You will be happy with any of these mangos. Most mangos fruit in June and July. If you have more than one tree, consider getting early or late varieties to extend the season. Just about any mango you grow yourself is far superior to supermarket mangos.
⊕ Fairchild Garden Curator’s Choice Mangos 2014 2017 2019
† Webmaster’s favorites.
Here are few video descriptions by Dr. Jonathan Crane at TREC of some popular mango cultivars:
- Carrie † Soft, fiber-less, excellent sweet flavor
- Cushman July-August
- Edward † Excellent flavor, shy producer without micronutrients
- Julie Favorite in Jamaica, for good reason. Highly susceptible to Anthracnose in FL. Alternative: Ruby & Graham taste a lot like Julie, but are more disease resistant.
- Keitt August-October, huge fruit, juvenile trees have disease problems.
- Kent July-August, large tree, very productive
- Mallika ⊕ † Usually picked mature green and ripened in a warm area for best flavor. (Good if you have drive-by raiders. Shhh, they won’t know they’re ready.)
Some excellent fiber-less mango cultivars:
- Coconut Cream Tastes like coconut cream pie, though production isn’t as good as Pickering.
- Lemon Zest † * Lemon Meringue † * is incredible, “Lemon Zest” is more…zesty.
- Orange Sherbet† Oh my … another top-tier mango from Zill.
Extend the season with these small trees:
- Rosigold ⊕ Mid to late March
- Angie ⊕ * Beautiful red tint, intense mango flavor. Early.
Other recommended small-tree, fiber-less varieties
- Cogshall ⊕ Great flavor and color
- Glenn † Excellent flavor, color, and scent. Extra disease resistant
- Nam Doc Mai ⊕ From Thailand, one of the best Asian mangos
- Pickering † * Excellent flavor, hint of coconut. Polific, small tree, fruits very young
- Sweet Tart This got highest marks from mango grower Alex Salazar* at our Sept.’16 meeting.
Pictures and ratings on Pine Island Mango Variety Viewer (Great pics by Ian Maguire). A word of caution about the Variety Viewer. Some of their recommendations are off base. Young / Tebow does not compare well to Edward in MHO; Lancitilla is not a small tree.
Mango-yours vs supermarket
Just about any mango you grow yourself is far superior to supermarket mangos. Why?
“Just about any” means a few varieties in the store are good. Any that are grown in your own country might be good. But most are grown overseas and they have many strikes against them before they start.
- Many people who say they don’t like mangos have only had them from the supermarket. Most commercial mangos in the USA are the variety Tommy Atkins or related. These are the large, mostly red, oval shaped mangos. They are beautiful fruit with great eye appeal, they ship and store well, the tree is very productive and disease resistant. Qualities growers especially like. Unfortunately, they can be fibrous (stringy), and not the best flavor available.
Some people grow their good mangos in back and Tommy in the front yard and so they can tell passers-by who ask for samples: “sure, take all you want.” - Mangos that are shipped from oversees must be picked way too early or they will spoil before they get to the shelves. That means they can never develop the ideal sugar content and flavor. Strike two.
- All imported mangos must be disease and insect free, so by US law they must be either irradiated or heat treated. Consumers object to irradiation. Growers don’t like it either because the equipment is expensive and the process is complicated. That leaves heating the fruit to be sure there are no disease spores or insect pests. The heating requirement is a water bath at least 115°F for at least 90 minutes. Essentially cooking them. Strike 3.
- What is left after cooking heating mangos is a fairly colorless fruit, so they are then treated with ethylene gas to bring back the red color. Also heating increases stringiness and reduces flavor.
- You can now better understand why store bought mangos can be disappointing. I used to think it was my fault: maybe I picked up the wrong piece of fruit, or I didn’t wait quite long enough or waited too long to eat it.
- And now you know why if you grow your own mangos, even a Tommy Atkins, it will be far superior to store bought. Whether you grow a low fiber (a little more durable) or fiber-free mango (more delicate and harder to ship), you will enjoy it much more, and you can get so many wonderful flavors.
- If you don’t have a yard, or live in an HOA that doesn’t allow you to plant fruit trees in the yard (who makes those rules?), try growing a Pickering mango in a container. It is a naturally slow growing dwarf tree that can fruit in a large pot, easily kept at 6 feet tall. Plus the tree starts fruiting unusually quickly after planting, is very prolific, and the flavor is a wonderful coconut/mango mix. Pickering is small enough and good enough that every mango lover should have one, even if you only have a balcony.