Harvesting
Timing is critical when harvesting mangoes. A mango needs to be picked when it’s mature, not ripe. A mature mango is still firm and green on the outside but has flesh that has begun to turn yellow on the inside. If picked from the tree too early (when it’s immature) it will not reach its full flavor. If the fruit is allowed to reach full maturity on the tree it can be picked firm & green and will ripen well at room temperature. If the mango is picked before it is fully grown & mature, it will not ripen properly and will taste bland when it eventually softens & ripens. During a mango season, market prices start high and then steadily drop until the end of the season so farmers are always tempted to get their fruit to market early which inevitably leads to immature fruit being picked and bland-tasting mangoes in shops.
Storage & Transport
Two things are critical when transporting or storing mangoes: time and temperature. When you cool a mango down, it takes longer to ripen and therefore longer to perish. Market agents and supermarkets will do this for various reasons such as taking advantage of the market price to match supply and demand or simply for logistical purposes. However, when the storage temperature drops below 18oC, the ripening process is affected and flavor will be negatively impacted. For this reason, we always take care to store and transport our mangoes between 18 C and room temperature. This means we are time-limited in getting our mangoes to our customers which is why we usually only hold mangoes on the farm for between 1 to 4 days before sending them to the fundraising school or organization.
Fertilizer Management
One of the keys to producing high quality mangoes is correct fertilizer application. Too much fertilizer will give increased yields and increased fruit size but will be detrimental to the quality and taste of the mango. On our farm our main source of applied fertilizer is biodunder (a biproduct of ethanol production) which we apply only once a year. We also use a single application of gypsum as well as a few applications of various trace elements.
Biological Farming
At The Mango Fundraiser farm we are always trying new growing techniques that reduce our reliance on chemical pesticides and soluble fertilizers.
We have found over many years, that the more natural diversity you have in your plant life, insect life and animal life and soil life, the more resilient and productive your farm can be.
The challenge of course is to develop ways of enhancing all this life while at the same time having efficient harvesting and growing systems.
Our latest practice comes from other country farming method ,where many farmers have been developing systems for soil life enhancement from cheap & simple nutrient sources. Here we have learned ways of culturing beneficial organisms in liquid cultures that we call biofertilizers. We source these organisms from the local forests and grow them in our biofertilizers to be applied in the orchard. These are early days but initial responses are encouraging.
Of course many of these “biological” products are not as potent as “agro chemicals” but they are much more friendly to handle and much cheaper to produce, so you have to apply them more frequently.
We have found with farming, as with most things in life, the more you focus on promoting beneficial life instead of concentrating all your energy on killing the things you don’t like, the better the whole system operates.