10-26-2013, 10:56 AM
The Hilo Arboretum on Kilauea is free and open to the public weekdays, people with a State of Hawaii ID card can pick a small bag of fruit for personal consumption every day if they like. There are maybe 20 or 30 mango trees there but many are large and have high hanging fruit, and most of the varieties are not labeled even though most of the trees planted were probably named varieties.
If you pick fallen fruit off the ground beware of the little wiggly orange bugs that wiggle around inside the fruit and yes they do taste terrible. They tend to proliferate later in each mango's particular season.
Carrie is right about choosing Anthracnose resistant varieties for the windward side of Hawaii. I wouldn't bother to plant a seedling variety because you never know what you may (or may not) harvest many years down the line. Better to spend a few bucks upfront as a long term investment and keep in mind that mango trees come in a wide variety of mature sizes and growth habits.
Some people sell posters of Big Island Mangoes. Here's a link to 2 of them, but beware that not all these mangoes produce well in the wet:
http://www.fruitlovers.com/MangoPosterHawaii.jpg
http://thesoupblog.com/wp-content/upload...Poster.jpg
If you pick fallen fruit off the ground beware of the little wiggly orange bugs that wiggle around inside the fruit and yes they do taste terrible. They tend to proliferate later in each mango's particular season.
Carrie is right about choosing Anthracnose resistant varieties for the windward side of Hawaii. I wouldn't bother to plant a seedling variety because you never know what you may (or may not) harvest many years down the line. Better to spend a few bucks upfront as a long term investment and keep in mind that mango trees come in a wide variety of mature sizes and growth habits.
Some people sell posters of Big Island Mangoes. Here's a link to 2 of them, but beware that not all these mangoes produce well in the wet:
http://www.fruitlovers.com/MangoPosterHawaii.jpg
http://thesoupblog.com/wp-content/upload...Poster.jpg