Mango Season Bounty

A message of abundance and resourcefulness

I live in southwest Florida, and summertime is mango time! Different varieties of mangoes are in season here from June through August. When I first moved here nearly three years ago, I assumed I would still be spending whole summers every year back up north in Michigan. I surely didn’t realize the impact that mango season would have on me! I relocated to Florida for the sunshine, the warmth, the ocean, the slower pace of life, and the FRUIT….and though tasty fruit grows year-round here, summer is the most abundant fruit season in Florida, just like in Michigan. So for now, I’ve decided to catch at least half of mango season, and then enjoy some of Michigan’s late-summer fruit bounty as well.

This summer, perhaps due to effects from Hurricane Ian impacting our area in the fall, and then a dry springtime, we have a real bumper-crop of mangoes. Trees that have not fruited for years are absolutely loaded. It feels miraculous to return to a single tree day after day, each day to find a whole new carpet of freshly ripened fruit on the ground. I fill my bags and bicycle baskets with all that we can eat, and there is always more. I am awed by the sheer abundance! It’s truly incredible how much fruit one mature mango tree can provide.

Most people don’t know what to do with all this fruit, and while they continue to buy grocery-store fruit the perfect and free mangoes lie on the ground for animal foragers, and fruit-lovers like me! I am eating mango mono-meals twice a day, every day, and I will likely do this for a couple of months. This is what eating seasonally is all about…and when it’s mango season, it’s time to really capitalize on the fresh local mangoes! I look forward to the day when our own banana and papaya trees are producing abundantly, and we will not need to purchase any fruit in the summertime here.

I have discovered that while mangoes are abundant, lettuce is not. Lettuce doesn’t thrive in southern Florida’s summer heat like the mangoes do, so we will need to find work-arounds. Wild rabbits like our land, so we will need to build table-style raised beds for growing salad greens in the cooler months. We do have some perennial spinaches such as longevity spinach, which can grow up a trellis, out of rabbit-range. We also have bushes of katuk (with its nutty berries), and cranberry hibiscus - complementary wild salad leaves I learned to love in Costa Rica. The spinach, katuk, and cranberry all thrive year-round.

I am sure my readers know the satisfaction to be found in harvesting one’s food directly from nature. It’s wonderful to reap the harvest of seeds we have sowed, and foraging is yet another kind of reward. There is wild-foraging, and there is city or neighborhood foraging. One woman in my small-town community started a non-profit ( community mango tree program ) which plants mango trees of many varieties all over our town (well over 100 so far), on lawn and side-walk edges where they are intended to be enjoyed communally. Interested property owners apply, and a tree is delivered and planted if they meet the community-access requirements. Many of us here share a dream that one day our little town will be on the map with a mango festival.

The mango is a particularly popular and useful fruit. There are hundreds of cultivars, with a huge variety of exquisite flavors and textures. An average-sized mango may have about 100 calories, and is packed with nutrients. They are particularly high in vitamin C, and carotenoids (precursor to vitamin A) which cause the orange coloring of their flesh, and mangoes are also a good source of copper, folate, magnesium and potassium. Their amylase compounds and soluble fiber make them known for digestive health and regulation. Their skin and sap does contain minimal amounts of urushiol, which is the irritant in the oil of poison ivy, so it’s wise to use caution in handling the skins (and not eat this part) if you are someone who reacts very easily to poison ivy. The flesh of the fruit is free of urushiol.

My favorite way to enjoy fresh, ripe, local in-season mangoes is to eat them all by themselves, so I can savor nature’s already sublimely perfect recipe. All the ingredients needed for amazing flavor, sweetness, texture, and nutrition have already been considered and included! Mangoes are also quite versatile in human-created recipes, such as creamy-sweet salad dressings, salsas, puddings, pies, summer soups, smoothies, fruit-leathers, and so much more. I have found mangoes to be one of the very best fruits for bringing a low-fat creaminess to raw vegan recipe creations, and they combine very well with virtually all other fruits.

I love mango season because one of my most favorite fruits is abundantly available, for free, all over my neighborhood. This happy abundance helps people easily express their natural generosity. Neighbors compare notes about the different varieties, which ones are ripening, and locations of abandoned trees or trees with owners who wish to share their extra bounty. I collect a little more than we need, and then enjoy gifting them to anyone who comes by, and watching them light-up and smile. Mangoes are happy fruits! The more common ones here are like bright golden-yellow treasures, and others are impressively large with exotically beautiful exterior hues of red, purple, orange and green. All have sunny insides. While they are growing and ripening, each fruit hangs separately, and rather dramatically, in the tree on the end of a long ‘cord.’

Mango season, coinciding as it does with deliciously warm ocean waters and uncrowded beaches, is reason enough to make Florida a summertime destination. It’s a slow, peaceful time here, and rich with abundance. We have space to share in our Living Heart Sanctuary, and plenty of mangoes to go around.