Makes Koh Samui's coconut yield (70 coconuts per tree per year) seem rather paltry. 29,000: The highest recorded annual yield from one tree is 29,000 mangoes (cue extended !!!!!!!!!!!). To the uninitiated, these mango facts might be surprising: Twenty-nine thousand one mangoes? Worth a try. And, in 15, the ever-so-gluttonous promise of “optimum yield”. By which point your kids may have given up or lost interest – no matter, let them be your mango babies. While it took just a week for them to sprout in Samui’s hot and humid climate, elsewhere – colder countries – you might be waiting three weeks or more. Note that only the polyembryonic varieties will breed true – so if you’re determined to get fruit, be sure to pick this kind of mango. You can see that this guy, below, has two shoots – Southeast Asian mango varieties, unlike Indian varieties, are polyembryonic. In a week's time, we had these to call our own. We planted it with a lot of worm castings to give it a good head-start in life. Do note that your mango needs good drainage. By all means, try in a compost-rich container mix – but this seemed to work. We planted our mango babies in a mixture of what’s available in Koh Samui’s plant nurseries – a coconut coir potting mix and worm compost. Spoiler alert: A mango seed looks like a rubbery alien baby. Soon you’ll meet the round and rubbery mango seed. Use scissors or a knife to cut off a small corner of the mango seed pod, until you are able to pull the pod apart. You’ll know when it’s dry because, suddenly, it will look furry – like in the photo above. We wrote on the pods to remember which variety was which. Dry off with a paper towel, and then leave it to completely dry for up to a day. You might have to run it under water and scrub a bit. Using a spoon or a knife, get as much of the mango flesh off the seed as possible. Mango seed pods: top 'khaew sawei' and bottom 'nam doc mai' mangoes Mango sticky rice – get an amazing recipe for *black* mango sticky rice in David Thompson’s Thai Food cookbook Step 4: Denude mango Much like the very spicy papaya salad – it’s made with green, unripe mangoes and is extremely, amazingly delicious. If you get beyond Pad Thai on the menu, try a mango salad. Need a few ideas? Mango with sticky rice (khao niew mamuang) is a food we’d place higher than bacon on the ‘Tastes Like Heaven’ list. You'll never see a Thai person cutting up a mango this way – but a Good Grips mango splitter makes the exercise a lot more child-friendly. ![]() If you’re not good with knives and have abundant kitchen drawers, try an OXO Mango Splitter which gets rave reviews from white people everywhere. Making sure they’re ripe, cut up mangoes. However, as mentioned in 'Mango 101' at the end of this post, there are as many as 500 mango varieties – so perhaps you can find something really interesting. Step 1: Buy mangoesįor comparison’s sake, we bought two varieties of mango at Koh Samui's Tesco ( 'nam doc mai' and 'khaew sawei', both Thai varieties). (Probably best that each child has his own mango seed). Growing mangoes would be a fantastic project to do with kids – as you’ll soon see why. How to grow a mango from seed Step 0: Involve children All the same, allow us to introduce our mango babies. Much like growing our own dragon fruit (a thankless enterprise performed only for curiosity’s sake), we have a long wait until we can call them trees – or expect any fruit. Keen but novice gardeners, especially with tropical plants, the thought of growing mango – our favourite fruit – is astonishing. ![]() While most of us from the northern half of the world learn to count using apples and oranges, mangoes remain slightly exotic. ![]()
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